can fish do math?

Greetings, poetry people. I have awoken—Pisces will out—with no intention for today’s poem/post whatsoever (except to get clear about time differences between Brighton, MoCo/NYC and Portland; this is the only actual math I’ve been doing). So you are getting a “kitchen-sink” poem, as in I am kit-and-caboodling a bunch of bits from my last 24 hours into an artwork made of words. I hope it’s beautiful, or at least interesting.

This kitchen sink owes a lot to this gripping @yujins.chalkdust Instagram post, which is nature+philosophy+math+beauty, and, if you ask me, religion in its purest original form*** of the ligaments between us and all beings. Which, if you ask me, is the best reason to protect, however we can, the home of all beings, this Earth. Which I must mention because it is the 3rd Friday here at mjlu, traditionally Climate Friday.

Currently in Montgomery County, MD, the smoke from Canadian wildfires has arrived and the air quality is officially “VERY UNHEALTHY,” which may be why my poem is spending most of its time underwater. Sometimes the ostrich just needs to hide her head in the sand, tending her eggs.

Thanks to Jill Dailey for rounding up Poetry Friday today with a “Fold a Zine” video—how fun! Maybe I’ll make one for this poem…see you in the comments, friends!

***However, popular etymology among the later ancients (Servius, Lactantius, Augustine) and the interpretation of many modern writers connects it with religare "to bind fast" (see rely), via the notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods." In that case, the re- would be intensive.
—from https://www.etymonline.com/word/religio-

Thanks for reading! Go to my Substack to subscribe free to receive new posts and support my work with kids at WHISPERshout Writing Workshop.

digging into inheritance

Greetings, Poetry People, and happy hotter-than-July! I'm grateful to those who have been supporting my efforts over at Substack, intermittent as they have been, and this post is linked there. Comment where you will!

It's the First Friday of the month and the Inklings--6 of us--are responding to yet another of Audrey Gidman's daily prompts from June 5, at Catherine's request:

Read “Digging” by Seamus Heaney. (Really, do!) Think about something that has been handed down to you—from a parent, a grandparent, an elder in your life—that feels alive in you now. Think of how it is the same and think of how it has transformed in you. Notice how, for Heaney, it’s gardening and writing—two kinds of digging, but still the digging continues through the generations. Write a poem that digs into what was handed down to you and examines what you carry now.

I was eager for this opportunity to consider whether it's a thing handed down--something concrete--or a skill, a tendency, a characteristic strength or weakness that I wanted to write about. I offer you not the first and surely not the last of my poems about accompanying my parents as they age.

The Inklings are excited as well because, after almost 10 years, our group will be getting together for a writing retreat! I joined in 2017, and there have been a few changes in personnel over the years, but the current group of Margaret Simon, Catherine Flynn, Linda Mitchell, Molly Hogan, Mary Lee Hahn and I have been meeting biweekly since 2021. Most of us have been in the same physical location with some others at some point, but never have we all been in the same place together!

At the end of July, that will change when everyone comes here to Silver Spring for a weekend of writing and writing-related hijinks! It's a nice grand finale to the summer, because after that, Fiona and I will be all-hands-on-deck getting our house ready for renters before the Great Relocation to Brighton, England for the coming school year. (We have landing places but still no flat of our own organized, so if you know anyone in Brighton we can connect with--for any purposes--do tell!) This is also exciting, but there are challenges; viz. the poem above. I don't believe I need to say any more than that--there are enough readers of *my juicy little universe* in the same generational boat who know exactly what I mean.

See how the rest of us dug the "Digging" prompt below, and thanks to Michelle at More Art 4 All for hosting us today!

 Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

tilt: a book review

Greetings, Poetry People! One of the nice things about being in this community is getting an inside look at our friends' projects. For a long time I've known that Jone Rush MacCulloch was working on something big, but I had no idea how deep and personal was the history of Jone's first novel in verse, TILT. Now, though, I've had a chance to enjoy the full experience of her creative endeavor, and I'm here to tell you it is VERY worth your time!

