I assume you’ve all read If Not, Winter because I think highly of everyone I’ve never met. Anne and Sappho are on my mind today. Below are a few fragments of fragments that I underlined in the book.
And yet belower— Random lines from my “poetry?” iCloud note. Fragments like this often find their way into my poems eventually. I also keep dreamnotes, they similarly feel like a subconscious log that I don’t actively remember writing down.
Dark to put my random musings in the same post as Sappho but we can do anything we want in here, so, let’s ! Photo pairings from my archives.
Listening to this classic as I put this soup together:
105A
as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot—
no, not forgot: were unable to reach
Above: 35mm Paxos, Greece August 2019
96
you like a goddess
and in your song most of all she rejoiced
Above: 35mm Paris, France August 2025
88A
]I say I have been a strong lover
]
]painful
Above: 35mm Tinos, Greece August 2021
58
]Dawn with arms of roses
&&
58 later
But I love delicacy and this to me—
the brilliance and beauty of the sun—desire has allotted.
Above: Paris 35mm August 2025
184
danger
185
honeyvoiced
Above: Paris 35mm August 2025
150
for it is not right in a house of the Muses
that there be lament
this would not become us
Above: 35mm Tuscany August 2024
march 2026
the poet asked questions we all knew the answers to and
i just know that i have been alive
before
Above: 35mm Cefalu, Sicily August 2022
feb 2026
california is full of warnings
Above: 35mm Venice, California December 2021
september 2025
i, turning into a dove______
Above: 35mm Venice, California December 2021
december 2024
i love you because you told me to
Above: Paris, France November 2021
september 2025
playwrights are poets who don’t trust the reader
Above: 35mm Los Angeles, CA December 2022
—
march 2025
you can’t keep a secret in the nightstand
Above: 35mm Tel Aviv, Israel July 2024
—
april 2025
and avalanche of birdsong
