Notices by dogtrax (dogtrax@mastodon.social), page 6

It's an eerie morning out there, in the hours before dawn. The temps are steadily rising, with a light rain, and the fog has moved in. The fog, surfacing and moving over mounds of snow under dim streetlights, makes walking the dog seem like wandering into a scene out of a Hitchcock movie. The fog will only get worse, too, as the temperatures here swing from below zero F two days ago to a forecast of potentially nearly 50 degrees F this afternoon. Another drop is sure to come. #smallstories

“Hope is the belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s an informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we might play in it. Hope looks forward but draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections.”

-- from Call Them By Their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit, page 174

#smallquotes

“A poem is a way of capturing a moment.”

-- from The Writer’s Desk, edited by Jill Krementz, on the desk and words of Nikki Giovanni , page 49

#smallquotes
#smallpoems

@wordsmith when people share your art, or when you take the step to share it with others, it can stir quite a response in your heart ...

this moon
hangs, high
in the sky,
a wolf
baying for
blood in the
night

#smallpoems lunar event

I find myself beset with gratitude again. Last night, for nearly 2 1/2 hours, two friends -- a guitarist and a bass player -- played nothing but original music. We got through nearly 20 of my songs. I think they are getting tired of me thanking them for jamming but I can't not do that. Many of the songs have never seen the light of day beyond my little writing area. The songs take on new dimensions, new layers, new sounds, new interpretations. I hear them different. Grateful. #smallstories

“A voice is a ship, and sometimes, it is enough to know it is a ship and that it is coming, whether or not we can picture in our minds precisely what it carries in darkness below the waterline.”

-- from Voices (How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life) by Nick Coleman, page 4

#smallquotes

@wordsmith @maloki @Algot @tellio @uschi_the_listener

I hadn’t realized that you left a poem on Terry’s etherpad so a lovely unexpected discovery this morning ...

And this, too, a line of yours from another poem, now lingers in my mind:

“Her tidal shackles hold fast”

He chugs his way slowly up the street, in his sit-down snow-blower tractor. I am huffing and puffing in my driveway, leaning on my shovel, battling many inches of snow as the precipitation turns from snow to sleet to freezing rain. The day just gets heavier with every hour. He gives me a wave, and the widest smile, and then clears away the bottom of the driveway. I wave, grateful, --smile, too -- and file away a reminder to send cookies of thanks to his house later in the day. #smallstories

we wade
our way into
the solitude of
this winter's
morning

a day beyond
the storm

the only sound,
this burst of
wind, reminding
us to blink

for some tears
only come
in the cold

#smallpoems

@wordsmith I've been using this write.as site to remember my poems (since I am apt to write and then forget them in online spaces)

https://write.as/dogtrax/

“Everyone traveled through the library. In such a place, this crossroads, you might find someone you had lost. People searching for missing loved ones sometimes scribbled messages into library books with the hope that the person they were looking for would see the message -- as if the library had become a public broadcast system, a volley of calls and wished-for responses.”

-- from The Library Book by Susan Orleans, page 176

#smallquotes