Bread & With It

Since I was young, I dreamed of having a backyard garden. It was perfect. No weeds, continuous blossoms and a harvest to die for. Especially in the winter when I longed for the blossoming energy of spring. Dreaming of what a garden could be. When I was 15, we moved to Boston and my family had a community plot. I loved driving there with my family after dinner and all of us pulling weeds and watering in the quiet dusk of the river valley, the joy of discovering what was ready

Color and B&W images allow me to see things in very different ways. Color's power, in this unedited Nantucket sunset (taken at Madaket Beach 10 years ago), is its ability to add emotion— peacefulness, gratitude, and awe. Look at that... How can it be real? Truly a moment given by God. The longer we stayed, the more beautiful the colors became. But there is something about a B&W image I love. Check out this other image taken in Nantucket. It strips away all the distractions

If I sit quietly, and go back to my living room in Des Moines—to the red velvet club chairs, black couch and homemade stereo cabinet, I can still hear the music that played like a score through my childhood,—Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's "A Taste of Honey," Andy Williams's "Hawaiian Wedding Song," and numerous Firestone Christmas albums that were the score to my young life. Our living room in Iowa was always filled with music. The notes curled through the living room wh

To me, the enjoyable thing about writing is seeing what words, experiences, images or sounds will send a poem my way each day. It seems the more I find them, the more they show up. Like many of you I was making a pot of homemade Turkey soup the other day and pulled out a bag of baby carrots, and to my delight, this sweet little pair of "carrot pants" fell out. "Look," I said to my husband... there's a poem here." He just laughed. I guess he is getting used to this now." This