This is a poem that surprised me. They often do. But this one especially. Each of us has exiles - places within that we shun, doors we're afraid to open, pain we're afraid to embrace. One of my exiles is what I call the black hole.…
Nature is the most generous and helpful teacher. So many of my poems come when I'm watering the flowers, or picking tomatoes, or walking my dog. The natural world teaches me over and over that the way my mind likes to categorize, divide, and subtract is great for…
Two and a half years ago, on a Friday night, my son and I were leaving Houston when our car broke down. That was the beginning of an adventure: getting towed off the interstate in rush hour traffic, figuring out how we'd get home (we lived three hours…
Years ago, I read an article about mental health recovery whose advice continues to support and help me. She said to do one thing each day that you're good at - even if it's something as (seemingly) simple as making a grilled cheese sandwich. And she…
A few years ago, we built raised beds in our backyard in an attempt to grow vegetables – ever the humbling process. This spring we had a mild April with lots of rain, which gave us lots of tomatoes. Many mornings I began my day by collecting the new tomatoes before…
I live in a busy city in Texas, a border state with Mexico, and I see many refugees where I live. They're often families with children, selling flowers at street corners or asking for money at busy intersections. My great grandparents were Italian and Polish immigrants. They labored…
The other day I was thinking of the phrase that we often toss out when someone we love is doing something that alarms, frustrates or distresses us: "They'll learn." We can feel so helpless and powerless when the people we love are suffering. This powerlessness can…
Ida Zaccagnini Zborovancik was my great aunt - my maternal grandmother's younger sister, one of seven children from an Italian Catholic family. These old ones lived long: most past ninety. But over the past decade, year by year, another one died. Last fall, my great uncle Tony died,…