Emily Brisse

Hello, friends. So tell me: how is it where you live? Here we are in Minnesota already on the declining side of a short and warmish winter. There were cold spells, certainly. But really: Not that bad. It all was made immeasureably better by the fact of a small child and sleds and hills and a backyard marsh that was made to be explored in  snow pants  and boots. It is something strange that we remember so little of what it was like to be very  young, because it is so full of wonder. I wish I could recall more of my own early experiences with snow, with animal tracks, with a full moon through empty trees leaving rectangles of light on the wooden floors. But that is part of the joy of parenting, I suppose. A selfish part. The living again through another younger body. In any case, it has been a sweet season. Winter has also brought us fewer house projects, and therefore more time for reading, writing, lazy mornings, hearty meals, and occasional adventures. I'm r...

"The Orange" At lunchtime I bought a huge orange-- The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave-- They got quarters and I got a half. And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It's new. The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I'm glad I exist. -- by Wendy Cope

Friends: One of the reasons I love this space is because it allows me to just write, to not worry about narrative arc or publication criteria or even a singular piece's point. If a moment comes, and I want to put words around it: Here.  Here is where I know I can both talk to myself and talk to you, whether you talk back, whether you are out there at all. And sometimes those words, as amorphous as fog, become something that coalesces, rises up--become a thing to see and sometimes touch. I've been lucky these past months in that a few things I've written for this blog--after a bit of reworking--have been published by other places. Today, my essay "Tonic" from almost one year ago, is trying to reach into the moments of a few more people over at Mamalode . You might remember it? Sick boy, slow poems, a day that was long and tender. If you have a moment, read it again--especially if you or someone you know could do with some tea and soothing words during this co...

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you. -- by David Wagoner To a year of being found. Happy 2016, all.

At almost four in the afternoon, the wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods. The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches on fire in the heavy sky that flickers with the disappearing sun. I wonder what I owe the fading day, why I keep my place at this dark desk by the window measuring the force of the wind, gauging how long a certain cloud will hold that pink edge that even now has slipped into gray? Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp in every window and nests of stars on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills and people climb, rung by rung, into the night. -- by Joyce Sutphen

Hidden, oh hidden in the high fog the house we live in, beneath the magnetic rock, rain-, rainbow-ridden, where blood-black bromelias, lichens, owls, and the lint of the waterfalls cling, familiar, unbidden. In a dim age of water the brook sings loud from a rib cage of giant fern; vapor climbs up the thick growth effortlessly, turns back, holding them both, house and rock, in a private cloud. At night, on the roof, blind drops crawl and the ordinary brown owl gives us proof he can count: five times--always five-- he stamps and takes off after the fat frogs that, shrilling for love, clamber and mount. House, open house to the white dew and the milk-white sunrise kind to the eyes, to membership of silver fish, mouse, bookworms, big moths; with a wall for the mildew's ignorant map; darkened and tarnished by the warm touch of the warm breath, maculate, cherished; rejoice! For a later era will differ. (O difference that kills or intimidates, much of all our small shadowy life!) Without ...

When I was a June twenty-two, one week fresh from graduation, I took a flight to Lubbock and wore cowboy hats with friends as young and sweet as grass. One night we put on skirts and tall boots and ambled through the halls  of an old restaurant, bourbon and whiskey  in glasses, all very kin to cigars  and mustaches, dark with ranch wood. The stars would be bright, the moon uncommonly full in that wide sky, so we stepped outside, a slight chill wrapping down our boots and around our ankles, expecting Texas. Instead, the screams of a child-- two children? more?--broke the twilight, and I gaped up--up, for they were in the trees,  perched and wailing at the coming dark, pleading in a language I couldn't decipher. “Peacocks,” a man said, amused, thumb in his pocket. I know because I stared at him in astonishment. Pressed pants. No belt buckle. Thin tie. No cowboy hat. Peacocks in trees, their tail feathers draped ...

