Space

April 19, 2026April 19, 2026 | Megan

Westwood Hills Park Loop; Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.

Jazz

jazz, how something
jazz
something so messy
so seemingly unkempt and
chaotic brings
jazz
something so messy
so unkempt and chaotic, disordered blooms
jazz
so unkempt and chaotic
brings subtle peace
jazz
brings calm clarity
to the mind
to the being
jazz

Napa Valley, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.

Lonely Place (II)

I’m still alone in my anxiety, in the pit of the stomach of the thing

Why does it take humans constant living to remind them that they
are alone and together all at the same time?

being alone
being lonely
being human

are they the same thing?

Am I still sitting at the table by myself?
Or is that just my childhood imagination talking?

What does it mean to be truly intimate with someone, in that you
you can call and text and still be alone

you can have sex and still be alone, still remain disconnected

you can be married to someone and still be walled out or wall

Maybe I’ve built too strong and well against vulnerability

The horns at sunset. Westwood Hills Park Loop; Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.

Noted:
I noticed the quiet
omission of those three words
when you said goodbye

Eventide. Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.

Space

What does it mean to need space, to take up space, to be in space
If we look at all of the bodies surrounding us, antithetical to room,
In definitions of space we might see blackness, bed covers, a field,
Yogic bodies in goddess pose, scientists from my planet on a vessel,
Artemis, a vehicle, the goddess of the hunt, she blasted them up into
The heavens, the dreams of generations of humans went with her
Astronauts in first grade classes from the sixties until that the final
Countdown from the Kennedy Space Center in twenty twenty-six
Imagined that moment, enraptured by the darkness, a new pitch and
Moment of aloneness, closeness to mortality like very few have lived
Our utter contrast, a bluegreenwhiteorb, pure pith and circumstance
Twelve months, our orbital timeline around the sun, twelve moons, of
Waxing and wanning, newing and fulling, shifting and pulling oceans
It’s hard to know what will come of this push and pull in the end

Wyeth grasses. Westwood Hills Park. Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.

Angle

April 12, 2026April 16, 2026 | Megan

Little Rock Canyon Trail. Image, my own. 2026

Billie Holiday and a Constancy of Dishes

growing into what goodly work feels like, allowing

Billie Holiday to meet a Sunday afternoon, a moment to rest

sultry trumpet lines and mellow tenor sax vibratos curl

around the soft razz of her story, falling in sensual serenades from

her lips, tragedy, truth, the fact that things fall apart, and fall

together again all in one song, one heart, one lifetime

a slow, delicious meal simmering on the stove to be

shared with my dearest, a quick sear to seal in flavor

so as I wash these dishes, may I remember Brother Lawrence

1666 Carmelite monk whose work became to wash the

dishes– pots, pans, spoons, bowls– whose devotion

to paying mind and body to the menial task became

a meditation, a prayer, a conversation, an act of deep adoration

to the point of nourishing Brother Lawrence in joy

joy at the least of these, the insignificant existence of humans,

recorded as the stuff of worshipers, acolytes, viewers, and tourists

over the ages who watched Brother Lawrence wash, in soverignty,

dishes

every dish evidence that life was given, bread was broken, food and

tidying up became an act of physical communion

Dance

sometimes I’ve climbed back into the dress
I wore when we danced together for the last time

we inhabited two separate bodies, two separate lives, we danced with
all of our experiences swirling inside of us, there is seemingly nothing

that could save us from the next part of the dance. undone, again, I am
sad, it’s a different sadness, not the raw, aching fire of the first separation

not the low moaning tears of the days the boys had to leave to be with you
it’s a sadness more of recognition, of assent, nodding ‘yes’ to what was

and accepting what is, and allowing myself to still feel sad that I didn’t
know, could never have known, it would be our last dance

A Certain Slant of Light

the clouds rise in great crescendos
thunderheads of nimbostratus, portent
like that mahler record of resurrection
nestled in the thrift store vinyl section
life and death and redemption
those rays of light we all see
which break through the somber
sky, a promise,
who knows the rules, who keeps them
when it comes to poetry, lightning
mercury, fate, spirit, a palantir

Iris, goddess of rainbows. Image, my own. 2026

Harvest

October 4, 2025October 4, 2025 | Megan

Autumn Pi

Rain on desert ears has the
Nostalgic ring of ancient
Canyons, striae revealed

In layers of eras, reality
Visible over eons where
Water knew its way.

Maybe we’ll wake
Tomorrow, the hot sun
Returned to its high autumn

Zenith, symptom of the
Sickness humans have
Inflicted on everything

Natural around them–
Trees, air, water, animals
Earth’s great oceans all

Poisoned with plastic,
Suffocated, hexed in
Chemicals, save us

From ourselves, our
Hubris and our short-
Sighted nature

Perhaps it is only the
Infinite that keeps me
Sane these days, makes

Me whole, returns me
To my place between
Stars and atomic particles

Sun-burnished sandstone and
Outer space, reminding me
With all our furious machinations

Good and ill, humans have never
Found a round number for Pi,
The circumference of the universe

“My Business is Circumference” Emily Dickinson

Season changing clouds, October 2025. Image, my own.

