In June 2020, I wrote a poem. It wasn’t quite right.

Months (years?) later, I edited it, changed line breaks, cut the second half and thought about what else could better fill the space. In the end, I just didn’t know where this poem was going. What was it saying? What could it be saying? Why did I start writing this in the first place?

I still don’t have all the answers. I returned to the poem because of a particular phrase that I couldn’t let go of. I wanted to use it somewhere, somehow, but it’s been six years and I think it might be time to set these lines free in the big wide world and see where they find a home.

The lines:

multiflora roses erupt into June
like ditch grass handing out miracles

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I’m excited to see what blossoms from the hopeful little seed I planted during our first Covid summer. Thank you so much for reading.

On Sunday, summer reached its peak. Our front yard was alive with crickets, fireflies, orange lilies, and evening primrose. Even the moon was growing. Though I prefer cooler temperatures, I find summer unquestionably poetic in its fullness.

So for the third mini workshop here at Poetry and Miracles, I once again offer:

1. An exclusive erasure piece by me that I don’t share anywhere else;

2. A few related poems by other poets;

3. A question or prompt to tie everything together and rouse your creativity.

This time, we are inspired by the magic of summer. ✨

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It’s summer & honeysuckle
sweetens the air. Catbirds sound
their plaintive cries from the fence post
upsetting the sparrows who believe
they own this land. The day is thick
with birdsong & bee hums &
water that aches to be rain.

I’ve set my intentions
in a blue glass jar
beneath the oak tree.
In darkness, crickets
will sing my dreams
into being.

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I’m collecting my thoughts like passing clouds as we prepare for the solstice this coming weekend. For whatever reason, sitting beneath a honeysuckle arbor in June makes this song play in my mind:

May these long days be sweet. 💛☀️✨

There I go changing
into a bird again—
winter crow, summer owl.
Seasons please me like rivers
punctuated with precious waterfalls.
Voices rise from the waters.
Voices ring in my ears. All day
angels make their pleas and wait
for me to heed.

Cloak and feather,
no one knows
what I’ll do next.
Spring will come and you’ll find me
crouched beneath an oak tree
devouring violets.

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This poem was originally published at The Crooked Circle on Medium.

Have you written any self-portrait poems? Care to share? I recently put together a mini-workshop on creative self-portraits for poets, writers, and other artists. There are some beautiful sources of inspiration out there.

May we be inspired by our selves and our own spirits, too.

See the skeletons of industry picked clean, brick bones
discarded along the edge of the river, hollow corpses
sprouting maple trees from rooftops, sides streaked
with neon graffiti. Imagine our ancestors greeting the river
as they set to work, turning trees to paper, ore to knives.
Here everything happens along the river—creation,
destruction, morning, night. The river is a vein
that beats with our hearts.

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The photo above is a few years old, taken on a local outing with my son at the start of his sixth grade year. Last week, I visited another old mill building in another town and wished I’d taken another photo (but I didn’t).

Massachusetts is littered with empty mills. I don’t know enough history to write a longer poem yet, just that manufacturing drifted away in the mid-twentieth century, moving south and overseas. Renovation costs and EPA guidance makes it difficult to deal with the old buildings, so many remain empty—though the one I visited last week is now a modern office building with a completely rundown, vacant building just a few feet away.

Thinking about all the old mills along the Connecticut River, I was reminded of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “Brooklyn Bridge.” Specifically, one of my favorite passages, translated here by Max Hayward and George Reavey:

If
the end of the world
befall-
and chaos
smash our planet
to bits,
and what remains
will be
this
bridge, rearing above the dust of destruction;
then,
as huge ancient lizards
are rebuilt
from bones
finer than needles,
to tower in museums,
so,
from this bridge,
a geologist of centuries
will succeed
in recreating
our contemporary world.

