And then one day, while I read
the news aloud to my husband
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant,
I shifted from disgust with the world
to awe. Awe for this fierce, bespeckled
miracle, this wonder of feather, beak and claw,
this small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.
Posts Tagged ‘news’
Today’s Headline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, bird, disgust, falling in love with the world, news, owl, shift on February 11, 2026| 8 Comments »
Before I Read the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, news, ritual on January 5, 2026| 22 Comments »
How courageous can I be to let all of life in?
—Leslie Odom, Jr. on The Hamilcast with Gillian Pensavalle
I press both hands
to my chest, then
look at the trees
and the road outside.
I imagine the world
beyond what I see,
cities, continents, space,
then close my eyes
to open.
I listen to what is here,
attune to the silence
that holds up all sound.
Feel my heart beat
against my palm.
Hello heart, I say.
Hello heart.
If I am to read the news,
I want to invite not only
my head but my body.
Want to receive it as if
I am river and sky
as much as I am human.
The ache of the news
is no less great,
perhaps greater, but
I know I am not alone.
In the barren branches
of my fear, the chickadees
come to sing.
Oh the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged news, what continues on November 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Every day a new wound,
some new hurt I could
not have prepared for
that wallops me. Every
day I wonder, how long
can it go on like this?
Every day, it goes on.
How does it go on?
It festers. It chafes.
I ask the grass in the field,
the algae in the river,
the lichen on the rock.
It goes on, they say.
It’s never the same,
but it always goes on.
U PICK
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged innocence, joy, news, strawberries, time on June 22, 2025| 6 Comments »
STRAWBERRIES, said the roadside sign,
big red letters on a white-washed board.
We followed the signs to the farmer’s field
and wandered into long green rows,
one stiff blue carton my hands. Such blessing
to kneel on the ground and gather
ripe red sweetness with our fingertips,
to pull the small fruits into our mouths
and hum as their sun-warmed flesh turned
to juice on our tongues. How simple
to smile, thinking of nothing but finding
the deepest red berries, praising
our backroad luck. Oh innocent minutes
spent only in joy, forgetting for a moment
how everything is fragile. Later, the news
came crashing in. Such difficult news.
But for those moments, we lived in such
generous sweetness, such abundant
red sweetness, such wholly shared sweetness,
the kind of sweetness so real that while
you’re in it, you slip out of time
and mistake sweetness for eternity.
Some Good News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodness, humanity, kindness, news on February 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
It’s like driving over a hill
the day after a flood
only to discover on calm water
a gathering of trumpet swans,
the elegant stretch of their long necks rising,
their white wings spread wide in arrival.
Or like skiing through a vast valley
only to find another trail that leads you
into a grove of elder cedar trees,
their great trunks humbling you,
their balsamic scent opening
in the shade like holy incense.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
in a world that feels hostile and hateful,
you arrive in a faraway town full of strangers
who welcome you into warm rooms
filled with bright cloths, with soft guitar,
with fringed yellow tulips in blue vases.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
after listening to the firehose of the news,
you meet new friends who speak with you
of moss and making baskets and singing and seeds,
and your heart leaps up like a crocus in spring,
alive with the truth of how good it can be, this life.
Instead of Turning Off the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting it all in, news, note to self, pain, trees, war on April 29, 2024| 14 Comments »
Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?
News of the War
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, ice, news, ukraine, war, winter on February 25, 2022| 7 Comments »
The newscaster speaks
and beneath you
the floor becomes ice
and the world
is speeding
on balding tires
and the moment
is the highway
and all is fishtail
and the brakes
are useless now—
and the cliff so close
and you brace
against nothing
and the only way
to correct a slide
is to turn
into the slide—
Another Reason to Be Kinder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, news, tenderness, war on May 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
Somewhere I’ve never been
reaches across the ocean
and wrenches my thoughts.
I don’t try to push it away.
I let the ache in,
let sorrow do its terrible
work. It slices in
deeper than I want it to,
but I do not resist.
All day I think of the small child
being pulled from the rubble.
All day I think of the many hands
reaching for the small frightened body.
All day, I am softened by
grief, ravaged into tenderness.
Thanking the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, hope, news, plants on December 29, 2020| 7 Comments »
Tonight, for a moment,
my world shrinks to the size
of the Christmas cactus,
which, despite the storm
that even now blusters outside,
has opened dozens of voluptuous
red blooms, as if to say,
Here I am, blooming midwinter,
and you can do it, too.
There are days when
the news makes me doubt
the value of blooming—
when the headlines alone
twist hope into a crumpled,
unrecognizable heap.
