The bare bones of trees scrape against the sky
Heavy and cold, holding memories of snow
The sun disappears a little earlier each night
And I let out a breath, let my old self go

It’s heavy and cold, holding memories of snow
I can feel the year hurtling toward its end
And I let out a breath, let my old self go
I’m trying to see winter as a friend

I can feel the year hurtling toward its end
Another cycle of seasons in this one finite life
I’m trying to see winter as a friend
Patient and present as a midwife

Another cycle of seasons in this one finite life
Could I gather the gifts and walk into the dark
Patient and present as a midwife
Waiting to see what new life is born?

Could I gather the gifts and walk into the dark?
The sun disappears a little earlier each night
Waiting to see what new life is born
Where bare bones of the trees scrape against the sky

🖊️ (Belated) NovPAD Week 3 Update - 2 out of 7 days?

This is the annual point of NovPAD where things just sort of fizzle out thanks to Thanksgiving and work deadlines and generally losing momentum. It is what it is! But for Week 3’s Form Friday (cyclical forms) I finally tackled a pantoum.

It’ll need a little polish to feel done, but there’s something there. For those of us well north of the equator, November feels like hurtling headfirst into the long dark. Consider this a little poem of preparation.1

I already have a week 4 poem to share before the month is out! Here’s your annual reminder that NovPAD is not a contest. Whether you write 30 poems or 2, you did the thing! 🌟

Sure,
there are Dunkin cups
in the gutter, and the
light pollution blocks any
hope of seeing northern lights,
and the kitchen window view
is three houses, a bus yard,
and Golden Arches in the distance.

But imagine walking 
to a coffee shop 
or the grocery store 
or the mechanic 
when your battery dies
for the third time in a month,
and see what’s there at a
ground level, human pace.

Find a little free library 
on the side of a busy road
stuffed with bookmarks and novels.
Catch a world tour whiff 
of small takeout spots 
(Brazilian, Domincan, Korean),
spices and cultures and
deep fried something.
Hear a fleeting beat 
from an old car radio
playing reggaeton or hip-hop.
Pass the rundown houses
with tiny ground floor
hair salons and appliance shops.
Pause under the trees at a baseball field.
Notice the strange derelict beauty 
of wildflowers in an abandoned lot, 
and a scribble of graffiti to say
“I am here.”

🖊️ NovPAD Week 2 Update - 4 out of 7 days

This one was for the prompt “cities” and came from scraps of an abandoned essay I wrote the week I found myself walking home from the mechanic for the third time in a month.

I love to write a nature poem and, like I said last week, will drive a full half hour to take my dog for a walk somewhere outside the city, away from cars and noise. At the same time, cities have a beauty of their own, and a lot of interesting things to notice. So here’s a little love note to Fall River and city life in general.

This came out in a big long stream of consciousness brain dump, then I chopped off the opening and closing sections. I read it on a Poetry Pub Zoom call a couple nights ago, and when I said I was sad to cut the part about how I can kind of see a McDonald’s sign from my bathroom / kitchen window, said “oh no put that back or write another poem about it.” So the new first stanza is me returning some of the weird little images I was sad to cut. Thanks JJ!

It’s a little too cold for 
early November in the woods.
Oaks and elms already giving
up, already flaming out,
letting go. And everything
already feels heavy, but here
I can let go too. Suddenly
a lo-fi car radio cuts the
stillness with a 1992 hit:
“I won’t cry for yesterday…”

(Sing along if you know it.)
Later I’ll look up the video
and lyrics to write this poem,
wonder why they chose that hat
for a bride in white (of course,
it was the 90s, you know).
But the woods, the woods
The scattering bluejays, the
crunching of twigs, the radio —
there’s an ordinary world

out there. Terror and beauty,
the rage of weak strongmen,
the kindness of small talk.
Maybe I can step outside my head
long enough to feel the wind,
to be free, like my terrier
romping in the leaves, bowing
to a skittish spotted blue dog
she meets on the trail. I’m tired.
Somehow I have to find

a measure of peace, a laugh.
We are all travelers here,
all ordinary. We are bound
to each other, to the woods,
to the birds, to the dogs,
somehow yes, to Duran Duran,
in that space where a busy road
bumps against the wildness.
Now I can breathe easier.
I will learn to survive.

We’re a little over one week into November Poem a Day, and I think I just might feel those atrophied poetry muscles waking up again. In Week 1, I managed 4 out of 7 prompts, all a little bit decent start in their own way, but this one was the most fun in all its stream of consciousness.

Last week, I took Malika for a walk at a nearby wooded trail. Do I need to drive my dog 20-30 minutes every other day to get a good sniff walk when we have a perfectly okay neighborhood route? Probably not. Does it bring me joy to get out of the city for a bit and be under the trees, even if it’s just a pocket of nature preserve? Absolutely. (This is one of the gifts of working from home.)