I love the idea of human-made structures as part of the living fossil record and wanted to borrow it, so the short prose poem above came to be. Of course, archaeologists or historians often learn about ancient life from old ruins, but the way Mayakovsky likens the bridge to an animal pins our humanity to its creations in a compelling way.

It might be an interesting prompt to spend more time with—what structures exist in your part of the world whose ruins might one day tell a story of our time?

Walking with my family, we happen
upon a field of dandelions in various states
of living, dying, being reborn. They float
like angels in a soft green sky. I snap
a few photos, trying to catch a moment
like lightning bugs in a jar. But if you come
from these fields, you know how long
little lives last after capture.

Already the moment is flying away,
skeletal umbrella seeds ready to settle
elsewhere. My son is ten steps ahead
when it starts to rain. Outside of yellow
flowers and sunny photographs, we know
that water is life—the only reason we
are even here is falling from the sky,
soaking our t-shirts. We pause

beneath a canopy of pine and poplar.
All at once we are living, dying,
being reborn. Gray cloud to the north,
blue sky to the west, rabbits sheltering
in tangles of bittersweet and wild grape,
time rolling overhead, rushing
with the thin stream that cuts behind
the old garage littered with liquor bottles.

How could I ever forget
a single drop of this life?

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Last week, I jotted down a short self-portrait poem during a break at work:

Self-Portrait

Lop-sided stroke smile, perpetual
chin zit, eyes the color of swamp grass.
Roughly the height of a full grown
Camellia shrub. Soft grey feathers
in place of teeth.

This was perhaps the fifth self-portrait poem that I’ve written. While it’s structured around physical appearance, much self-portrait poetry is more identity-based. Some is quite abstract. Some active.

Like visual artists, poets can use this form as an exploratory tool to tap into emotion, intuition, and thought while practicing craft. It is a form that bridges our inner and outer worlds.

In the second monthly mini workshop for paid subscribers, I will once again offer:

1. An erasure piece by me that I don’t share anywhere else;

2. A related poem or two (usually by someone else—this time you also have a bonus freebie written by me);

3. A question or prompt to tie everything together and rouse your creativity.

This month is all about the creative selfie.

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In autumn, sun-gold leaves cast their glow
against darkening days, clinging
to skeletal branches, bright
spots trimming the treetops.
Winds blow and they fall
like shooting stars,
cascading—
except
one.

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I’m a big fangirl. Lauri and I bonded a few years back thanks to our shared love of snowy weather (psst, definitely check out her book, Polar Opposites, which includes breathtaking photos from both of Earth’s poles).

While I dabble in taking pretty pictures, Lauri is a true artist and professional. I’m always enthralled by the way she captures light and shape. Her nature and architecture photos are my favorites. She also initiated a very cool snail mail project called Perspectives in Post, which I’m happy to participate in.

Graciously, Lauri agreed to let me write an ekphrastic poem inspired by some of her work. Huzzah!

When I saw this beautiful photo of a poplar (or cottonwood) leaf in Lauri’s Substack feed, it seemed the perfect subject for a nonet. I love how such a minimalist shot manages to depict the fullness of a whole life cycle and change of seasons. There’s an implied collapse despite the stillness we see here. A nonet is similarly minimalist with the same sense of fading away.

It’s spring in the northern hemisphere, but I can conjure the nostalgia of autumn year-round. It clings to me like this one stubborn yellow leaf. Many thanks to Lauri for drawing it out with her beautiful photograph.

View more of her stunning work and read reflection and tips at .

Because I loved green leaves and ferns
people always asked me their names,
which I never learned in conversation
with the forest floor—she only told me
about light and possibility. I uncovered
the identities of sycamore and nightshade
through poetry, odes overflowing
with adoration, which made me
want to praise everything
I loved.

So I wrote a poem
about cows and another
about ice cream. I created
a collection of young joy
and colored it in, bound it
with thread and shared it
with the god of words
who said, “This is good.”
And I kept going.