But then some snippet
of beauty finds me—
a scarlet flower,
a handwritten letter—
and breaks any scale
I would use to interpret
the world. It’s not that the terror
goes away, no. But for a few
moments, I am blessed
with the certainty
that even the smallest beauty matters
and that it is my job
to meet life however it appears—
petal, bomb, sweetness, pain—
grateful for my humanness,
vulnerable and tenuous
though it is.
Proxy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, despair, news, writing on July 13, 2020| 9 Comments »
The woman who knows what to write
did not show up today. Perhaps she’s gone
hiking amongst the blue larkspur, or
maybe she’s pulling weeds in the garden.
Perhaps she got a job as a counselor or a priest,
or decided to run for political office.
I wish she’d show up again. Sometimes
it’s not easy to face the blank, to believe
there are any words worth writing. Like today,
when I read about how the abandoned fracking wells
are leaking pollutants. How today will be
the first federal execution in seventeen years.
How there are still children at the border
still crying, “¡Mami!” and “¡Papá!”
Perhaps she was simply so sad
that she went to sit in a corner, quietly,
not to forget, but to find the strength to meet it.
Perhaps she is, even now, trying to conjure
the words that might actually make a difference.
Until We’re All Away from the Edge
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black lives matter, choices, community, human nature, kindness, news on June 6, 2020| 5 Comments »
for J Unterberg
In the picture on the news,
the little black girl holds a sign
that says, I’m your next president.
And in the grocery store,
the clerk smiles at me from behind her mask
and compliments my dress.
Consumed as I’ve been
with a sorrow so great
it swallowed our country whole,
I had thought it would take an energy
equally great and opposite
to pull me away from the bleak edge.
But then a stranger walked up to my car
where I was parked on the side of the road
to make sure I was okay. And just like that
I felt myself backing away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit.
It can be so small, what reminds us
who we are—a people who want
to thrive, to live in peace,
a people who are kind to each other
not because we have earned it, but
because kindness is in our nature.
I want to vote for that little girl,
want to help create the just world she rises in.
I want to help someone else
back away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit, another bit.
The News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, Corona Virus, fear, geese, news, pond, wilderness on March 16, 2020| 6 Comments »
Just as I had settled into doom,
I heard the wild call of the first geese of spring
come screeching through the window.
I leapt up like a woman desperate
for good news—leapt up and ran to the window
in time to see a pair land on the pond,
splashing against the water. They quieted
immediately after alighting. And then,
there was only the sound of me watching them.
How graceful they were in the pond,
the water wrinkled behind them, as if their arrival
were the only news, the only news worth telling.
Especially When It Seems Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, news, poem, poetry, praise on November 14, 2019| 5 Comments »
Try to praise the mutilated world
—Adam Zagajewski
The cratered earth
and the blood stained shirts
and the men with guns
and the hate sharp words
and the sour rooms
that never see sun
and the rashes, the cancers
the blackened lungs
and still, there are paths
in Ohio woods
where upended trees
show elaborate roots
and the water seeps
in the ancient gorge,
and dead leaves fuel
whole dominions of soil
and though beauty
can be hard to reconcile,
worse to ignore it,
worse to look away,
worse in this mutilated world
to pretend we don’t have
ten thousand times ten thousand
reasons to praise.
Such Luck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disasters, luck, news, poem, poetry on August 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Once again the flash flood
misses the house. And the cats
are not found by the mountain lion—
even now they curl on the chair.
The forests around the house
are not claimed by wildfire.
And though my right inner arm
bears a dozen red bites,
none of the mosquitos seem
to be carrying zica.
Yes, it’s a marvelous night,
just think how many things
are going right. Not one
broken bone. No earthquake.
No angry bear. It’s enough to
make you think you’re lucky
no matter what that letter said.
Just look at those stars
and that clear night sky
without even a chance of hurricane,
no tornado, no drought.
Why Every Act of Kindness Matters
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, horse, kindness, mother, news, poem, poetry, truth on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she said, is it true? And it wasn’t
that I’d tried to keep the truth from her,
it just never came into conversation,
old horses are sometimes used for glue.
Yes, I said, wishing I could soften the message. It’s true.
She knew its truth already, but don’t we all
sometimes long to be wrong? New tears dammed
in her eyes before they fell. Is that really
the world I belong to? she rued, then buried
her face in the couch. Two hours later,
I thought her same thought as I read the news:
Anti-Semitism. Bribery. Child sexual abuse.
I wanted to hear the stories weren’t true.
Oh world, so broken, still, unglued, I choose you.