Anyway. The thing is, sometimes these little nature pockets are right next to houses, and sometimes you are walking on the trail close to said houses and catch their music playing loud, and it feels so weirdly out of place, but you are supposed to be writing poems this month and the prompt is “found poetry,” and you whip out your notes app.

That’s it. That’s the story. I’ve wanted to try writing a glosa1 again for a while. I have one in my first book that uses lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, from when I was a younger ✨intellectual✨ poet. Who knew a 1992 Duran Duran hit about grief would be my glosa breakthrough?

October has always been one of my favorite months. Yes, even before I lived in a place with apples/pumpkins/colorful leaves autumn, or before I leaned all the way into spooky season.

This year October looks like tromping through a Renaissance Faire with friends, a day trip to Walden Pond, lighting work candles on rainy days, and buying the fancy pumpkin spice coffee creamer because it’s cheaper than coffee out (but still getting coffee out anyway).

This year it also looked like traveling down to Nashville for my 13th Hutchmoot. Catching up with 20+ year friendships and starting new ones. Sitting in the silence of a pop up art gallery and skipping plenary sessions for long hallway conversations. Playing with art supplies and crying a little at hearing my favorite Rich Mullins song played live for the first time.

jroseyokel

A post shared by @jroseyokel

And then there’s the poetry open mics, a beloved Hutchmoot tradition for me now and always an honor to host.

Now November is on the way, which means Year Number I’ve Lost Count of attempting the November Poem a Day challenge! My friends at The Poetry Pub and I collaborated on a fresh list of prompts that I’m pretty excited about. Come write along if you want?

I’ve done this over a decade and have never hit all 30 prompts. So no promises for a flood of poems, but I’ll do my best and share my favorite drafts here along the way. Writing is a little more fun in community, so here’s a couple places you can join in:

• Still on Facebook? The Poetry Pub Writing Community is where it all began! Chris and I started this group back in 2018 just to write poems with a few friends, and now it’s one of the few things that compel me to keep my account open, ha. We’re accepting new members til the end of October, then we’ll disappear into the shadows as a private group to keep things safe and cozy. My pals and host virtual open mics from time to time, and we’ll have a daily NovPAD thread where you can share your poems!

• For the Facebook-avoidant among us, runs a spinoff Discord server called, adorably, Poetry Pints. Ashlyn will be running the challenge over there with the same prompts. Smaller, even cozier, and… it’s not Facebook! Here’s an invite link that will be open for the next 7 days. (If it doesn’t work DM me and I can send you a fresh link.)

It’s hard to be a person out here in the darker half of the year, but poetry helps. And friendship, and silliness, and homemade costumes, and letting yourself be a basic pumpkin spice girlie once in a while.

Good Friday and Easter get the attention, but Holy Saturday still has me in all its humanness and liminality. For Christians who observe Holy Week, every day has a dramatic story. But today is like a pause between the notes, the beat of rest between two high holy days.

For some, today is something of a high holy day in the American mythos too. It’s the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord1, the start of the American Revolution. I find it hard to care about American war holidays anymore, but there’s something in this contrast I can’t shake. The day that Christians honor God becoming powerless before overpowering death is coinciding with a day that, unknown to those soldiers 250 years ago, planted the seeds of a future empire.2

For me, one of the most transformative perspective shifts has been learning to see how Jesus’ life and teachings confront and confound our notions of power. Five or so years ago, I shared a little Holy Week poem cycle on my old blog, and I wanted to clean them up and republish them here. Each small poem is a reflection on a story from the Holy Week narrative through that lens.3

I put them in a little pdf with some iconography and classical artwork, if you like the combination of reading and visuals. I’ll also include all the poems in text form below for those who need/prefer that format.

Jry New Empire A Holy Week Poem Cycle

32.9MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Happy Easter Eve. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. May you find peace in the waiting and hope in the coming dawn. 🌷

New Empire: A Holy Week Poem Cycle

I. The Arrival
Behold your new king —
not striding in
with sword and shield,
and ten thousand men,
scowling down
from a war horse.
Behold the Kingdom comes
to you, quietly riding on
a borrowed mule.

II. The Cleansing
Even the glow of 
the holiest house
can be dulled with 
the dust of greed.
But listen — a shout, 
the crack of cage 
and whip, and a
King reclaiming
what is rightfully his.

III. The Dilemma
Rabbi says give Caesar his due —
coins, roads, power, borders 
to defend, wealth to be eaten
by moths and rust. 
And what is God’s?
Fields, forests,
oceans, galaxies.
Nothing to monetize,
somehow everything.

IV. The Gift
She wept like she knew
what was coming, like
someone who’d seen 
death itself reverse.
Some called it a waste, 
but she’s done
a beautiful thing,
a burial anointing
fit for a king.

V. The Washing
Before 
the cleared plates,
the sword’s clatter
the silver’s clink,
he did not call to arms.
but to the floor,
to wipe away the dust
of a long journey
from their tired soles.