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This morning I was inspired by . Editor shared a few poems she’d written in April while implementing a poem-a-day practice. Alex also shared a few of the prompts she’d both crafted and used during that time.

The Messy Writers Club

I will probably never write a-poem-a-day again

I wrote a poem-a-day for 30 days. Was it challenging? Yes. Was it empowering? Yes. Did I grow as a writer? Yes. Will I ever do it again….. probably not…

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2 months ago · 54 likes · 40 comments · Alex Dawson

One such prompt was an invitation to share your “poet origin story.” Mine is largely shaped by Cicely Mary Barker, Jane Yolen, and the wooded, rural lands of my youth.

What’s yours?

I was sitting in the river named water itself
and slowly, very slowly,
it became God.

The many desperate hands
of his intention and his hope
kept singing.

Sometimes the river murmurs,
sometimes it raves
while I sit here filled with ideas,
doubts, hesitations.

Don’t blame the river
that it’s difficult to hear
through all the traffic,
the ambition.

We do not live in a simple world.

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Earlier today, I came across this offering from :

Poetry Outdoors

I Don't Know Who God is Exactly, But I'll Tell You This

Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver…

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3 months ago · 366 likes · 26 comments · Poetry Outdoors

After sharing the full text of Mary Oliver’s “At the River Clarion,” the author asks us to craft a cento using lines and phrases from the work. And so, I created the above.

A little while later, I wanted to do more with Oliver’s poems. In particular, I wanted to borrow lines from multiple poems instead of only one. I focused on three of my favorites:

• “Out of the Stump Rot, Something”

• “The Ponds”

• “Sleeping in the Forest”

It was also a great excuse to share more of her writing here.

Here’s the result of piecing together bits from those three:

Heart of stone,
what in this world
is perfect?

My thoughts,
light as moths,
work in the darkness,
nothing between me
and the white fire of stars.

Grappling with a luminous doom,
floating over the leaves
of the old year,
I bend closer and see
my life, full
of its own unstoppable decay.

I like this one slightly more. And you?

Many thanks to Poetry Outdoors for the inspiration! I recommend giving it a try.

A low rumble, which is
maybe a wild animal,
maybe a pickup truck,
maybe hunger,
rolls down from the hills,
spills across our rooftops.
A dance of camera flashes
in the clouds—the main event.

I don’t know who lost this fight,
but their cold tears are everywhere.

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It’s springtime and I’m starting something new, much like the forests and fields all around me. Each month moving forward, I will share a special post for paid subscribers that features:

1. An erasure piece by me that I don’t share anywhere else;

2. A related poem or two (usually by someone else);

3. A question or prompt to tie everything together and rouse your creativity.

Additional personal narrative is always a possibility.

Here’s the first installment!

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Canada catches fire, and all
of New England floats in a haze,

not the sort of zombie haze that marks
Mondays in the office—this haze

is made of smoke. This haze makes us cough
and choke. The sun burns red in this haze.

My son, homeschooled, plays with fire
while we chat about the future. Stuck in the haze

of adolescence, it’s hard for him to see
his own small part, though he sees the haze

that sinks from sun to soil around us.
Maybe all we can hope for is the crisp haze

of burning dollar bills, smoke-stained freedom.
We talk about anarchy, about the modern haze

of greed and capitalism. He burns a worksheet
from second grade, and the haze

lifts.

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I hope this letter finds you.
I am lost in the desert of wounded hearts
with no return zip code, sky
blazing tangerine then sinking
to black. Perhaps you are somewhere
beyond the barricade of bad news
and I could find you if only
I peered over the broad shoulders
of fear and hate and absence
toward the softly shifting horizon.
Closing my eyes I see
your face—smooth wet sand
uncovered by a retreating wave
when it remembered it was water
and returned to the sea.

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I am inspired by pretty much always. What a treat to be so deliberately inspired by his poem and subsequent prompt, “Dear Peace.”

