The Branch Is a strong one, an old one.Accustomed to the weightof the people who choose her.She believes in the simple joyof offering them what beauty she can She makes the windwhisper in their presence,shaping the soundswith the perfumed scoopof petals by the thousands. Beyond the whisper,there is a song in each wind.The branch knows…

This came after the pleasant surprise of opening a book at The Strand to “Parable of the 6th Night of Creation” by Muriel Rukeyser, having earlier in the day had a conversation with a friend about us wanting to go find a tree suitable for sitting and talking and looking. Here’s the Rukeyser bit– The…

It’s Like This It’s like this, young one. It’s hard to describe, young one. It’s got no set shape,though I’ve seen it looklike a smiling cat, a rinse water wet plum,and a pair of handspulling weeds. It’s got no special sound,though I’ve known it tosing forth from a cello string,and heard it said thatshe can…

There is talk sometimes of the “sleep of the innocent” and I do not profess to have had that any time recently. What I have had, though, for the past several nights is the sleep of one who has done much, worked much, shared much, and experienced much. It has been the immobile sleep of…

6:50 AM At the bus stop, coffee resting at my feet so that I can write, the sun still shaking aside the clouds Moon tucked around her edges last night. There’s nothing to keep her from the process and nothing to demand it, save the rustling movement of a planet in the throes of revolution….

I was told once about ten years ago that my theme song could be “Don’tFence Me In.” At the time, it did not sit well. I heard the wildnessit implied as more feral than anything else. Alone, skittish,protective, afraid– not words I was inclined to accept or adopt as myown descriptors, despite any timid undercurrent…

Again with a challenging day at work yesterday. If it was mental challenge of an intellectual sort, that would be one thing… a pleasure, actually. I love to try and have my mind roll and stretch in new ways. Mental yoga—who knew it could bend that way? But lately, the challenge has been far more…

I have a new print on my wall. It is a gift from a friend with whom I went to the Met this morning. We stopped outside to speak with an artist she knew who had a table of his prints displayed. This one is of two striped cats staring at each other…no faces, just…

Know what happened on the way to work this morning? It was quiet enough, still enough, for a brief, brief moment in the middle of Manhattan to actually be able to hear the sound of bird feet on the manhole cover by the bus stop where I was standing. You could hear the little clicks…

The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Eastertime is John’s story of the Good Shepherd. It isn’t often I find myself thankfully praising God for sheep as I swarm down Manhattan sidewalks with the rest of the hive. Rarer still, for one who prides herself on a certain capacity for insightful logical thinking, the…