Author: Ian Trimnell

Beloved is Where We Begin By Jan Richardson If you would enter into the wilderness, do not begin without a blessing. Do not leave without hearing who you are: Beloved, named by the One who has traveled this path before you. Do not go without letting it echo in your ears, and if you find it...

Derailleur of the Heart By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer Because our conversation feels like riding a bike uphill, I think of gears. I think of how easy it is to shift lower, how a simple flick of the thumb makes the impossible possible. Where are the gears for love? There must be better ways to use our...

Walking Past the Mud Puddle By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  Today I feel too clean to play, but oh there was that day when you and I walked past the mud puddle, all slick and ooze, a miresome mess, and we reached our fingers into the sludge and smeared the muck onto each other’s faces— thick mud,...

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing By Hafiz  I know the voice of depression Still calls to you. I know those habits that can ruin your life Still send their invitations. But you are with the Friend now And look so much stronger. You can stay that way And even bloom! Keep squeezing drops of the...

A Work for Poets by George Mackay Brown  To have carved on the days of our vanity A sun A ship A star A cornstalk Also a few marks From an ancient forgotten time A child may read That not far from the stone A well Might open for way farers Here is a work for...

Getting Older By Elaine Feinstein  The first surprise: I like it. Whatever happens now, some things that used to terrify have not: I didn’t die young, for instance. Or lose my only love. My three children never had to run away from anyone. Don’t tell me this gratitude is complacent. We all approach the edge of...

Badly By Lynn Ungar  Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. No one ever did something well without doing it poorly first. But if we’re going to get real, the chances of your ever getting really good are slim at best. The Olympics and the pro leagues fled with the end of your puberty. Maybe the...

Love and Playfulness By Hafiz  Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living In better conditions, for your mother and my mother were friends. I know the Innkeeper In this part of the universe. Get some rest tonight, Come to my verse tomorrow. We’ll go speak to the Friend...

It is Enough By Anne Alexander Bingham  To know that the atoms of my body will remain to think of them rising through the roots of a great oak to live in leaves, branches, twigs perhaps to feed the crimson peony the blue iris the broccoli or rest on water freeze and thaw with the seasons...