VI. The Accusing
In the face of violence,
his silence was 
the only answer,
his blood and resolve
the only example,
his final breath
a resounding protest
to the empires that crush 
what they cannot own.

VII. The Resting 
While his friends mourn
the revolution lost,
the King waits silent
behind stone. How could 
they know his rest was
spent wrestling, resisting,
Death — that old tyrant 
even Caesar himself
could never escape.

VIII. The Dawning
Mary weeps in the garden,
through tears asks,
“Where is he?”
He whispers her name.
and she hears
the quiet coming
of a new empire
where even the lowest
are named by Love.

In Pine Cathedrals

The story goes
that we were made
to tend and watch
the growing things,
to feel the life
hidden in soil
because that is where
we once came from.
And when I stand
In pine cathedrals
and hear the branches
whisper above,
I believe it
a little more
And wonder if
I should take
off my shoes.

For last Saturday’s November Poem a Day prompt, “sacred spaces.” Appreciation to for giving this baby poem a title during the Poetry Pub Open Mic. 🌲

The truth is I’m tired. It’s been a sad, disappointing, discouraging week. The U.S. election results were not what I hoped for, and I’m worried for folks who will be hurt along the way, who feel betrayed and unsafe and abandoned.

And another moment of honesty: I’m sure some folks reading this did not vote the same way and don’t share my feelings. You’re still welcome here, of course. I can’t promise it will always be comfortable, but I can promise to not dehumanize or shame anyone.

In the best moments, I feel grief giving way to a quiet resolve to tend the world in the ways given to me — listening and loving and writing. Right now my echoing question is “What is mine to do?” No matter if you voted or not, if you’re American or not, or who you voted for last week, you’re invited to ponder this question with me.

One thing is for sure: All the emotions have been fueling quite a bit of writing. So hey, let’s get on with some poems, shall we?

Once a year, I join with my friends at The Poetry Pub to write a poem a day in November. I’ve been doing this in some form for about 10+ years, starting out alone with the Writer’s Digest prompts. In 2018, Chris and I started writing along with a few poet friends. For the past 4 years, our little community has been curating our own prompts. This year’s theme is Poems of Place, and I’ve had a wonderful time writing with friends and waking up the sleeping poet. (Some of you may recall that I… didn’t get very far last year.)

Every week, I hope to share a favorite draft or two here. If you want more, I haphazardly post on Instagram! (The rules of NovPAD: anything I write counts, I reserve the right to not share exceptionally bad drafts, and I won’t beat myself up for missing a few days.)

I Voted Today

To love a city means to leave your street and go downtown. To feed the meter with every coin in your wallet and walk to the Brutalist concrete cube they call City Hall (fun fact: first in the nation to be built over a Federal highway.) To vote early is a sort of love too, to let your life mingle with your unknown neighbors’ for a moment. And who is your neighbor? The poll worker in a t-shirt that says “Drag Out the Vote,” and the Black man in a wheelchair that he gently guides to the voting booth. The woman in glasses who hands you ballot before returning to the soft scarf she’s crocheting. The little brown-skinned boy, grinning as he stands on tiptoes to press his mother’s ballot into the box. They are the pulse of this place, and to love a city is to love them and the stoplights and the bus yards and the vacant lots growing wild on this warm autumn day.

Let this city take root
and expand my soul, for in
its life I find my own.

Day 1, a favorite from Week 1 of NovPAD (and the first form Friday). I wrote a haibun about early voting. No matter the feelings about the outcome, I am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in free and fair elections. It helps me love my city a little more.

I Promise, Nothing is Wasted

even the crumbling leftovers
of the summer tree’s crowning glory
that flame out so bright they draw
crowds for miles, only to dissolve 
into dust, be eaten by worms,
shelter the wintering creatures
and feed tomorrow’s seeds.

Week 2’s prompts explore nature that’s close to us — soil, plants, animals, trees. This poem is for the Day 9 prompt, soil. PSA: if you can, leave the leaves. 🍂

Hello hello and happiest springtime! Mildly amused that the last time I wrote here it was at least partially the product of a pre-work morning dog walk. Because on yesterday’s pre-work morning dog walk (probably at the same park) I remembered this poem.1

And wouldn’t you know, the trees really are blossoming, and the lilacs really are budding, and I saw my first dandelions of the season and everything2 smells like fresh cut grass. Also, the pickleball players were back.

So let’s just say in 2024, my suddenly spring moment was April 16th. Let’s revisit this little poem from Beneath the Flood, shall we?3

Suddenly, Spring

Every spring, there is the one day 
(this year, April 6)
when I spy the dramatic change 
in pink-petaled trees
on Thayer Street
and I struggle to remember
the names of the raucous yellow 
blossoms on shrubs,
so I google “Yellow blossoms
New England,”
(it’s forsythia, by the way
)and then I see daffodils everywhere 
and red buds on my neighbor’s tree 
and the lilac limbs growing heavy 
for the next round of blooming.

