It began as a gift to a friend. Every week I would mail a photo to poet, Meghan Sterling, in Maine. She would respond with a poem, and mail both to our mutual friend in Oregon. 

It quickly became a gift to myself. 

I hadn’t fully considered how wonderful it would feel to share an image with someone, and receive such a genuine response. how it would feel to have sparked the creation of art in an entirely different form. how it would feel to begin a conversation, without the use of a single word. 

Two years later, and we are still making these photo poems. You can sign up to receive them in your own inbox (or actual mailbox!) here. . 

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Tender is the Flesh

This morning there were stars in the snow.  I drove 

through dawn and watched the earth glittering like 

the whitest teeth. On the river, islands built of ice jams 

clogged up the view, everything in a hurry to pile up 

and go nowhere. The narcissism of ice sticking out 

of the water like bones. Here lies our dead. Here lies 

our ambitions. Like us, it cannot flow. Like us, it tries 

too hard and gets stuck. The sky was laughing with its 

soft blue mouth. I don’t know how long I’ve got, but I want 

to absorb light every day, fling open every window, strip off 

my clothes and exhibit myself before the sun’s blinding eye.

Cold weather be damned, I bring my own heat. I want to amaze

the world, shocking it with my joy, my lack of shame. You see 

this flesh? I have earned it. In a world full of bones, I choose soft.

Stellae Aqua

(Star Water in Latin)

I will never not be enamored of sun sparkling on water

my friend the photographer says 

I want her to hold onto this despite what’s happening

To know she can go to the riverbank

And beneath a canopy of dark sweetgum trees

Light will scatter across water like stars

This will be our sustenance 

when we forget who we are

I have lost as many people as I’ve loved    

Maybe more

I made the mistake of reading the news first thing today

And I became afraid   

Looking around frantic as if spring was turning to shadow

Going through my morning motions seized with dread

I brushed my daughter’s hair and it shone like spun gold 

Cast out of a tower window

She is the river singing its song across stones

I don’t know what I can do to protect her from the monsters we are

So I went down to the creek 

Running full of fresh new rainwater

It was glinting with sunlight

Like so many newborn stars

Because July Has Been Storm

& song, the fields emptied of their fires

as though God’s own hands have lifted

the sluices: the air scented with potatoes,

thinly sliced & fried in fat: the fourth of this

month: o what we herald: the divisions between

bodies: between outdoors & indoors crumbling:

the water world and the damp seeping into the ceiling

and windowsills: peeling paint in long wet strips:

my daughter: quiet beside the window fan: breathing

into blades: her voice a blurred stutter: o say can you see:

my daughter: learning anthems: sliding across the tarp

sprayed by the hose: I didn’t ask my daughter to know:

she has come to want the sensation of slipping: she has come

to want to lie in wet grass: beneath silver sky: still as a garden

snake: she has come like her grandparents to find harbor in

the field: the boat of her body set sail: across the rest of her life

How To Be the Hero In Your Own Life

Tell everyone about your grandmother,

the way she held your hands to her lips.

The way your daughter does too, pressing

her mouth to your fingers as she falls asleep.

Book the trip, no matter how low your bank

account. Picture your daughter seeing a volcano,

a puffin, the endless rough face of the North

Atlantic. Wear the sequins. Wear the hat. Do

good work but not too much. Make peace with

what others can give. With what you can give.

Burn your old beliefs down to ash. Make new ones.

Walk everywhere. Be that person everyone sees walking.

Watch the spring unfurl its secret lace. Stop to look at fallen

petals. See how they shape themselves into a halo of light.

Moon Jellyfish 

Something was sleeping inside the sea, 

rising, rising like an opal, like a dream, 

and beneath the dreaming was more water, 

clear as a moon I once saw from the deck 

of a ship. No cities. No islands. No anchor 

to the familiar world. Its wants. Its strange

longings. Touch and belonging. Here, there

was air like the fingers of an invisible lover.

There was an occasional seabird calling as it 

searched for fish. All was softness like the alula 

of a wing—clouds, sky with its membrane of light, 

waves and their secrets. Then there was this moon, 

rising in the water. The moon with its promise of forgetting. 

What did I want to forget? Myself. My incessant self. 

Antiphony of the Crone

where are you from

the earth’s blue 

mouth

What do you know

what I knew before

what did you find

the stars the sea

the scent of your

neck the pulse of your

blood

what did you feel

how the scent of you took

me back into the garden

of the child of my child 

your hand salted as

your eyes

what do you want 

for us to become

to grow the greenest 

grass the bluest

plums to taste

the ripe pears on 

your tongue

what is your fear

how the teeth of the earth

can tear things apart

where will you go

when you have gone

inside your very flesh

and the flesh of your

child 

how do you know

where you go, I will 

follow

Headlands Walk

The wind was all. I felt it

in the long gold marram

stems, their blossoms thick

with morning’s rising fog.

I felt it in the cliffs that stared

their stone crags down. The lips

of grass. The bottom rocks

worn teeth. The wind was all.

I wore it in my long dark hair.

The wind, the fog, all near

as God, as the breath rattling

in my weakened chest. And

of course, the sea, its unrelenting

calling, calling, saying in its stone-

cold voice that I would join with it

one day—reduced to water and bone.

// more photo poems here //

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