I took a long walk this morning, down the road, up through the woods, and looping back through pasture. I was reminded how important the landscape is to my work. It’s a mix of the textures, the way the rolling hills meet the sky, and the patterns of specific grasses or leaves. These influences are quiet. They arise in my work as if I ingested it all and reincarnate these materials through the impulses of my hand.

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

—That’s how I feel about my pots—

—Robert Frank (Swiss American photographer; perhaps from Life Magazine, 1951)

In December I struggle to get my desired number of steps in during the daylight hours. I reach for bowls of soup with more spicy heat than is usual. I work harder to find beauty in the fallow garden. I trust that both dawn and summer are coming.

Be patient
where you sit
in the dark.
The dawn
is coming.

—Jalaluddin Rumi [go here for a discussion of Rumi quotes/translations]

I often turn to the books in our home library or take a mini field trip to the public library when searching for clues to make my way through these cold days and early sunsets. I go in search of a vocabulary to describe the season, hints for finding beauty, and road maps for coping.

“The artist’s bookcases were full of poets, like the bookcases of anyone trying to find out how everyone else copes.”

—Fredrik Backman, from My Friends

Over the last few days, I have brushed up against so many people that I love both past, present, and several babies who are in the future. I keep them all alive through stories, images, meals, heartbeats, plants, and sunsets.

The truth then:
We turn our hearts
into museums
of the people
that we love
to keep them alive
inside us.

—Nikita Gill, excerpt from “When You Asked Me If I Still Think Of You”
@nikita_gill (Instagram, November 18, 2025)

Walking through the cold on the streets of New York one might wish for a fire.
Personally, it ignites a of remembrance of other short days, an act of reckoning with the years that have come before as well as imaginations of the future.

You cannot put a Fire out—
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan—
Upon the slowest Night—

You cannot fold a Flood—
And put it in a Drawer—
Because the Winds would find it out—
And tell your Cedar Floor—

—Emily Dickinson (#530)

Images of shapes, and many conversations about ideas, memory, and learning keep ringing in my ears long after the moments have passed.

The temple bell stops—
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

—Matsuo Basho translated by Robert Bly

As we leave the pottery exhibit tonight we say thank you to all the volunteers who help make it possible and well run. We thank everyone who comes and carefully looks. We are grateful for the conversations, for the support, and for the reinforced friendships. We step out into the world where night is falling and we say thank you yet again.

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

—W. S.Merwin, in Migration: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press, 2005

The day was short and the night was long. So many conversations about how I make and fire my work in a show of many potters, each of whom has their own ideas for their rules of expression.

Like Snow

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly
leaving nothing out.

—Wendell Berry, in Leavings, 2009

Over the years of doing this image series, I have learned to pay more attention to the moon. I find myself anticipating the rise of the full moon and am in awe of its setting. But I am also intrigued by knowing that one of my brothers is most grounded by seeing the waxing crescent moon. I read today that the Egyptian god Thoth was the god of the moon. He was also credited with inventing writing and creating languages. I find it beguiling that the god of the moon is also connected to writing. We give the moon so many names like the cold moon or winter maker moon. Tonight’s is the super moon or long night moon. For me, the movement across the dark becomes an asemic poem in the night sky.

Barn’s burnt down —
now
I can see the moon.

—Mizura Masahide, a 17th-century Japanese poet

This morning the sun was startlingly brilliant especially when reflected off our pond. As I headed out on my dog walk two swans flew off. In this micro season part of the pond is frozen and the diving ducks have arrived to eat pond weeds. I give the pond a wide berth as they are skittish and fly off at the mere hint of our company. As I circled back to the house a flock of geese came squawking, flapping their rusty hinges to land with the ducks, gliding in over the pasture to find shelter among the crowds on the open water.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

—Barbara Crooker, from Radiance, Word Press, 2005