This is the day I remember 
how much I forget
year after year,
and I write a little poem 
so I won’t forget again, 
even though I know I will,
even though the surprise 
is part of the joy.

Keeper of Days
- after Rilke

The first chill rode in on a windstorm, like a guest that let 
itself in through the back gate, sweeping everything 
left of autumn’s majesty away. So call it happen 
-stance or grace that the trees turned late to 
burn until the clocks turn back. Look, you
see how fading autumn days hold beauty 
in their brevity — golden, glowing, and 
grieving in unleaving. Do you feel terror

at another year’s turn? Is time un-just 
to drag us on? Somewhere the Keep 
-er of Days waits beyond the veil, is going 
to wind every clock back someday until no 
thing wastes away. Autumn is fleeting, feeling, 
full. In timelessness I’ll still hope for seasons. Is 
there still winter there, in that land where nothing’s final?

Why yes, I do love a good golden shovel. I wrote this one during the November Poem a Day challenge in 2021, the first year that we started making our own prompts at The Poetry Pub. Fridays are for trying forms, but that this is one of our favorites and must show up yearly. Take a peek at the last word of each line and you’ll see a little hidden message from one of my favorite poems, “Go to the Limits of Your Longing” by Rainer Maria Rilke.

It’s so chaotic that sometimes I’m not sure it works. But I kind of love that about writing forms. It’s a puzzle to solve, and sometimes the word choices surprise you.

Also, if you center align the text it looks like an hourglass, so that’s cool. Substack won’t let me do that though, so you’ll have to either trust me or turn to page 71 in Beneath the Flood. (shameless book plug!)

I thought I might share a new poem with y’all, since it’s #NovPAD season again, but… about that…

I love the November Poem a Day challenge. I’ve been doing it over a decade now, starting with the Writer’s Digest prompts as a replacement for NaNoWriMo.1 My beloved little Poetry Pub community actually started just so a few friends could do it together. I’ve never actually finished November with 30 poems — or even 30 passable poem drafts — but I think the bulk of my two books came out of this challenge.

This year, our community pulled together a beautiful list of prompts circling around the idea of Time and Seasons. The Instagram graphics were made, the posts scheduled, the notebook prepared. I was ready.

Then November hit and I just… couldn't feel it. I scribbled a draft for the first prompt that felt kinda tired and obligated, if I’m honest. Now it’s day 13. I think I have 4 drafts, and maybe 1 or 2 could become something.

One friend texted me to confess they were skipping out this year. I replied along the lines of hey, actually probably same.

There’s still a good chunk of November left. Every day is a chance to pick up wherever and do what I can. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just finish knitting the scarf I’m working on and read and let some new ideas percolate.

I do wonder why I’m sharing this. But hey, here’s your friendly reminder that it’s okay to push yourself as a creative person — to make things when you don’t feel like it, to challenge yourself to try something absurd and new.

And it’s also okay to skip out. ✌🏼

I just got back from a trip to Nashville and Charlotte. I want to tell you about my travels, about time with old and new friends, and poetry readings and beautiful things. But not right now. While I was traveling and mostly offline, I caught passing glimpses of the news about the horrific violence between Gaza and Israel. War, again, brewing a world away. Children, mothers, fathers, grandparents caught in the crossfire.

To be honest, it’s hard to know when to speak, or how. There is so much to grieve in this world. It’s especially hard to know what to say as a white American Christian watching it all unfold. But I do know this: many things can be true at the same time. There is no justification for violence against innocents, and cycles of oppression only beget more and more destruction.

So I’ll do what I know how to do and send you a later than usual Sunday poem. (It’s just barely still Monday.) Two, actually. The first is is one I’ve come across several times, most recently through Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s Life is a Sacred Text. It’s a prayer for peace by Jewish and Palestinian authors who are doing the hard work of reconciliation.1 The words of these women give me hope.

The second is one of mine, a small celebration of the things that keep us safe in a burning world. I read it out loud twice this past week: once at a Hutchmoot Poetry Open Mic, and again around a fire with friends back home in New England. Maybe I keep returning to it because I need to remind myself that there’s good out there worth fighting for.

Prayer of the Mothers
By Rabbi Tamar Elad Appelbaum and Sheikha Ibtisam Mahamid 
Translated by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie

God of Life

Who heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds

May it be your will to hear the prayer of mothers.

For you did not create us to kill each other

Nor to live in fear, anger or hatred in your world

But rather you have created us so we can grant permission to one another

to sanctify Your name of Life, your name of Peace in this world.

For these things I weep, my eye, my eye runs down with water

For our children crying at nights,

For parents holding their children with despair and darkness in their hearts

For a gate that is closing and who will open it while day has not yet dawned.

