Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”
Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning — to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,
that also needs accomplishing.
~ from “The Word,” by Tony Hoagland
Today I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to look for a bath mat. I should have known better. BBB has the power to induce in me a confusion and delirium unique in the world of retail. It surpasses even the weirdness of IKEA. I discovered the trouble with BBB years ago, when my friend…
The silence spoke loudly of silence, and the rivers kept speaking, of rivers, of boulders and air. ~ Jane Hirshfield
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke the owls. Invoke winter, then spring. Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. After that sound goes away, wait. A slow bubble rises through the earth and begins to include sky, stars, all space, even the outracing, expanding thought….
When I was in law school, I was sick half the time. It usually had something to do with my lungs. I had pneumonia. I had pleurisy. Bronchitis was routine. My close friend and classmate, Roger, was also regularly stricken with nasty bugs. When one of us collapsed under the weight of casebooks and even…
Today I bought and returned my first webcam. I bought it because, with all of Stewart’s travels, we decided it would be nice to be able to Skype each other. The service works with or without video — but wouldn’t it be fun to see each other while we talked? Not so much. The camera…
Here in Fairfax, it’s a hot night that smells like honeysuckle. There are people in this town who look like they haven’t changed a bit since 1972, when I was six years old. These are the long-haired, wide-eyed people of indeterminate sex who come out at dusk to dance in the park, turning in circles…
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thank you
I love this, thank you!
Thank you for sharing this. Good stuff.
Oh my! That is almost as delicious as your jam!
Sweet, Leslie. Thank you for taking the time to visit and read.
Tony Hoagland is my favorite poet on earth, I think. I absolutely love him. We have every book he’s had publishes, and we had his poem “The Time Wars” read at our wedding! I got to hear him read last year and meet him afterwards…one of the highlights of the year for me!
I love this piece that you’ve posted here. Thanks for the reminder (which I often need) to keep what’s important – really important – on the old to-do list. :)
Thanks for sharing that, Aimee. I just found that if you go to this link, you can find an amazing collection of his poems and quotes from people who blog on Tumblr. It’s kind of wonderful.
that is really weird. i left a comment on here when you first posted. now it’s gone.
you moderated me! ;-)
Look, look, there it is! For some reason, Akismet thought you were spamming me. Bad, bad Akismet. I would never moderate you, so I’m glad you came back and said something. :-)