I'm not a rock, I'm not an island

Burlington Vermont at Starr Farm Overlook, December 2023

Between a rock and
the hard place
a soft thing sits.
Quietly stuck, absorbing mist.

The hard place
glistens, sun resists.
Quietly stuck, absorbing mist.
Soon, day breaks,

glistens. Sun resists.
Dew, stone, wet sand:
Soon day breaks,
Out reaches a hand.

Dew, stone, wet, sand.
fingers gliding,
out reaches a hand.
Rough, smooth. Filtering light.

Fingers gliding
feeling night.
Rough, smooth, filtering light.
Impossible. Slowly. Shifts.

Feeling night
between a rock. And
impossible slowly shifts.
A soft thing sits.

---

my attention, lately

• Prayer for My Daughter, David St. John

• Werner Herzog on Fresh Air

• The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing, Dana Goodyear

• Urban Roots Podcast: Rukaiyah Adams on Reimagining Community Wealth

• Powerful Forces are Fracking Our Attention: We Must Fight Back, D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt

• What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal, The Ezra Klein Show (featuring Kristen Ghodsee)

• Invisible Landscapes: A human bodypart hiding in plain sight—and the mysteries it might help us solve (and its RadioLab counterpart) Jenn Brandel