Click the cover to go to Amazon

This beautiful, glowing cover, designed by a parent in Jone's school community, offers the right amount of information. We know that it's a story about a relationship, that the characters are big kids (but not nearly-grown teens); that it's a neighborhood story, not a wilderness one; that trees and birds--are those crows?--will be important; and that all is not sunny in TILTville. Seeing the characters in silhouette, their backs to us, suggests that they are opaque in some way, unavailable in some way. Perhaps it's easy to divine all this in hindsight, but I give kudos to the illustrator and to the clarity of the writing she worked from!

I have to admit that my relationship with verse novels has been strugglesome. My instinct has been to demand that a poem in a story should still be observably, experientially a poem, and for me that requires figurative language. It can't just be musical prose chopped into shorter lines (and it definitely can't be straight-up narrative chopped into shorter lines). On top of the figurative language requirement, I somehow got the idea that each poem in a verse novel should stand on its own, appreciable as a poem even outside of its narrative arc. Happily, I've come to understand that a verse novel is a different beast, and that the metaphorical, figurative ideas can stretch across the arc of the entire work rather than being trapped in single, free-standing poems.

Jone accomplishes this artfully in TILT. By interweaving a few different concrete images or "markers" (I don't want to say symbols, because they don't necessarily stand in for something else), the basic story, which could be reduced to a tragic, rather sensational evening newsbite, becomes a story of considerable texture and emotion.

First, there's the pinball image that lends the novel its title, and serves as the anchor for main character Darrah's relationship with her dad, which, like a ball drained by too much shaking, nudging and shoving, has changed forever. Next we have the special oak tree, Garry, who has free-standing poems of his own and is the site of Darrah's important friend relationship with Lily, which also breaks and tilts at the start of the story. The crows come in as a counting rhyme and connect Darrah to her mother, grandmother, and supersitious ideas of fate, which are, just as stereotypes are based on real observations, based on real things that happen to people.

And then there's Jackson, no image, but a living, breathing daredevil mystery-boy who arrives to replace Lily just as 4th grade ends and a long sad summer looms. Jackson is my favorite character, and although Jone establishes by the 25th poem all the necessary bases for everything to come, I finished the novel loving the kid I'd come to know, yet still wondering about who Jackson was, exactly (maybe that's because we didn't get many glimpses of his family, and maybe that was intentional).

This story is full of hurt and fear and stubbornness and misunderstandings of the kind 10-12-year-olds specialize in, along with joy and courage and connection, especially in nature. It's based on events that happened to a real 2nd grader in Jone's school community who died after being mauled by dogs. Jone was wise to move the story up to 5th grade--though of course younger kids also need to read and be comforted and guided by stories in which bad things happen--but to place the story in the voice of Darrah with Jackson and Lily alongside, (after a rocky rapprochement of the two original friends), allows for a convincing and important first-person exploration of personal and community loss. You can tell Jone did a good job with that, because the family of the real Jackson attended her book launch and approved.

Finally, I appreciate the pacing of this novel in verse. It gets going fast, but like the cover, does not reveal too much too soon. It gives a lot of space to the secret Darrah keeps, and although the world is full of pain that comes in various forms and intensities, the adults in the story come through for the kids in the end, and we get to see this happen on a timeline that does not feel tidy and pat, but more like…real life.

And now I’m going to give a very big compliment that I didn’t see coming as I planned this review. Jone’s book, I realize, reminds me broadly of one of my (and possibly your) favorite books of all time: HARRIET THE SPY. Portland 10-year-olds texting on their pink Razr phones seems very far from scribbling in a notebook in 1961 Manhattan, but the complex feelings about relationships and loss are exactly the same 65 years on. I’m comforted to think that we’re not evolving as fast as it sometimes seems.

I'll leave you with one of Garry the Oak's poems:

Trying Out Things

sun
shines
ko-aw--
caa--caa--caa--
fledglings try out wings
someone climbs, hangs from my branches

Jone wrote an amazing post back at the beginning of May when TILT launched. I encourage you to go and read the letter she wrote to her characters. It's so informative about how the book came about, the time and effort that went into making it a creative work of fiction, and how personal our projects are. It's a miracle any of us can make such personal experiences into something others will relate to--or is the miracle that we will, over and over?

Thanks to Buffy Silverman for hosting us today from soggy Michigan!

do read the comments***

Greetings, Poetry People! This is my first Blogger post that will also be posted at my fledgling Substack. Find it here!  