And with my tears and prayers which I pray

And with the tears of all women who deeply feel the pain of these difficult days I raise my hands to you

please God have mercy on us

Hear our voice that we shall not despair

That we shall see life in each other,

That we shall have mercy for each other,

That we shall have pity on each other,

That we shall hope for each other

And we shall write our lives in the book of Life

For your sake God of Life

Let us choose Life.

For you are Peace, your world is Peace and all that is yours is Peace

And so shall be your will and let us say Amen.

Current Events

So maybe it’s true.
Maybe the world burns.
But in other news,
I stopped for coffee on
a foggy day, then went
to the chiropractor to
get my spine realigned.

Later we replaced the
broken-hinged toilet seat
(“I bet you didn’t plan
to spend your Tuesday
between the wall and
a toilet bowl,” I joke,
holding pliers to bolt.)

After that, we make
quesadillas, watch a show,
turn in by ten, reading
by burning lamplight.
Maybe the world burns too,
and nothing is guaranteed.
but still, it is so good

to be here.

Maybe grocery stores 
are thin places. 
Listen close and
you may hear 
the voice of God 
delighting over
September apples.

There are so many ways to mark the start of autumn. Is it the arrival of pumpkin spice lattes on every coffee shop menu? One more cookout on Labor Day weekend? School buses rolling through the neighborhood and the smell of fresh sharpened pencils? The equinox, a chill in the air?

All of them, maybe. But I’d also add the day that you walk into the grocery store and the produce shelves are overflowing with little 5 pound totes of apples.

They’re smaller than the ones you buy right off the shelf and labeled with poetic names — Cortland, Braeburn, Pink Lady, Gala, and Macintosh. I thought I didn’t care for apples much, but maybe I was getting the wrong ones. Or maybe they actually do taste better in the Northeast, closer to the orchards, in their season.

Around this time every year, I find myself at the local Market Basket buying the usual things, and I spot the piles of apples. There’s usually a text to Chris (THEY HAVE MACS), and I grab a generously overflowing bag. Last year, as I was checking out, the cashier let out a little squeal as she weighed and scanned them. ”Oh my gosh! These apples! They’re so cute!”

And well, she’s right. Maybe even more than that.

***

I’ve long loved the idea of thin places, where the temporal and mundane meet the eternal and wondrous. And it’s easy to think of the thin places I’ve seen at the edge of the sea, under a canopy of trees, or maybe even at a wedding or a concert or a really good meal.

I don’t typically think of grocery stores as such a place. There are crowds (depending on the timing), clanking carts, fluorescent lights, so many smells and sounds and tinny speakers blasting pop music from over 20 years ago.2

But there are also neighbors running into each other, teenagers laughing and chatting in Spanish as they stock the aisles, old songs that you subconsciously catch yourself humming.

I think of Thomas Merton in a Louisville shopping district, “overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”3 For a moment, the cashier isn’t just a kid with a name tag trying to make it to the end of her shift. She’s a neighbor, probably living somewhere in my own city. And together we are noticing that apples are kind of a miracle.

Merton concluded, ”There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” But I guess I can try, with a handful of lines.

🍻 Poetry Pub News

My inner poet gets really hyped up in October. Here are a few things you should know:

• Twice a year, The Poetry Pub Writing Community is open to new members, and October is one of those times! If you are still hanging around on Facebook and would like to join a friendly community of poets, click on over and request to join.

• And speaking of poetic community… November Poem a Day is quickly approaching. At The Poetry Pub, We’ve put our own twist on this long-running Writer’s Digest tradition, releasing a set of themed prompts every year that will eventually become a community chapbook. So another reason to join the community: we’ll be announcing this year’s theme and brainstorming prompts soon!

Well, an old poem, in a new place. But let me back up.

Over the past couple weeks, a bunch of new readers have joined us here. So welcome, I’m Jen! I’m a poet and spiritual director living in southern New England. After 20+ years wandering among blog platforms1, Alongside Journal is the latest home for my writing on the Internet. While I figure out what this space wants to be, I’m sending poems out most Sundays (okay, every other Sunday or two? when I remember?)

If you’re new here, please drop a comment and tell me something interesting or beautiful or funny you can see outside the nearest window right now.

Leave a comment

Today I’m sending a poem… and I’m sending you somewhere else to read it. A lot of the new folks may know about this already. But for those who haven't heard, I’m really excited to introduce you to a new project from my friends at The Rabbit Room — the newsletter!

The Rabbit Room has been part of my life for a long time.2 I started as a curious reader, then an avid fan, Hutchmoot conference-goer, and eventual contributing writer. So of course, when their content director reached out to me about the new Substack experiment they were launching, I was all the way in.

Last week they kindly shared “Processional,” one of my older poems. This is a small, true story about a particular small town funeral. It speaks for itself, I think. After spending so much time immersed in revising newer writing for my book3, it was nice to see this one come around again.

