Sep 25, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes, Poetry
Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the...
May 5, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes, Poetry
May May, and among the miles of leafing, blossoms storm out of the darkness— windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees dive into them and I too, to gather their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs is the deepest certainty that this existence too— this sense of...
Oct 28, 2022 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes, Poetry
A poem for this moment in our lives… (October 28, 2022) BY MAGGIE SMITH Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from...
Sep 1, 2021 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Poetry
Andrew Grace After my father died I should have gone to therapy. I tried instead to solve my grief with alcohol and poems. Now I am almost 40 and all I can tell you about grief is that when I found my father on the floor of the machine shed the radio was on and wind...
Aug 14, 2021 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Poetry
August Mary Oliver . . When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spendall day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts...