I met Fred at a friend’s dinner party. In meeting him, I met three generations, for he was there with his daughter and grown granddaughter. We talked about cities and transportation. This poem combines his word with the wintertime loss of our family’s pet mice: Coralina and Sparkles. The poem’s tentative title is “The Third…
Poetry for Strangers
The word: Empower
Dear readers, happy early Valentine’s Day and welcome back to Poetry for Strangers. I’ve taken a break for two months—two months in which much has happened: The major thing that happened is that my beloved grandfather, subject of my biography Energy, died at the amazing age of 103. This has been a strange process, being grandfathered—sitting snugly…
The word: Awesome
This is my final poem from a stranger met at the Bown Crossing Library. Poetry for Strangers will continue, after a short break, in the new year. XO and happy holidays to you all, wonderful readers! Just at library closing time, several people came up to say hello. One was Nataraj, who looked interested in my…
The word: Compassion
Gail shared with me her daily practices about how to begin and end her days with compassion, gratitude, and humility. The Stranger: Gail The Word: Compassion The poem I wrote: With your whole heart, dance. Let creature-love consume you. Make whole those with you. Look the injured in their eyes. The compassion you’ve saved up forever, for…
The word: Lava
Sandra and I talked about rocks and rock-hounds, those who see something in every rock. She gestured toward the landscape: “This was once a lake, those hills part of the shore. There’s lava up there.” The Stranger: Sandra The Word: Lava The poem I wrote: Like a boy unfurling into man or stone, this lava rock splits…
The word: Wander
When Merric learned that I am into fairy tales, she asked which ones—and when I told her (the girl going into the woods ones) she said, “Grimms!” Then she told me she wandered after high school to the part of Germany where the Brothers Grimm grew up. The Stranger: Merric The Word: Wander The poem I wrote:…
The word: Home
A glitch on my website that was bouncing back emails has been fixed. Now, if you respond to this email, I should receive it. Thank you always for reading, writing poems, and responding. Onto the 277th poem: Evan, age 10, and Rachel, his mother, moved from Illinois in August. They came to the library and when I…
The word: Wolf
“I appreciate what you do,” Hoda said to me while I was writing, then she started to walk away. “Wait!” I said. “Please tell me what sorts of things you do.” Hoda teaches university-level computer science, a fact that led us to a conversation about robotics and girls in STEM. (I googled her later—she is…
The word: Thought
I recognized a father and son who were visiting the library, and we figured out that we had seen each other before at my children’s school. The son, Evan, gave me the word “thought” for a poem, and it was fun to imagine all of the ways the word could be spun. The Stranger: Evan The…
The word: Anyong
Happy Halloween, readers, poets, and strangers! A family stopped by twice to say hello when I was typing away on Vox Poplar. I explained the word-poem-concept, and the father, Anthony, said that over dinner his family liked to tell stories based on certain words. I asked them for a word, and they all looked at…