Poetry Is Life

Dear Peace

Dear Peace…

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3 months ago · 18 likes · 2 comments · James Crews

Reading poetry, writing poetry, and reflecting on peace? Not a bad way to end a week.

Glowing yellow, petals splayed
in triumph of the winter stayed,
your face reminds my heart of spring,
when sunrise calls the birds to sing,
and puddles swirl with glorious mud,
and sugar maples and lilacs bud,
you are among the first to shine,
a drop of sun in the shade of pine.
Mistaken weed, a golden treasure—
a dandelion, the bee’s first pleasure.

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Written in April, 2020.

I rarely write rhymed poems, but I’d been spending time with Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” some years ago, pondering my time spent studying British Romanticism in college. Such structure and artifice! It’s good to try sometimes.

Another grand ode to dandelions can be found in Ada Límon’s “Dandelion Insomnia.” A snippet:

It must bug some folks,
a flower so tricky it can reproduce asexually,
making perfect identical selves, bam, another me
bam, another me. I can’t help it–I root
for that persecuted rosette so hyper in its
own making it seems to devour the land.

I’ll always root for dandelions, too.

You said
children make too much
racket
in their classrooms
chattering
giggling
all at once,

but I saw
a group of starlings who
crowded
spring treetops
chattering
squawking
all at once,

and they were busy,
they were companions,
they were joyful,
and the sound
was a sign of life.

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Written some years ago, before I pulled my son from public school. Read more about the joys of free-range learning in Tipping Points, published by The Alliance for Self-Directed Education. And check out the Self-Directed podcast.

I decided to share some older material because all of my recent poetic attention has been given to developing a new manuscript. I’m feeling really hopeful about this one. Stay tuned.

Remember: you are beautiful.
The blood of the dying world
rolls cleanly from your featherless head
as you ferry the blossoming residue of lost lives
to a better place.

And when I immerse myself in the rotten flesh
of this dying world, its blood rolls off
my bare, featherless head, too.

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9/29/2023 — one of a handful of poems I’ve written to turkey vultures

There are snakes in my larynx,
forked tongues flash between my lips,
venom burns my esophagus.

Outside, February wind howls
whipping snow into window screens.
How is there so much air and yet

I am breathless? Why
do I choke on bitterness
while sipping chamomile tea?

In another world, it’s June–
I’m lying in soft grass and violets,
I’ve wretched until the snakes

fled across the yard,
slithered beneath spiderwort.
I am sucking on sunlight

like a lozenge, soothing
the soft lining, the thin wall
between this moment

and endless possibility.

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One of the best things about Substack is the creative community it fosters. Since joining, a few fellow writers and artists have reached out to me about collaborating on projects, including . Thảo asked me to create an erasure work from her most recent letter.

Because I love adorning erasures with tangible objects—feathers, shells, etc—I wanted to print it and work in hard copy. Alas, my printer isn’t working, so I had to get creative. First, I copied Thảo’s words into a google doc and black-highlighted text to remove from the finished product. Then, I took a screenshot and opened it in the Photoshop Express app. I used Photoshop to combine the digital erasure with a picture of soft reed grass that I’d taken a few weeks back while exploring the banks of our local river.

When I use the word art, I mean it all—visual art, literary art, collage, painting, poetry, digital media. I think combining media is joyful, and transforming one thing into another is alchemy.

Thanks to Thảo for the invite, and to everyone here on Substack for letting creative community flourish and bloom.

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In late winter or early spring (or both), my family eagerly visits The Botanic Garden of Smith College. We waltz down the orangerie hall, inhale fresh blossoms, linger in the tropical greenhouse, and revel in spiny cacti. We remember that the world can be a warm place, with far greater depth of color than the stark white snow that blankets Massachusetts.

Smith College is a stirring intersection of things I enjoy: beautiful buildings, a nature trail the skirts a small pond, indoor and outdoor gardens, an excellent art museum, and the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center. It was via the Poetry Center that I first understood the possibilities of blackout (or erasure) poetry as art. The Center hosts an annual Blackout Poetry Project, arranging submissions into visually stunning collections. You can peruse past entires here, toward the bottom of the page.

