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
Here’s the truth about my Girl Scout career: It ended when I was nine years old, busted for shoplifting red licorice from the local grocery store while wearing my uniform. Before that, I managed to rack up a long list of scouting offenses: I consistently forgot my dues which, in 1975, were one shiny quarter…
I didn’t know anything about the mind of John O’Donohue until last year. The poet, philosopher, and former Catholic priest gave an interview in The Sun magazine (April 2007) in which he noted that when we enter an intimate relationship with another person, we are hell bent on colonizing all the space between us. (I…
This giveaway is now closed — but the recipe for honeyed apricots (below) is great! The first person to cook an apricot sure did stumble on something great. I don’t know how you feel about it, but most apricots eaten out of hand don’t knock me out — not the way that the perfectly sweet…
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…
The other day, my dad sent me an email correcting one of my posts, Snake Oil, in which I mentioned that I inherited his goofy bow legs and something odd about his teeth. To set the record straight, his feet actually point out like a duck and his knees point more or less toward each…
A Perfect Day to See Denali Do you ever get tired of using the same old words to describe something — can I say it just once — “amazing”? Consider the white-fisted mountains that knock the breath right out of you, or the sinuous body of a glacial river that silvers along in the late-day…
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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. :-)