Sacré Coeur & Wound Man (First published in The Cincinnati Review, Issue 15.1, 2017) A painting of the Virgin hangs at the foot of my bed. She wears her sacré coeur like a brooch, fastened with a sword through her chest. Mary’s sacred heart is crowned with flowers, just as gravestones are. I wish I…
Category: A Life of Wonder
Still Lifes in our Artists’ Loft
My treasures aren’t worth anything but mean the world to me. The paper-cut oak leaves were collected on a stroll up to the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte last year. I love cutting shapes into dried leaves – so ephemeral, they promise to rip and turn to mulch on the studio floor. I love…
A Geography of the Heavens
The working title for my current memoir – a meditation on my exile and love affair – was A Natural History of the Sky – the sky being a running motif throughout the narrative for many reasons (natural history, art history, magical realism, dreams, astrology, etc). With chapter titles ranging from “Miranda Pirouetting on a Zephyr”…
Solo European Pilgrimage
33 Days, 500 KM on the via Francigena pilgrim route from Canterbury, England to the Vatican.
Letting the World Rush in…
I’ve been asked by the founder of the Internations Women’s Empowerment Seminars in Florence to deliver a talk about my solo pilgrimage from Canterbury to the Vatican. I’m so honored, and a bit bashful – to be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it two days along the trail, let alone finish the pilgrimage. This…
We Two, How Long we Were Fool’d
Whitman always says it best. Whatever it is, he says it best. My dad and I just spoke about Whitman, and coincidentally, the next day, I got my copy of Leaves of Grass out of storage and I found a poem that I don’t remember reading, though I must have read it a dozen times….
Tattoo’ed Maps & Dragons – my Inspiration
My poem Mappa Mundi has been published by The Roanoke Review, The editors asked me to write a little bit about the inspiration behind this poem. Mappa Mundi was inspired by my passion for books of antique maps, some of them so large, I could step through them like doors into imaginary, naively drawn worlds. These…
The Weight of Prayer
I’m excited to announce that my poem The Weight of Prayer has been published by The Roanoke Review, a literary journal that was founded by a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of his students; a down-to-earth journal that publishes writers with no previous writing credits as well as well-known writers. The Roanoke Review editors asked…
My First Pilgrimage Was a Scavenger Hunt
My girls made the “please do not remove” note for me years ago when I was suffering from depression and couldn’t get out of bed. It’s one of my most treasured belongings, even though it’s just a ripped piece of paper. It was one of many that lined the streets – secret messages taped to the walls,…
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