Where the Work Comes From
Although this video from 2014 can be seen elsewhere on this site, I wanted to post it here, now, as I commit to writing more deeply, clearly, and joyfully in this new year.
Similar Posts
Crow poems | Poems - Ruth Thompson | Poems about ecology | Poems about nature | Ruth Thompson Poetry | Whales - poems
Whale Fall & Black Sage: Poems of the Journey
Byrtrt
Today the first edition of Whale Fall & Black Sage went to the printer. A special, numbered and signed edition of 50 was printed for the Whale Fall poetry and dance performance on December 15th, but some blurbs were missing and there were other small edits. So today is the day that it finally feels…
Wise to Cinderella
Byrtrt
Wise to Cinderellafor Mary Brown At five, we liked the same stories,laughed at dissonance, were wise to Cinderella. We dressed in women’s clothes, tried them onfor size. No tulle or glass slippers,though we’d have gone for a spangle or twohad anything shiny been in the box. You were Puss-In-Boots: skirts hiked up,ready to swash buckles,…
Bless You, Father Walt
Byrtrt
Bless You, Father Walt for lying stripped and singingin the floes and fallows of your own body.For granting us land-rights to your shaggy unkempt tonguewhere through long syllables of scarlet leaveswe ride shanks-mare, drunk on the public road again. Oh, bless me, Father Walt!Lend me your large boots to caper and hoot at dusk,make me…
Grouse Song
Byrtrt
In many traditions, the grouse is a symbol of the spiral dance to the heart of mystery. Here she is also an offering to my own limping, arthritic joints. Grouse spins inward, dancesthe one-wing limp-dance – the hunched, knee-favoring,stiff-hip-lurching two-step. Round and round she dancesdragging a wing, a thumb joint, and the dragged part, flightless,makes…
My Life in Mathematics
Byrtrt
My Life in Mathematics My third grade teacher fissioned us into teams.Flashed cards. Shouted. Five seconds to answer:7 times 8! Ruth! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! My team always lost. A brain can be a cloud chamberfull of random events. And shame is easy to memorize. Later, my mother drilled me with flash cardsin a…
Travel Instructions for Elmwood Avenue
Byrtrt
Travel Instructions for Elmwood Avenue You leave the sepia light of the tea restaurant,lapsang and peony, earth and green twig,continuo of quiet human voices. Outside is rain, fat frying, damp exhaust, sputum,spit of tires on a wet street, brakes tunedto the pulse of streetlights: green, amber, red, green. You blunder, glasses fringed with rainbows,until your…