Loose Leaf Notes

1. I’m not a rose-colored glasses person. I like all colors.

2. I prefer THIS kind of snow white.

3. Today I found myself singing “I wish I had a river I could skate away on’ and pining for my ice skates that I gave to our local thrift shop a few of years ago.

4. I wrote this poem in 2009 by candlelight during a wind storm: Unleashed wind lashes / slapping through branches / of innocent trees / that cower like children / in fear of the whipping / Bowed over and trembling / they whine through the howling / outside my window / too many to save.

5. Neuroplasticity is defined most simply as the nervous system’s ability to reorganize itself in response to stimuli. “We have all experienced heightened neuroplasticity during the so-called sensitive periods of brain development, which typically unfold between the ages of 1 and 4 when the brain is uniquely responsive to environmental input. This helps explain why kids effortlessly learn all kinds of things, like how to ski or speak a new language… Conversely, if you have the misfortune of being neglected or abused during your brain’s sensitive periods, the effects are likely to be adverse and enduring — probably more so than if the same events happened later in life.”  -Dr. Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, The Atlantic

6. And this: Mountain Chill – A chilled wind slices / through tabletop ridges / clouds cut to the chase / across a tumbler of sky / Glassy ice blue / overwhelms the horizon / like a drink on a counter / spilled over

7. My sister used to think meteorologists were saying “windshield factor” when they were saying “wind chill factor.”

8. For most of my life I thought ‘mourning doves’ were called ‘morning doves.’ But now that I have a pair that live in my yard I understand because they startle when they see me and sound like crybabies as they fly away.

9. It’s too cold to crack open a window / but the woodpecker at the feeder / reminds me to wear red / It knows when to fly in / and when to retreat / It doesn’t care / what the other birds think – Read This is a Test in its entirety HERE. 

10. “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.”
–Salvatore Quasimodo

11. Rizz is the new Oxford dictionary word of the year, taken from charisma and meaning romantic appeal or charm, which can’t be used in Scrabble because there is only one Z in the game, unlike Za, which is short for pizza and a word that no one I know ever uses.

12. Holding a mirror / to human amnesia / I’m a harbinger of the future / From a high wire / with a long view / I’m a witness bearer / of grace and trauma / I’m a town crier / of a deeper truth – Read Canary in its entirety HERE. 

13. These days, it works best for me to see what a new day or a new year brings rather than try to dictate it. Rising to what the moment calls for, that is the practice I’m interested in. – More from Practice HERE. 

_________Thirteen Thursday