Bit by bit I hope to shift completely over to Substack for all kinds of functionally modern reasons, with due respect to Blogger for providing *my juicy little universe* with a comfortable home for coming on 18 years. I don't have Substack set up quite as I'd like yet, but I hope you'll recognize me there and subscribe and like and share and all that. 

And now, this month's Inkling challenge, simply set by Mary Lee:

Use a recent comment on one of your posts as a line in a poem.

Great idea! I often find that I myself am leaving a Poetry Friday blog comment that, inspired by the post itself, becomes rather poetic. In fact I have a running record of such comments of my own that might become something later. But I believe Mary Lee really meant someone else's comment, so I trawled through the Comments page on the back end of Blogger.

I decided, after some internal debate, not to use this one:

JAMES MOSHER commented on "unearthing the good news"

Apr 3, 2026

My heart is so filled with joy. If you are suffering from Erectile dysfunction or any other disease you can contact Dr. Moses Buba.

🤔

But as I intentionally move into a new commentable space on the Internet, I also have to consider anew what it means to offer my poetic innards up to the public, and this one, from our friend Joyce Ray, caught my eye. 

Unknown commented on "npm poetry friday: ✒️"WE TEACH POETRY" - video conversation with Jone Rush MacCulloch, Margaret Simon & me"

Apr 19, 2026

I didn’t mean to be Anonymous. It’s Joyce Ray.

And while I was searching my blog, I came upon my post about the Faultline poetry form, which struck me as a fun thing to play with today again. And thus, "Advice from the Comment Section"

It should have that little extra piece at the bottom with the fault line, "I didn't mean to be Anonymous. It's Joyce Ray," but you see how that's a bit odd in this context.  Do you think it's okay to stick with just this? 

                                       I didn't mean to be Anonymous.

Thanks to Mona for rounding us up today at her What's New? page.  I'm late finishing  this post (still have to put it on Substack) but the light of June is now fully illuminating the pretty murky tunnel that was May and I look forward to getting around to everyone's posts!

_____________________________________________________

***FOOTNOTE

"Thou shalt not read the comments section, lest thou covet thy neighbor’s likes. Anyone who uses social media religiously knows that there’s one main rule of the Internet. Well, one main rule besides “CATS, CATS ALWAYS”. It’s to stay outta the comments section; for the love of all that is #holy, stay out of it. Luckily the ever-wise winner of our Internet challenge did the best thing you can do short of hanging a virtual sign on every comments section that says, “HERE BE MONSTERS!”; Rodrigo Leonardo Batista Ferreira (@rodrigobhz) created a design that sums up this number one commandment of the Internet, albeit swapping the stone tablet for a touchscreen one."

---a pretty good explanation of the idea that it's wiser to post without regard to everyone else's responses; take the likes and shares and don't dig too deep, from this post at Threadless where I went to make sure I understood the concept of  "Don't read the comments" correctly before I then referred to it in my post title. It's very time-consuming being a person who likes to be as factually accurate as possible all the time. Except in my actual poems, which is why writing poetry is awfully freeing, almost like an anxiety medication. 

jaw-dropping: pacific gray whales

Greetings, poetry people! I'm still not over the wonders of a trip to Oregon this past week, Number One of which was watching our younger kid graduate from Lewis and Clark College in Portland (shout-out Duncan!), and Number 3 of which was spending time with Jone Rush MacCulloch, who hosted us at her home in (yes, it is literally called) Happy Valley, OR, across the Willamette River) and getting my hands on her new book TILT. Both of these were expected wonders, and I don't think Jone will mind that I am placing her at Number Three, after the UNexpected wonder of seeing whales--at least three!-- along a favorite part of the Oregon coast, near Yachats.

I can't explain why, exploring the low tide pools full of green anemones, purple urchins and scarlet sea stars, why, watching the water boom, thump and thrash up from Thor's Well, why catching sight of--is it? could it be? YES IT IS! gray whales!--was so affecting, except that we didn't go looking for them. They were just there, doing their own thing, but honestly, appearing to wave at us now and then while cavorting, perhaps feeding, possibly with a calf!!! And when I watched with the excellent binoculars of my bird-watching son and his partner Zoë, I was just....flabbergasted at the actual size of the beast, somewhere around 40 feet and 40 tons, the ninth largest cetacean.

To go along with Tuesday's suprise, look what I just noticed at the bottom of my Windows screen!

