Emily Brisse

Many thanks to Roadside Poetry's organizer, Paul Carney, and my mom, ever the intrepid photographer. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

You said it was a twelve-house town. Did you call it town? No sé . You’ve been speaking in English and I’ve been attempting Spanish and there are details we’ve lost to effort, that we’ve grinned over, our hair flying around us in time to the bus’s bumps along the narrow road, the thick air coming in the open windows. “I grew up here, just around here. There were twelve houses and a soccer field. Very peaceful.” “ Paz ,” I say. You smile. “See that?” You’ve been pointing out the agricultural fields as we pass them, a serious job as they’re everywhere, on the right and the left, stretching for kilometers. Coffee. Plantains. Cassava. Hectares of pineapple. You described how volcanic ash has enriched the soil, how the area is flush with large ranches and small family fincas . As we’ve traveled, I’ve watched men with machetes at their hips, some slashing their silver blades in strong strokes mere meters from the road. “See that? Sugar cane.” “ Azúcar ,” I say. You smile again,...

When I was younger, I used to believe that out of everyone I knew, I was the only one who not only appreciated nature, but loved  it, pined for it, understood it as a perfect part of life. I talked to the trees. Yes, I was one of those .  I could spend hours by myself in the woods, or by a stream, or watching the light shift across the surface of a lake. My first memory is of a mountain landscape in Montana, the feeling of the wind rushing up my legs, the blueness of the sky. I began this blog for several reasons, but it was naive to not count among them connection with other "place people." I didn't know. I didn't even guess that fifteen months from its inception, this blog would have introduced me to complete strangers who now feel like friends, and friends who are now ever-more-deeply that because we've had cause to discuss and share about things that before just somehow never came up. I didn't know that what I'd most appreciate a year later about thi...

that night we lay on air sultry as an Egyptian's exhale. Nothing stirred but firefly wings and our gentle fingers, figuring at the throb and pulse that electrified such small bodies with sparks. Their glimmer laced the lake's edge like a necklace, like lookout smoke, and we drifted tranquil within, at peace with each other, our unwearied lips. The water was blue-black beneath us, a veiled mirror underneath the cloak of sky, light discovering light only when we moved. -- by Emily Brisse, originally published in The Talking Stick , Vol. 20, Editor's Choice award

Thanks to Chris Johnson, the Center for Servant Leadership at Gustavus, and the amazing and beautiful Prairie Oaks Institute in Belle Plaine for an incredible weekend: retreat, rejuvination, reflection, and old and new friends--"live encounters," every one.