The fourth bullet point in the project guidelines gives a decent indication of the work:

“What you do to alter the text is up to you! Here are some strategies to get you thinking: Cover words or blank space with whiteout pen or tape, marker, colored pencil, cut/torn paper, fabric, washi tape, images from books or magazines, string, embroidery, photos or film negatives, buttons, beads, dried & sealed plant material.”

Prior to stumbling upon these gorgeous creations, I’d seen a few small poems created by coloring over words on a page with black sharpie. The addition of textural elements — collage, flowers, buttons —and the hybridization of art and poetry (and plants!) enthralled me.

I made my first erasure art piece in 2023, using a religious periodical that my grandmother subscribed me to (she is concerned about my soul). At the time, I’d been experimenting with the use of flowers in still life photography and was excited to add poetry to the mix.

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Today I have an “Erasure” album in my google photo library with 48 pieces in it. Many are sourced from that same periodical or modern texts. I worry about publishing these anywhere due to potential copyright issues, so I recently began sourcing pieces from texts in the public domain, like Plato, Shakespeare, Coleridge and others. That’s important to me, because I’ve finally been able to sell these somewhere, thanks to a publisher I met here on Medium. Soon, I will also have an erasure work featured in the spring issue of Wild Roof Journal.

Folks often ask about my process and I’m happy to share a basic overview here. The first step is to choose your source material, which might be a book, magazine, periodical, newspaper, or any text. My husband keeps promising to attempt an erasure work from one of his product manuals but has yet to deliver (he works in manufacturing). I like to use old books that I bought for college courses and never revisit.

If you’re worried about ruining a book, you can also print a text from the internet and work from there. Here’s an example where I did just that:

Before printing, I used the highlight feature to whiteout any text I didn’t want to print.

When selecting a page to work with, I typically flip through a book until a word or two catches my eye. I’m sappy and melodramatic, so it tends to be something like love, glimmer, magnificent, sparkling stream, etc. Once I’ve keyed in on a favored word, I glance around the page for other words that might connect with it. I tend to write in a mostly straightforward way (i.e. complete thoughts/sentences) but you can be as abstract as you like. My main advice here is do not read the page. You are creating something entirely new — don’t let the work’s existing message influence your process.

Mark words of interest with a small pencil dot until you’re ready to commit, then you’ll need to decide how to demarcate these words. You could box them, circle them, or create an edge with your artwork.

When you’re ready to blackout the rest of the text, pick your favorite art supply (best if it’s very opaque). You can collage, paint, use markers, pastels, or cover the page in grains of sand. Use your chosen media to create an image, or decorate the work further with found objects. Flowers, feathers, seashells, and stones are some of my most-used items.

In my life, this work is ephemeral. I first learned that word from Le Petit Prince in high school French. Translated to English, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes:

“My flower is ephemeral,” the little prince said to himself, “and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!”

We must’ve delved into some deep discussion of special things in life being ephemeral, because that word still hits me in the gut. In any case, I make these little arrangements that are in no way permanent, photograph them, then take them apart. For me, they’re a type of process art, which The Guggenheim says tend to emphasize transience and change. At the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center, artists are asked to permanently affix objects to the page.

If you want to give it a try, I highly recommend exploring Boutelle-Day’s Blackout Poetry Project galleries for inspiration. I also recommend two phenomenal blackout artists on Instagram: Colette Love Hillard and Fade Into Blackout Poetry. For a taste of exceptional erasure that is pure poetry (not hybrid artwork), check your local library for The Ferguson Report: An Erasure by Nicole Sealey.

May your process be as profound or lighthearted as you need it to be. May art carry you through bleak winter or proudly display the summer blossoms of your heart. Thank you so much for reading.

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This story was originally published in The DIY Diaries.