It is Endangered Species Day, and Bing wants me to know that sperm whales are among those species.
The gray whale is also endangered, critically so until populations began to rise around 2018.

Here are a few more factoids that make us pretty certain we were seeing gray whales and not another type of creature. We kept seeing a fin pop out of the water, which was likely a pectoral fin as the whale turned on its side to feed.

"The whale feeds mainly on benthic crustaceans (such as amphipods and ghost shrimp),[107] which it eats by turning on its side and scooping up sediments from the sea floor. This unique feeding selection makes gray whales one of the most strongly reliant on coastal waters among baleen whales. It is classified as a baleen whale and has baleen, or whalebone, which acts like a sieve, to capture small sea animals, including amphipods taken in along with sand, water and other materials.


Gray whales migrate along the Oregon Coast twice a year. They head south to Baja in winter and again north to Alaska in the spring. In 2026, an estimated 13,000 gray whales are expected to make their way along the coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Spring is a great time for whale watching because the gray whale migration can be a bit closer on their return trip north, usually within a few miles from shore," Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Ranger Peter McBride said. "As we get later into the spring, we can sometimes see the mothers with calves in tow.”

North Pacific

Gray whale breaching

Gray whale spouting along shores of Yachats, Oregon 

Two Pacific Ocean populations are known to exist: one population that is very low, whose migratory route is presumed to be between the Sea of Okhotsk and southern Korea, and a larger population numbering about 27,000 individuals in the eastern Pacific, traveling between the waters off northernmost Alaska and Baja California Sur.[62] Mothers make this journey accompanied by their calves, usually hugging the shore in shallow kelp beds..."

Here's my new definito poem about the amazing wonder of being in community with another of the beings who shares our Earthly home.

____________________________________________________________

Jaw-Dropping

                    A disturbance on the surface,
unusual movement in the never-ending movement
                              of the waves---
a humped back? a fin? was that a head ahead?---
                    and just when you think you didn't see it,     a spout!
                                                                                                                   a spray!  a signal
from one of the most mega of beasts:                                 WE ARE HERE.
                    WELCOME TO OUR DAILY, WHALEY LIFE.

This is no cartoon, no blubber blue sticker of a whale
                                                                                     on your water bottle.
This is the real deal, double blowholes, dark skin marked and mottled,
                                       bubbled with barnacles, rolling around in
                                  the tub of the close ocean.              We are flabbergasted.

draft HM 2026
_____________________________________________________________

Thanks to our host Patricia at Reverie for rounding us up today, and I'll offer my review of TILT in an upcoming post!

be that as it's may

What the whirlwind?! 

May already? May FIRST already?
MAYDAY! MAYDAY! 

M'aidez! M'aidez!

The sense of urgency and emergency does not diminish, does it, my friends? and yet poetry must keep at it day by day. I'm joining the General Strike today and supporting the residents of DC at the Washington Monument in their demands for freedom from the caprices of this Administration, which is toying with lives of the 51st state like a nasty cat with a mouse.

This month the Inklings are writing to this challenge from me:

Celebrate May by writing a poem that Maykes use of the verbs may, might, could, can, ought. “These verbs are all modal verbs, which means that they are generally used in combination with other verbs, and are used to change the verb's meaning to something different from simple fact. Modals express possibility, ability, prediction, permission, and necessity.” It May be worth reading the further info here: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/modal-verbs-may-might-can-could-and-ought

This is one of those Instadrafts that I've thrown together this morning--it May change by later today. Thanks to Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for hosting today (the perfect place!); read everyone's response using the links below.

     Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

npm day 23 - poem's progress!

 

Welcome all to the Land of Poetry! Is that Mary Oliver I spy, making her way around Clifton Cliffs towards the Reef of Rich and Roethke?  I'm up today to progress the cooperative, collaborative creative challenge known as the National Poetry Month Kitlitosphere Progressive Poem.

What is the Progressive Poem? 

It began with Irene Latham, who hosted it from 2012-2019. Those archives of the poem can be found HERE! Margaret Simon took over in 2020, and those archives are HERE!

Here are the rules:

• The poem passes from blog to blog.
• Each poet/blogger adds a line.
• The poem is for children.
• Each blogger copies the previous line exactly as written, unless permission from that poet has been given. They then add their own line, offering an introduction if they wish.