Plastic

Driving into the ever-early sunset,
East, city streets, wet from rain

moments ago, just passed,
In the waning light

Street lamps begin to wink on
A turkey vulture rides a thermal

High above the traffic light, black,
Feathery, flighty, I’m surprised

To see such a bird here,
Metropoli, humanity, all scrummed

Together in ever-growing towers
Towns, I look away from the bird

To the arrowed light, dictating a
Turn, the bird takes another

Breeze, it’s moving on to
Other climes, no, there is

No bird. The black specter,
An airborne plastic bag

Autumn in the Wasatch Mountains, 2025. Image, my own.

Paper

A fearless paper
Advocate, let decay the very
Lines I hold so dear

Gold

November 19, 2024November 22, 2024 | Megan

Beethoven Era

Can you imagine?
Deafness where once was joyous
Sound
Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light
Ricocheted
Can you imagine?
Losing everything?
If you are human, the guess is, yes
But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it
Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of
Death
Enough to cause us to cling to love, to
Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind,
Senseless
Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for
The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore
Respiration
Reaction, all part of this existence when what we
Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where
Reality is echoed and
Chambered
Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as
A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink
A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string
bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie,
Be

Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.

Andante

It will never do to keep running
Into yourself if you can’t look up,
Ponder the path of the stars in
The night sky, gaze with longing
And new eyes, on the moon with
Rapture, take in the horizon each
Day and walk into a new lifetime

Honey

Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood
I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic
and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us
through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the
storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook,
sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night,
silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity
what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and
delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight
join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm
snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life
depends on it because it does, resistance can be small
nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon
swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark

Orb

In reality
In the body
Black and gray
White and blue
softest aura
Hazing purple
Bold broad
Moon the
Clouds opaled
All around
Stars and sky
Dappled through
and Through
Lord, Bless
Gratitude for
Ohs and glitters
Heavens and Earth
The glory of it
All that lone
Full Moon

Gold. Leaves. Fall. Trees. Image, my own.

Water

October 19, 2024October 19, 2024 | Megan

Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Creation

creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment
being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in
your hands and awe for a few precious flashes
its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being
given transubstantiational power, snippet of the
infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos
unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant

Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.

Shit That Makes Poets Laugh

a couplet of haiku
getting to write the word
Uranus
espousing astrology while
being an unbeliever
writing all the people
you know into poems
recording the natural
world and wishing for
more smell words—the
olfactory is important,
man, and so under
expressioned—playing with
all mediums of art– music,
history, science, language,
painting, sculpture, theater–
being a badass generalist
the fact that mostly poets
read your poems
realizing that everything
is art, and it’s easier
than you think to tell
someone to fuck off
trying to figure out
if anyone really has an
editor? (Maggie Smith,
in my dreams you’re
reading this and cutting
and slashing, and un en-
jambing to your heart’s
delight.) Hearing that
one of Mary Oliver’s
best poems, ‘Wild Geese’
was an exercise, and
experiment in end-
stopped lines performed
for another poet, a magic
trick (hear Krista Tippet’s
interview with Oliver
on her unparalleled podcast
*On Being*)
realizing that your fly is
down, thank you John
Craigie
trying to figure out the
infinite mystery while
trying to figure out
american politics while
simultaneously realizing
that life is built on water
looking up the word ‘word’
in a thesaurus
realizing that you
should have hidden an
easter egg in all of your
work and you’ve forgotten

Libra Season

As Libra season concludes, I’d like to
invite all of us to love a lot of Libras
for the next few days. Like
my triple air massage therapist,
bless her. And my best friend of
all time, he could not be more elegant and
nuanced in his approach to the world, and people
who I don’t even know, and people I once knew
all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted
pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we”
that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that
always gets stirred up by the scale and measure,
skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the
breeze this time of year that makes me
fall in love with Libras, a little more each
October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips
of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves,
the romance of dying with Libras in mind

Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.

Chap Book
best is the open
chap book on the soul leave it
vulnerable in air

Lovng Hard (no i)
Sussing and figuring
and preparing and
planning as to how
to love
difficult people:
Drive the Bus,
Like Mo Willems’
Pigeon, in the
front seat
Self-assured, ready
Without license, but
there is no playbook
to love these difficult,
purposeless individuals
NPCs, people who have,
a bit, burned out on life
Who see the end, but
seem to have no ideas
on wellness or whole
ness- are not willing or
able to take the reins
any longer, who are
Offensive and rude
Blunt without purpose
Unmeasured in their
Aimless wanderings
through Time and
Space, Pretentious in
their lack of attention
to others, Tough