pull up a chair

dispatch from 49546…

well, i didn’t strap quite that much onto the old red wagon that carried me across three states to land here, at my biennial infusion of poetry, incandescence, and spring peepers (that frog song that rises up from a pond deep in the woods at the end of an endless parking lot), otherwise known as the festival of faith & writing. where i gorge on writers and poets and wander the hills of michigan in a state of bliss that likely has twinkly little stars whirling from my eyes.

over the course of 48 hours, i’ll inhale the likes of poets marie howe, pádraig Ó tuama, and scott cairns, the writers joy williams, edwidge danticat, kwame alexander, and bill mcKibben, big thinker parker palmer, journalist barbara bradley haggerty, and essayist dinty w. moore, among the many. i’ll feast on flannery o’conner’s prayer journal, and thomas merton’s record collection.

and in between it all, there will be those frogs belting out their vernal love tunes from the murky pond i’ve not yet found.

at night, once heaven’s dome is star-stitched with twice the skylights seen back in sweet chicago, i hole up inside an old, old house, where the floors creak, and the blankets smell of lavender. the folks who run the bed & breakfast, they make you feel right at home, invite you clear into the kitchen while they stir the eggs, or scoop the melon into high-stemmed bowls.

it’s the closest i come to a spell at any spa. in my book, i’ll take poets over thermal mud baths any day.

i’ll try to circle back to this old table and weave in a few of the lines i’ll be scribbling in the margins of my big, fat program guide. i know, sure as i know how to spell grand rapids, that there will be lines and exchanges and snippets of magnificence that take my breath away, set me soaring on the vernal updraft of incandescent poetry.

in the meantime, i’ve been delighting in the joys of making what’s known in the world of literary marketing as “shareables,” lines lifted from the pages of my little bitty book, the blessings of motherprayer, pasted atop all sorts of lovely pictures. they’re meant to share. so feel free to click and drag onto your desktop, and print them out. you could stick them to your fridge, or scribble your grocery list on the back. use as a bookmark, or line your drawers with a whole swatch of them.

i’ll pick just a handful for now, but i’ll keep adding, so please come back to watch them multiply…..

what’s your idea of a spa for the soul? 

(p.s. feel free to tell me which one of the shareables you might like best. i need you all to be my in-house market research committee….) xoxox