I'm very grateful to all who have helped to set the stage for a poetry performance in the Land of Poetry, and to Irene and Karen who invited the speaker of this poem to step up! I love that we have combined the topographical features of this location with its birdy inhabitants, but I know that birds are not the only denizens of the Land of Poetry. So having inhaled inspiration, I am taking up the microphone with an Earth Day calling-in of All Beings--animals to start with, but I hope that others who are part of this land will be acknowledged in all their rocky, golden, watery, vibrant, sandy, living presence. Our Earth is the Poem of All Poems.

_________________________________________________________


The Land of Poetry

On my first trip to the Land of Poetry,
I saw anthologies of every color, tall as buildings.
A world of words, wonder on wings, waiting just for me!
Birding for words shimmering, flecked in golden gilding.

Binoculars ready, I toured boulevards and side streets,
exploring vibrant verses, verses so honest and tender.
feathery lyrics, bright flitting avian athletes
soaring ‘cross pages in rhythmic splendor.

In the Land of Poetry, I am the conductor,
seeking oodles of poems that tug at my heart,
a musical medley of sound and structure,
An open mic in Frost Forest! Wonder who’ll take part?

There’s a pause in the program; no one takes the stage
the trees quiver, the audience looks up. Raven lands,
singing Earth’s message of the sage.
“Poetry in motion will be forevermore, from forests to sands.”

“Scatter,” she croaked. “Beyond Wilde Pond, to each and every beach.”
Meek Dove mustered courage and sang, “Instill humanity with compassion and peace.
Let Thackeray’s middle name, from this thicket, hearts reach!”
Her gentle coo-ooo-ooos reverberate, soft as fleece.

Words dart, dimple—Do I dare warble what's in my soul?
I’ve inhaled inspiration…yes, I’ll risk my refrain.

I fly to the mic, chanting "Tadpole, mole and oriole!


_________________________________________

There you go, Mary Lee: you are invited to a poetry slam! 🌞 Follow along as the Progressive Poem makes its way toward the end of April! I believe that Tabatha is now going to close us at the end as well. Here's the list of intrepid participants.

April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone MacCulloch at Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet
​April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails

GloPoWriMo Day 22 - barefoot; boots

 

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a middle grade book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree drafts this month. 

APR 22 Jaswinder Bolina’s poem "Mood Ring" imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.

https://www.napowrimo.net/

___________________________________________

Barefoot; Boots

Inside me lives a doorway. No, not a frame of doorway–an arch of entrance. A green gateway, a clean dirt pathway that curves instantly just out of sight between the trees. It calls to me all the time, a dusty whisper singing “Come in,” sometimes “Come on,” sometimes “Come over,” even “Get over yourself,” which makes no sense to me. How can you climb over yourself? Does the path mean my shadow, maybe? I know that riddle. Maybe I should climb over my shadow and come in. Come on, leave what I can see before me and duck into this hole like an thin invitation at the edge of my vision? When I step through the doorway, the entrance, the gateway, I know then that I am large and adventurous, full of intrepid ideas for meeting the stitch of any wrinkled river, the blister of any bouldered rise of forest.

draft ©HM 2o26

GloPoWriMo Day 21 - place names

 

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a middle grade book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree drafts this month. 

APR 21 In her poem, Names and Nicknames, Monika Kumar reminisces over various nicknames she has been given, the actual name her mother gave her, and the way both names and nicknames indicate a claim and an intimacy at once. In your poem for today, we challenge you to write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place.

https://www.napowrimo.net/

____________________________________________


Place Names

The Bamboo Forest, of course–that’s what it is. But other places have more mysterious names: Grape Jelly Tunnel, 

Bailey’s Honeysuckle Fence, 

The Easter Sunrise Dogwoods, 

Nurse Billyfoot’s Bush. 

There are others who know one or two of the names, but only I know them all, 

labeled on the map of my mind. 

My Weeping Curtain Room. 

If we should find ourselves meeting more than once in the same place, a place we mark 

by its tree or bush, by our tongues or noses, by the time of day or the mood we bring, 

we’ll name it together: 

The Meeting Maple or 

Bushwhacker’s Wood, 

Beech Beach or 

The Golden Carpet.

draft ©HM 2026