I walked this morning thinking about shadows. The green grass was muscular and the light was striking, although slightly muted by the Canadian wildfires. I and our dog, Luna, moved through the field, the path and along the road parting the grass and the air. We noted the shifts of shadow from the looseness of the knee-high grass to the clarity of mowed trail to the sharpness of the shadows on the paved road. Luna and I each have our reasons for moving and walking even if it only involves chasing our own shadows.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in   
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

–Mark Strand, Keeping Things Whole from Selected Poems, published by Alfred A. Knopf, © 1979, 1980 by Mark Strand

Our friend, John Neely, died this weekend. At the North Carolina woodfire conference in 2022, for some an opportunity to showcase large pots and macho egos, John Neely exhibited a beautiful and sensitive selection of small woodfired cups. I tried to buy one but they were all sold. I told John how much I liked them and he offered to trade. So when we got home we each sent the other two cups. Warren and I have often treasured these small objects.

John was an organizer and presenter at this year’s conference. Last week, each evening after the formal events of the conference, John happily filled everyone’s cups with liquids along with stories and laughs. I have no desire to go back to school, but sometimes I have wished I was a fly on the wall of his ceramics program at Utah State University. John’s former students seem to have gained so much and move through the world in great ways.

The shock and sadness of John’s passing on Sunday has spilled through our nervous system.

My Cup

They tell me I am going to die.
Why don’t I seem to care?
My cup is full. Let it spill.

–Robert Friend, from Dancing With A Tiger: Poems 1941-1998 (Spuyten Duyvil).

Last week I was at a North Carolina woodfire conference where my job was to listen; to be part of the ecosystem of the clay world. Now back in the garden in the ecosystem of my home I am able to bury myself in the lush green leaves of kale and pick my favorite garlicscapes. I toggle between garden and studio attempting to be witness to the season.

Sanctuary

Suppose it’s easy to slip
into another’s green skin,
bury yourself in leaves

and wait for a breaking,
a breaking open, a breaking
out. I have, before, been

tricked into believing
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye

of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.

To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.

–Ada Limon, Sanctuary, in “The Hurting Kind”
published by Milkweed Editions

Welcome to June and the first in a series of 21 posts — an offering of images pots, poems and snippets inspired by the expanding days of June.

My mother loved the sunset. Often it felt like seeing the sunset with her was an emergency. Today marks not only the beginning of spring but also that day and night are equal. This morning I walked the dog and brought home a small bundle of the tiny yellow blossoms of spice bush. This afternoon I noticed my magnolia is blooming, the daffodils are glorious, the forsythia is doing its thing, and even our old sideways Redbud tree that came down in a February ice storm is trying to bloom. The news is terrible and our country may feel inhospitable right now and so each of these moments of beauty feel like an emergency.

“When we encounter a poem that is powerful, we are not the same when we leave it. The next time you take a walk, you are seeing the world through the lens of that poem. You are experiencing your relationship through that poem, reading the news through that poem, parenting your child through that poem.”

–Jessica Nordell talking with Maggie Smith, “Your Art is a Tool and Beauty is an Emergency,” in her 3/20/2025 newsletter on Substack

In the studio this afternoon the light was reflected by the snow. I wedged clay in a shaft of light. I rolled slabs and sifted white clay on my table and transcribed the poem A Dangerous Time through the dust. My words are messy, and when I press my wet clay into the dust it gets further abstracted. But the sentiment is clear. I want to flood the world with poems about how we might show up together. I made five deep bowls with the poem by Rosemerry Trommer printed backwards. The bowl/plates will warp and shift as they dry and are fired. They expand as I press them onto the table and they will contract as they dry. I am accepting of the distortion that happens through the process. These shapes become a safe place for love, for food.

A Dangerous Time

I think of the bones
of the unsung rib cage,
the way they protect
the heart. How bone,
too, is living, how it constantly
renews and remakes itself.
I think of how ribs engage
with other ribs
to expand, to contract,
and because they do
their solid work,
they allow the heart to float.
This is what I want to do:
to be a rib in this body
of our country,
to make a safe space for love.
There is so much now
that needs protection.
I want to be that flexible,
that committed to what’s vital,
that unwilling to yield.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Here it is, the solstice. The longest night of the year has arrived. Physics and astronomy can explain how and when this moment occurs. But for me it’s about the mystery and the marking of a subtle shift, the feeling of a pause before the increasing daylight clearly begins to shift the balance.

My Crow

A crow flew into the tree outside my window.
It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow.
Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow.
Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore,
after the battle. This was just a crow.
That never fit in anywhere in its life,
or did anything worth mentioning.
It sat there on the branch for a few minutes.
Then picked up and flew beautifully
out of my life.

–Raymond Carver, from In A Marine Light: Selected Poems

We left a friend’s house in the late afternoon grey skies. On the route home we always love the rolling hills and the endless apple orchard. Usually, I like to stop for a photograph. As I was contemplating where to stop a sky-filling burst of starlings seeded the sky. All I could do was wish I had wings.

To go in the dark

To go in the dark
with a light
is to know the light.

To know the dark,
go dark.

Go without sight,
and find that the dark,
too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet
and dark wings.

– Wendell Berry, in Terrapin: Poems by Wendell Berry

While photographing today I wondered if my pictures have been too grey. I felt as if the alphabet of imagery and inspiration in my landscape is lacking the darkness of crows amidst the bright witness of the moon. I was dreaming of the pop of color only a grocery store tulip could provide.

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

–Linda Pastan