I’ll share the first few lines below, with a link to read the rest at RR Poetry. Definitely take a moment to poke around, and if you like what you see, give ‘em a subscribe!

(excerpt from) 
Processional

We make a clumsy march, these machines
gleaming in the winter sun,
a line of old sedans,
hulking SUVs,
and dirt-crusted trucks.

And the leader of our patched-up parade,
long, stern, and black
plods on...

Read the Full Poem Here

Roads Go Ever On
– after J.R.R. Tolkien

In forests deep, find the hidden roads, 
the kind paved with broken stones. Go 
as if you could follow for-ever,
as if you could see how they’re ever 
ready, waiting for unexpected shoes. On

the first weekend of June, we explored under
the cover of tree, mountain, and cloud. 
We explored the hidden streams and 
forgot for a few days how it feels under- 
neath the weight of life. Every star

cut the clear sky over the lake, burning yet 
sparkling, paving galaxy roads for the feet 
of the Ursas, Orion, Gemini. That
was the summer of wandering—
us, away, or friends, toward. To have
rest and fellowship before the season’s gone.

This summer, I shore up hope and turn 
to places familiar and quiet. But at
least the mountains will stand to the last 
and the stars will burn silently, hidden to 
my eyes by city lights. This home
holds me now. Roads call from afar.

I remember summer of 2019 being full, in the best possible way. Two years after what we’ve (un)lovingly dubbed “The Year from Hell,”1 we were feeling settled again. We had a stream of family and friends visiting to enjoy the New England summer vibes and our guest room. I’d just wrapped my first year of spiritual director training and was feeling excited for the increasing clarity in my shifting vocation.

That was also the year that we booked a few days at a favorite tiny harborside cottage on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, and the host offered us a free upgrade to the big lake house on site. It was ridiculously big for two people! But on the first clear night of our trip, we were able to turn off all the lights in the house, step out onto the dock, and witness a dizzying sea of stars overhead. We downloaded star map apps and hunted for constellations. I don’t remember much about the house itself, but when I remember that trip, my imagination fills with stars.

The next year was 2020. We all know what happened.

***

About a year ago, I was talking to my spiritual director about something completely unrelated and she asked me something like, “So would you say you were disappointed?”

It threw me, honestly. Disappointed? No! Things happen! I just ride the wave, man.

We dug a little deeper. If you’ll permit me a nerd detour, remember MJ’s philosophy of disappointment in Spiderman: No Way Home? That’s about how I’ve moved through life most the time.2

I’m slowly learning that the only way to really open yourself up to joy might be allowing for disappointment too. And when it comes, what happens when you name it? Let yourself feel it and acknowledge that you wanted things one way, but something else happened?

No matter how much rest and ibuprofen I took to beat this thing, I actually needed strong antibiotics. Lyme Disease is no joke.3 If I’d shrugged it off, I might’ve gotten sicker while far from home. But for all the shine and spin and rationalizing I put on this past week, and all the self-assurances that it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of the universe… it’s still sad. And it’s okay to let it be sad.

All that to say, this poem is a travel story. It’s also a little bit about disappointment, or at least embracing what is, even if it’s not what you wish it could be. A poem from the summer of 2020, reflecting on the goodness of the year before and pressing into the quiet of a pandemic summer. And now, a poem for accepting a weakened but healing body, naming the disappointed desires, and looking with hope to the future.

”Acadia will still be there later,” Chris said, after making the phone call to cancel our cabin.4 It’s true. The roads will keep calling, and we’ll walk them again soon.

***

Some last notes and fun facts on the poem:

• This one’s a golden shovel, a form created by Terrence Hayes and one of my favorite forms to play with. Take a look at the last word of each line and you’ll see a familiar hobbit’s walking song!

• This isn’t the only poem to reference that night on the dock, looking at stars in Maine. You’ll also find similar images in “All That is Made,” another poem from Beneath the Flood. (plug!) Sometimes, an image gets stuck in your brain and turns up over and over again.

  Thanks for reading Alongside Letters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Choosing Sides

If I have to pick a side,
let me side with the bees, 
with summer blossoms and 
winter snowdrifts.
Let me side with the children 
I know and the ones I don’t, 
with the late-shift nurse
and his aching back,
with the grandmother 
digging in her garden.
Let me side with the earth
in all her sighing, the stars 
in all their singing, with 
stray dogs and street artists, 
with orphans and widows. 
Like Berry,
let me say everything was for 
love of the forest I will never 
see, the harvest I will never 
reap. I pledge my allegiance 
to the world to come. 

I wrote this poem in November 2022. Shortly after I shared it on Instagram, a friend asked me if this was a low-key election season poem. And I told her it’s not… but it’s also not not that.

This is not going to become another “wow we’re so polarized” statement. I don’t need to tell you that again. Instead, it’s a big sigh, and a vague gesture, and the fact that a couple weeks ago I realized we are in another election cycle in the U.S. already and that made me mildly depressed for a day.

So. Choosing Sides.

When it comes to politics / aforementioned polarized times, I have my views (many very strong!) but I have spent the last couple decades learning to tread lightly, to explore nuance, to avoid words like “always” and “never.” At the same time, as the world grows more complex, some things become more clear than ever.

That the earth is good and beautiful and sometimes terrifying. That my nieces and nephews and the kids running laps around my church every Sunday deserve a world left better than we found it. That the ones doing quiet, hidden work are changing the world. So, in a sense, this poem is a pledge of loyalty.

Some nerdy writing notes:

• The Wendell Berry Name-Drop: “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front” is a poem I love so freakin’ much. (He already said everything better with “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.” ) Poetry is a conversation, so I’d like to hope this is my small effort to enter the chat.

• Stray dogs and street artists: I played with many versions of this line. Landing on the repeated “st-” sound and rhythm brings me so much joy.

Also, still haven’t gotten over these rad typewriter prints by JJ Brinski that he made for the book launch. Shared elsewhere, but they deserve to live here. Collaboration is fun!

Buy Beneath the Flood

Preorder Beneath the Flood

Nature is Healing

When I was eight or nine
I spoke for the trees—
the pandas and oceans too. 
I walked the playground 
with my sign-up sheet 
asking any kid around
to join my Save the Earth club.

Where did I get the idea 
the world needed saving?

How did I go up to strangers 
undaunted
asking them to fight
global warming and acid rain
or at least turn off the faucet
when they brush their teeth at night?

A high school fatalist told me 
it was all gonna burn anyway.

On the day of the meeting 
nobody showed.

Just me on the playground
with the theme song I wrote, 
my homemade “Save the Earth” 
T-shirt with neon puffy paint, 
and all my embarrassed 
determination.

But today the world slowed down, 
and I read stories about
smog clearing from the skies
and jellyfish in the Venice canals, 
and I wondered
if maybe that kid was 
onto something.

I went round and round on the title for this poem, wondering if “Nature is Healing” was a little too meme-y and would make any sense in a few years. But I couldn’t think of anything better, so here it is.

Without going into a deep dive of cultural history, it’s hard to explain exactly why I was running around my school’s playground trying to recruit kids into my Save the Earth club. Maybe it was the SeaWorld field trips and the Captain Planet1 reruns. Or the "50 Ways You Can Help Save the Planet” book I got at a school book fair. Or just the sad reality that some of my favorite animals were quickly becoming endangered species, and I didn’t want to live in a world without pandas and manatees.

But today, when I read about climate anxiety, I get it. It was in the air in my childhood, and is even more present for the generation coming after me. This poem was an attempt to tell a little story from my past and link it to our present, and maybe our future too.

I’m no scientist. I don’t know if our collective “anthropause” really healed nature all that much. (when I was looking for a photo for this post, articles I found suggest eh… maybe sort of, but also maybe not.) But still, there’s something beautiful about the possibilities for healing, if we’d just slow our frenetic human pace and look around.

Something about that feels at least a little bit true.

Suddenly, Spring

Every spring, there is the one day 
(this year, April 6)
when I spy the dramatic change 
in pink-petaled trees
on Thayer Street
and I struggle to remember
the names of the raucous yellow 
blossoms on shrubs,
so I google “Yellow blossoms
New England,”
(it’s forsythia, by the way)
and then I see daffodils everywhere 
and red buds on my neighbor’s tree 
and the lilac limbs growing heavy 
for the next round of blooming.

This is the day I remember 
how much I forget
year after year,
and I write a little poem
so I won’t forget again, 
even though I know I will,
even though the surprise 
is part of the joy.

✨BOOK LAUNCH SHENANIGANS✨

Friends, it is time. Beneath the Flood is out May 2nd, and we’re looking for a few folks to join a launch team. My hope is that this will be a low pressure / high fun opportunity to help send my little poetry book out into the world. We'll have some giveaways and a virtual launch party too!

As a launch team member, you'll receive a free digital copy of the book. We invite you to read it, share about it, and consider posting a review on Goodreads/Amazon/your favorite social media platform if you want.

Our big launch push is April 25 - May 8! If you’re interested, head on over here to sign up! For questions, check out the FAQ here, or comment below.

Join the Team!

Excess

She wept like she knew
what was coming, as she shook
every drop of her life savings
from an alabaster flask,
when just a little would do.

She poured, touched, loved
like one who’s seen death
but seen it reversed too,
when her beloved brother
walked from the grave.

Can you blame them all for wondering
if maybe she should have sold it,
if all of this excess was a waste?
It’s reasonable to wonder —

Just as it’s reasonable to gaze
at a world of too much
	stars and seashells,
	plants and people,
	colors and creatures
and ask if this expanding universe
could stand to be more frugal.