By the Numbers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, news, numbers, poem, poetry, space, Voyager 2 on December 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Two hundred ninety million.
That’s how many dollars Monsanto
was ordered to pay the dying man
when the company failed to warn him
about how the poison they made
to kill weeds would also kill him.
Two hundred ninety million.
That’s how many miles
the Voyager 2 moves away
from the earth every year. And though
it was made to do so—to travel
past our sun’s magnetic field—who
could blame it for moving away
from this dying planet at
thirty-four thousand one hundred ninety-one
miles per hour. If that number were dollars
today, it would be equivalent to eight thousand dollars
in 1977 when the Voyager 2 was launched.
And eight thousand, that’s how many sacred
elephants there were on the banks
of the Six Tusker Lake in the Himalaya,
elephants who flew in the air, and sages say
the Buddha himself was once born as son
to the chief of these eight thousand elephants.
Yes, sacred and magical things happen here
on the earth, despite the greed,
despite the poison. I was seven
when the Voyager 2 left, and since then
it’s travelled eighteen and a half billion miles.
If those miles were pounds,
that would equal more than a million
large African elephants, though in all of Africa,
there are only four hundred fifteen thousand
elephants left, down from five million
just a hundred years ago. What I am saying
is that as the Voyager 2 enters interstellar space
things are strange here on Earth, and we seem
hellbent on our own destruction, but I
am so grateful to be here, still. Even as
the Voyager 2 hurtles beyond the heliosphere,
I find myself still falling in love
with the twenty-seven thousand three hundred seventy-five
days I have to live,
and the earth’s twelve thousand
species of grass, and the five thousand stars
visible to the naked eye and the two hundred six
bones in the body, all of them working to help
us run toward beauty, yes, grateful
for two hands to hold one beloved face
and, amidst all this enormity, the absolute absence
of sufficient words to say how holy, how incalculable is love,
and how marvelous, really, to stare up
into the familiar night sky and imagine
all boundaries we’re just beginning to cross.
check it out:
Special Edition
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged news, poem, poetry, Thich Nhat Hanh on April 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »
in response to The Good News by Thich Nhat Hanh
Good news. The ant on your toe does not want to bite you.
He is a traveler on the country of your foot, and he is teaching you
about the borders you have drawn around your kingdom.
Yes, the young sapling beside you has died, but there,
beside it, a new sapling is carrying on what it means to be tree.
The good news is that the daffodils, planted by some unknown hand,
have returned, and they bob their yellow fringe in the wind,
their cups filled with unspillable light.
The goldfinches find food beneath the old spruce.
And the meadowlark has turned the fencepost
into a concert hall.
And more good news. You noticed that there was a line drawn
between us and them, and you, with your ardent mind,
you picked up that line and refashioned it into a spiral.
And in this moment, the good news is that the sun is warm
on your shoulders and your eyes feel like closing and you
let them close.
The good news is that despite the passing hours, the passing years,
there is no end to good news waiting to be found
and you are just beginning to understand how infinite this special edition.
On a Day When Hostility Rules the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, news, poem, poetry on August 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »
And even as the countries aim their missiles at each other
and dangle threats and hurl names, the woman
in the hair salon gives you a deal because
in an hour you’ve shared dreams, shared fears.
And the bus driver helps you find your way.
And the tall man in the grocery store sees you reaching
for a box on the top shelf and offers to hand it to you.
Even as the congress argues and quarrels and stalls,
the little blonde boy you barely know snuggles into your lap
and tells you he loves you. Kindness continues to thrive,
Kindness breeds more kindnesses. Kindness
reminds you again that wherever you are,
you are home, that the world you most want
to live in is right here at the kitchen table,
right here on the noisy, crowded street.
Dear Finn,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, news, poem, poetry on June 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Full of seed, the bird feeder hangs
from the cottonwood tree
we planted years ago.
Even without the birds,
it is beautiful—
dangling midair
with its copper perches
and glass column.
This morning in the news,
we are going to war with each other—
either with words or with missiles.
It seems clear
that we are our own problem.
No wonder we try to bring beauty in close—
the garden with its open faced pansies,
the hummingbird feeder with its hold
of sugar water.
The battles are not
what will save us,
it’s beauty—not just
outside us, but in us.
All day, let us look
for ways be like this brown bird
at the feeder, see
how it gathers light
in its open wings.
No Matter How Cold the Air
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, monostitch, news, poem, poetry on January 26, 2017| 5 Comments »
In the bedroom of my heart, kicking out the stinking news, opening the window to hear the river song.