It’s been a little while since I shared some bummer bird poetry. This one has the marvelous distinction of having been broadcast into a dark Scottish forest. My other poems are still a little jealous. Window: White Pine I. Chaos in the predawn dark— starlings scream II. Robbing the open pinecone, rewarded again and again—chickadee […]
Nature
Returning to this creek was my stepdad’s idea. At 78, he wanted to try it again, but do it right this time. Twenty-some years ago, when we first hiked this mostly untrailed alpine canyon in Colorado, we planned it as a day trip with a car at either end for a shuttle. My mom was […]
About seven months ago, I acquired a boyfriend. I mention this for two reasons: (1) to brag that an exceptionally good-looking, kind, and intelligent man wants to hang out with me and (2) because I just recently noticed something about this tree in his front yard. I’ve been going out of the front door there […]
Near where I live in Seattle there is a rail trail called the Burke-Gilman. Everyone around here knows it simply as The Burke. An asphalt conduit that bisects north Seattle from Bothell to the Ballard Locks, The Burke is over twenty miles long, and a classic multiuse recreational urban route. Bicyclists fly over it, people […]
I had never seen or heard of cypress knees before last year, when I visited Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. It’s a beautiful place to walk around. The landscape is idyllic. Grass, grass, trees, trees, pond, swans, mausoleum, leaves, tombstone, tre—what the hell are those?
My neighbor and I went to see Barbie this past weekend. I loved it. Without saying too much, I loved the colors and the cleverness and the way that the characters said things that I have thought but haven’t said, and things that I’ve felt but that have never risen up and assembled into consciousness. […]
This past weekend, I climbed Glacier Peak with a friend of mine. Glacier Peak is Washington’s fourth-highest mountain, and also one of the state’s five stratovolcanoes. (Perhaps you’ve heard of one of the others; I know I have.) What distinguishes Glacier Peak among its volcanic kin is its remoteness. It is at the eastern edge […]