Maybe it’s better
to spend it all,
to let spikenard
overflow and fill
every corner of the room,
a lingering scent
to give comfort and courage
every step to the grave.

This week has been heavy. I am mourning alongside my friends in Nashville, a city I dearly love. I am angry that we’re here again, picking up the pieces after yet another mass shooting. I am sick of the violence and the grief and the “well, thoughts and prayers, ‘cause we can’t do anything about it” attitudes.

It feels strange, a little wrong to write about anything else. But I’m re-reading this poem I already planned to share, and somehow… it fits, I guess.

This is another collaboration. , a friend and fantastic writer1, put together a small poetry collection as a pre-release bonus for her book Handle With Care. She asked each poet to take a story from Scripture that connected somehow to Jesus and touch, and I was honored to contribute this reflection.

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me… When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.” - Matt 26:10

That’s all. Perhaps it’s enough to let the poem stand on its own.

Subscribe now

Viriditas

It happens slowly
then all at once —

	those few extra drops
	of sunlight at dusk,
	the whisper of silver
	mist on the lake,
	the riot of songbirds
	scouting for nests,
	tiny buds opening
	like unclenching fists.

For today,
the scales of darkness
and light find a balance.
The longed-for greening
spreads like a cloak
over the softening earth.

As I’ve been working on this new book, I’m reminded over and over that poetry — and pretty much all art, for that matter — doesn’t happen alone. You could be the most isolated solo genius ever in your awesome tower of art, but you’ll still need to forage for the seeds of art out there in the real world.

So, here are some of the seeds for this new little spring poem.

This was written for Kyra Hinton’s bottled magic moments spring equinox collection! Kyra is a wizard with ink and imagination, and it was an honor to contribute a poem for one of her collections. I mean, look at them. 🤩

Of course, I hoped to include a little bit of these bottles in my poem. The line “the whisper of silver / mist on the lake” is a nod to the middle bottle, Morning Mist on the Lake, and Dawn Court (far right) reminds me of the “extra drops / of sunlight at dusk.” I wish I could’ve got a rainstorm in there for the third bottle, but ah well.

The title came first. It comes from Hildegard of Bingen’s idea of viriditas or “greening theology.” “The longed-for greening / spreads like a cloak” is a small nod to the Legend of St. Brigid’s Cloak / her Celtic goddess counterpart’s association with spring. These are nerdy rabbit holes that I unfortunately don’t have time to dive into right now, ha.

And, apologies to U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, but "tiny buds opening / like unclenching fists” is absolutely inspired by her poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up.” Go read it, it’s amazing.

So, there you have it. An ecosystem of influences and inspirations.

I sat on the title for days, wondering if I’d be able to get a new poem together in time for Kyra. Then one day I was driving home from the chiropractor (as one does in this stage of life) and the middle section started to form. I frantically tried to dictate a note and a voice memo to my phone so I wouldn’t forget them, then sketched the whole thing out in the evening.

Moral of the story: read poems, chase nerdy rabbit holes, and be friends with all the artists. Happy Spring. 💚

✨ Book News Book News Book News ✨

Beneath the Flood Pre-orders are live! I got an email from my publisher this morning, and I wanted to share the news with you first! More to come on other launch shenanigans soon, but for now, go ahead and grab a copy if you want!

Pre-order!

The Things You Fear the Most

“Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O’ Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.” — Anne Lamott

If you want to write you must
first go back to childhood.
Find that time you fell,
or woke to dreams of monsters,
or emerged from the magical world
between shirt racks
to find your mother had vanished.
In those pale pre-dawn memories are the fears,
the shadows that chased you
into your grown-up life.

In there are the seeds
you bring back to plant
into towering, sheltering forests.
The things you fear the most
are the only things you have.

One of the delights of writing poetry for a long time is sometimes a new friend picks up a copy of your old book, and they share a little poem on Instagram, and you think “Wow, I wrote that? I forgot about that one.” When I wrote this poem, I honestly think I was intellectually riffing on Anne Lamott’s quote more than digging into my own experience.

If I could redo this, maybe I would get more specific about fears I felt as a kid — the exact moment in All Dogs Go to Heaven that freaked me out, or the time I had a meltdown in the tunnel slide at Chuck E. Cheese. They’re kind of funny anecdotes now, but I am also old enough to see how those fears show up in my grown up life, still lurking like monsters under the bed.

(For one thing, I can almost draw a line between the Chuck E. Cheese incident and my recently acquired car wash anxiety, but that’s a story for another day.)

I’m also old enough to recognize that I was gifted safety in those moments. My mom whisking a scared 6 year old out of the movie theater, my dad at the bottom of a slide encouraging me to keep moving forward. Perhaps reflecting on them opens up a compassionate way forward.

I suppose that’s the work of writing. Revisiting our stories. Making meaning. Carrying those seeds of the past into the present and nurturing them into something new for the future.