{npm23 – headline cinquain #21}

It’s odd to be entering the last nine days of the month. It’s almost MAY, people, and that’s just concerning and alarming, as this month has rushed by in a headlong bolt. Perhaps the confusing part for me is that where I live in California, the temperature hasn’t yet climbed into the eighties as it usually does in April, and it’s lush and green on every hill. I think collectively we keep looking around wondering, “Where the heck ARE we?” I don’t know either, Cali.

Meanwhile, the world keeps spinning and it’s abhorrent in its usual way. I cannot get the beautiful face of Ralph Yarl out of my mind this week, and the wreckage of his life, and his innocence keeps breaking me. As I often do when I’m trying to process, I’ve been writing poems – awful, toxic poems which won’t see the light of day… but it’s excising some demons. To that end, I’m returning to the Crapsey cinquain, but loosely letting my thoughts go to current events. I’m going to tell the story of this time in five line bites — what we’re doing, what we’re thinking, so we remember. Human beings have such short attention spans. To my horror, I realize I’ve written more than one poem about an innocent Black child getting shot.

But here we are again.

Poetry Friday is hosted at Karen Edmisten’s the blog with the clever name, and there’s so much lovely Spring content. Please don’t miss Denise K.’s poem about democracy and gun laws which gave me some words for mine.

{npm23 – tetractys cinquain #17}


My cousin, Mary Lee, wrote a whole series of poems on the climate emergency last year (I think?) and I have to admit that some of them were depressing – because she needed to be real. People have been falsely optimistic for a long time, hoping good wishes would do the trick. It won’t. But, action will. My action has been to plant a garden – a tiny, hopeful, oxygenating thing to do. I’m trying to be an optimist – because I’m an Eeyore at heart. Here’s to thinking of what else we can do.

{npm23 – tetractys cinquain #14}

Last Sunday was the first in the seventies with sunshine since… who knows when. We have had weekday afternoons when it gets into the low seventies just before the wind picks up and the temperature drops back into the sixties, so a whole day during this unusually cool, windy spring after our unusually wet winter was so, so welcome. The whole neighborhood was outside for our day of sunshine, and with the doors and windows open, we could hear the joy in the air.

Poetry Friday today is hosted at Jone’s place.

{story chat: angie thomas & books of wonder}

A breezy, sunny weekend, good books and avid readers! Looking forward to hanging out in the North Bay this Saturday night!

And, then Sunday afternoon, I’ll be virtually jetting to New York to talk with even more great book people!

I hope you can join me one place or the other – you can definitely still reserve your spot on Crowdcast with Books of Wonder, so if you can, do! If not, there will be recordings and photographs posted from both events, and I’ll tell you all about them later.

Until then…