Recently, I scrolled through the edited set of photos from my 2014 trip to Korea. It was like a beautiful dream. Images such as the drying persimmons and peppers in the road did not capture the confusion and moments that lacked translation. The tea cups on saucers made from Yi dynasty shards at the temple were beautiful in the spare light. One clear mental image is doing brushwork with the monks I visited with my host. Wrapping pots in practice sheets of calligraphy is another retained poetic image. The meals composed of so many varied shapes of pots along with bowls over flowing with fruit made for striking photos.

I sat down to do a five minute drawing of a cup from this firing that was inspired by the cups I had made to take with me on my Korean trip. It is a dark outward flange shape with a poem print. No one but I would know the marks are inspired by words. It reminds me of one reason I like writing on the computer; I am certain that someone can read my words. I have the luxury of spell check. When I write by hand it is fast, directly linked to my heart and mind, but often it is illegible. My handwriting holds the risk of misspelling and incomplete sentences. It is a far cry from the careful penmanship I learned in 3^rd grade, but perhaps it is the purest form of a poetic communication.

There are mornings
when everything brims with promise
even my empty cup.

—Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, in Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry, Expanded Anniversary Edition, Copper Canyon Press, 2023

I have been cleaning pots. I have a sanding pad set up on one of my pottery wheels which faces the pond. When I sat down to grind there were three Canadian goose families with a brood of baby geese grazing in the tall grass below the studio. There were the awkward, still slightly fluffy juveniles as well as the tiny yellow fuzzy goslings wobbling behind their parents. When I turned on my wheel one of the adult geese looked up and cranked its neck like it was nervous. The geese had been listening to the noises from my studio and they all quickly retreated to the safety of the water.

I am always learning to listen to my own rhythms of energy and doubt. When we unload the wood kiln there are always waves of disappointment that wash over me. The surface is never what I imagine. The air temps were really high and the kiln was hotter. I sweated my way through the whole process. I tried not to listen too carefully to those first impressions. I know this is my usual process, but I still have to move through the ups and downs of emotions. I have to listen to my mind in all its seasons, but not take it too seriously.

aren’t we all seasons
In the begging breeze

I swear I have been
listening since the
beginning

I swear I have listened to everything

—Jake Rose, from Joan, University of Chicago Press, 2026

This spring several friends asked me whether I would do another series of June posts. And my answer has been, “I aim to.” Each June feels as if it pulls me through the season faster than the last. My earliest version of this series in 2000 (link above) began as tiny envelopes that I gave to my daughter each morning like an advent calendar. In each envelope was a word that had to do with light. I plunked those envelopes and words on my scanner with painted pages of backgrounds and emailed them to a few friends. Warren, always the archivist of the household, printed and assembled them into a book to share with his parents. I remember Zoë sitting on the luggage as we headed out the door, finding the book and reading the pages feeling slightly left out that she had not been included in the larger message. Those envelopes have grown, like my garden. I am here watching the bumblebees and cutting the garlic scapes. I cannot save the world, but by looking closely the world is saving me.

This Spring

How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.

—James A. Pearson, in The Wilderness That Bears Your Name, Goat Tail Press, 2024

When working towards a firing in our wood kiln, I choose to be confined to my studio world. I am happy working in soft clay with delicate touches in the winter light. I often make mistakes. When working large and thick I edit down. Sometimes, I refer back to the journals and images from my travels to far away cities or the books in our library which can take me to endless kiln sites in the history of ceramics. But ultimately, I end up recognizing my own inherent ways of working, looking, and touching.

New Soul

We begin confined to a world
soft and small and delicate.
If we’re lucky,
we end in the same half-light.

My children ask why I make
so many mistakes
and I don’t have the heart to tell them
this is my first rodeo
just as much as it is theirs.

I had to go to every city
just to find out how
we take ourselves
everywhere we go.

—Kate Baer, in How About Now: Poems, HarperCollins, 2025.

The peonies are finished blooming here in Virginia. These flowers were gathered for the wedding of our friends’ daughter that we attended over the weekend. It reminded me that as we prepared in September 2017 for our daughter’s October wedding, we invited a group of potter friends to come help us to make mugs as gifts for the guests. One friend happened to be visiting from Homer, Alaska so she chose to gift us with a fresh, beautiful peony bouquet she had brought all that way in a cooler.

I have been thinking how weddings are like spiders webs. They bring together all the connecting threads of friendship, family history, and hope for both the spoken and the silent dreams. The weather over the weekend was spectacular. It felt as if every window had kept its promise to open. My hope is that these flowers bless you, that the vase with all its fierceness and tenderness encourages us all to find vast beauty in the days of our future.

A Blessing for a Wedding

Today when persimmons ripen
Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
     or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
     or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days

—Jane Hirshfield, in Come, Thief, Knopf, 2008

The garlic scapes in my garden have emerged, a great signal that it must be June. This is one of the clues that reminds me to photograph, write, and hit send. I am planning to post twenty-one images until the solstice.

I love this moment in the season of equality, when both the day and night are the same length. I enjoy firing the wood kiln at this point in the year when the night shift doesn’t feel endless. Today, I went out in the morning light with my coffee. It was sixty degrees. The world was wet and seemed full of potential as the crows recited their ebony poems. Spring is always about beginning again on our unfinished pages.

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, in Poetry, 2003

Happy winter solstice! Here is the last post of this decembrance series. I made sure to get outside before sunset to walk the dog and then light a small bonfire. The daily effort to photograph, write, and find a poem is never easy. But the poems freshen my eyes, renewing my local landscape, rejuvenating my language to express ideas that move beyond conventional beauty. I am looking forward to our lengthening days.

You told me you couldn’t see
a better day coming,
so I gave you my eyes.

—Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, from Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry, Copper Canyon Press, 2003

I found myself barefoot on the frosty porch this morning inspecting the decaying pumpkins that have been there since late September. I decided today was the day to listen to the earth’s voice and send those babies to the compost. It was a great moment (now with boots on) to admire the dormant garden’s splendor and to come inside and see the amazing growth one day brings to an amaryllis.

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you. Thank you.

—Ross Gay in Against Which, 2006

The wind followed me everywhere today like a big idea that I wasn’t sure what to do with just yet.

Love Poem as Ars Poetica

Because I am the dog who thought
her pain was a location, shuffling in
and out of rooms, trying to escape it,
it forever following along,

you stick with me everywhere — not
you, but the idea. We begin
with something big, water, or the wind, thinking we can shape it
before it all goes wrong.

—Erica McAlpine, in The Country Gambler, 2016 , Shearsman Books, 2016