One Tuesday afternoon, a month or so ago, I lay stretched out on my bed, my not-quite-two-year-old son cuddled between my arm and body, reading poetry aloud. " Before I was sixteen / I was fast / enough to fake / my shadow out," I read. "The instructor said, / Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you-- / Then, it will be true." "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--" I placed my lips against the feverish brow of my boy, my fingers running along the length of his arm, reading over the top of my worry. Reading because the sound had soothed him, had taken him away from the limbs of his discomfort. Reading. [... And speaking of reading, you can read the rest at Mamalode. ]

Hi all, Well, I'd say summer is almost over, but the truth is summer has been in the rearview for me for over two weeks already. My new set of students filled up my new campus on Monday, and brought with them the very tangible feeling of fall. Make no mistake: it was still hot outside. But school is scholarly and high hopes and eager nerves and very much what's next . I am dog tired. And can hardly sleep for the thirty-two things on my to-do list. But also: how many folks can say they get this--this influx of life  every autumn? Besides the kids and the content and the fact that, you know, I get to talk about books and words for a living, I am so grateful for the way the school calendar is cyclical, for the way even when it's harvest time, for me the world feels new. That said: summer was wonderful. WONDERFUL. So much time outside with my dear boy. There are ridiculous tan lines on my feet from my sandals, and this fact makes me grin, because the last time I had lines l...

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? . . . I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . . the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among whites, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. -- Walt Whitman lines 90-101 from Leaves of Grass

Bright snow, bright moon Mornings of bright breath beside mine Such aching, such light *** Though I've shown up here less this last year, Landing on Cloudy Water is still a special place for me, as are all of you. Thanks for your continued community and support. Here's to a spectacular, gentle, and joy-filled 2014!  Merry Christmas!

all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again: but winter's not forever,even snow melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then? all history's a winter sport or three: but were it five,i'd still insist that all history is too small for even me; for me and you,exceedingly too small. Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave merely to toil the scale to shrillerness per every madge and mabel dick and dave --tomorrow is our permanent address and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do, we'll move away still further:into now  -- by e. e. cummings

I've decided to try something new here. I was talking the other day to a friend about our summers, and I realized two things: I loved hearing about what she'd been doing, what she'd read and seen, where she visited, what she'd been mulling over. Although I had read/seen/visited/thought over actual adultish things myself, I could hardly remember any of them.  I am blaming this on my dear sweet little boy and the scientific FACT called "Baby Brain." And I am using it as a reason to put together a post now and then--maybe once a month? once a season?--to remember what I've been into between the rocking and feeding and human-jungle-gyming exploits that soak through so many of my waking hours. A good number of other bloggers  do this same thing, and despite the fact that there's nothing overtly lovely or inspiring about a list of television titles, I look forward to these posts. They open the door to that writer's humanness, I think, and they esta...

I look at you, and blink. Wind, and the world shifts. New shadows, new light.

Like a stunned piano, like a bucket of fresh milk flung into the air or a dozen fists of confetti thrown hard at a bride stepping down from the altar, the stars surprise the sky. Think of dazed stones floating overhead, or an ocean of starfish hung up to dry. Yes, like a conductor's expectant arm about to lift toward the chorus, or a juggler's plates defying gravity, or a hundred fastballs fired at once and freezing in midair, the stars startle the sky over the city. And that's why drunks leaning up against abandoned buildings, women hurrying home on deserted side streets, policemen turning blind corners, and even thieves stepping from alleys all stare up at once. Why else do sleepwalkers move toward the windows, or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals press sad foreheads to steel bars? Because the night is alive with lamps! That's why in dark houses all over the city dreams stir in the pillows, a million plumes of breath rise into ...

Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of  what was  is married to the vitality of  what will be? I don't say it's easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed. -- by Mary Oliver

Listen: after a long day's work the land is stretching its body exhaling toward sleep and white dreams  

Sometimes, even though I know such phrases are cliche, I can't help myself from repeating over and over comments like, "Time flies by" and "Where has the summer gone" and "Each year, each year goes more quickly, I swear."  Perhaps these phrases are repeated so much simply because they are very, very true. In the spirit of that quickness, I thought I'd pop in here and offer up a few arguably sparse updates in lieu of my somewhat moseying style.   In case you missed my little announcement, I've had one particular little thing on my mind lately: a baby ! My husband and I are expecting our first child at the end of January. Although I'm sure bits and pieces of that journey will end up here, I plan to keep this blog mostly place-focused. I'm writing for a pregnancy blog , too, though, so if you like yourself some baby and are interested in a different kind of (more personal! more crazy?) writing, then head over here and chec...