it's no one's (and everyone's) fault

Greetings all--late post to offer more detail on the Fault Line poem form that Mary Lee used in her Poetry Sisters/Arthur Sze poem today.  Over in Laura Shovan's February Poetry Project, a prompt about "What Lies Beneath?" the reminded me of a poem I wrote 2020 that kind of created itself. I don't think it exists as a known, named form (although it's similar to some you all know), so I'm trying to define it. Here's my working description:

A fault line poem contains a hidden line running beneath its surface — not in the first letters like an acrostic, or in end-words like a golden shovel, but in the fractures between words. The hidden line is built from edges rubbing together across rifts: the ending of one word, the beginning of another, or both combined. Whole words of the “landscape” poem may also be used. The result should be a smaller poem buried in the landscape poem, like a geological fault hidden beneath stable ground. Perhaps stepping close to it creates a vertiginous feeling of risk, or revelation.

The hidden line can be marked typographically (bold, italics, small caps) for those who want to show the fault line clearly as in my poem below, or left entirely concealed.

The reveal of the fault line at the end, like the haiku that ends a haibun, invites the reader to reconsider the formerly stable ground they were standing on from a new perspective.

To construct one: Begin with the line you want to hide---or don’t, and let the two intertwined pieces develop simultaneously! Either way, you’ll build the poem outward from it, choosing words whose edges, pressed together, yield the words of your hidden text in sequence. The poem must stand on its own — the fault line should be barely visible until the reader falls into it.

I'm posting the original fault line, called "Elves Chasm, Grand Canyon," and then another that I wrote, much shorter. 

On the Edge

Show me another gray day

and I’ll surrender, start scanning the 

cold, wet landscape for a way out. 

I’ll climb a bridge and stand, swaying,

trying to judge how many feet I’d fall, if I’d 

hit hard enough. Who can take any more

of this gnawing, windy winter?

How can we stand 

any more winter?

Thanks to Margaret for hosting today--I won't get around to much commenting this weekend, but I thought I oughta share!

somewhere waiting

So many of us are grateful to Susan Thomsen (and OG Poetry Fridayer) for inviting us to participate with her in responding to a poetry prompt mentioned by David Lehman in his intro to The Best American Poetry 2025: to write a short poem starting with the final line of Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: 

                                                            “I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

She's hosting today at Chicken Spaghetti and I have this to share--looking forward to all the stoppings, all the somewheres!

I stop somewhere waiting for you

It’s unclear where I've stopped
or who you’ll be, but I’m ready to settle
here, in a pool of shade or a beam of sun, 
with you.

It’s hard to know how it will happen.

You may emerge from a dressing room,
turning before the mirror in a new striped sweater,
dragging your eyes across mine, deliberate.

Or I may rush from my park bench to chase
you with the glove you just dropped.

You may stand just before me in line
to buy popcorn for the movie, the movie
we’re both seeing alone.

Or I may step into a repurposed phone booth
and dial 0, and you’ll be the stranger who picks up
in some faraway city.

I stop here, somewhere, waiting for you,
waiting to fall in love with someone

I’ve never met.

draft ©HM 2026

what if

Greetings, Poetry People. It's the third Friday of the month and thus Climate Friday here at mjlu. I think I need to write a love poem for February, a love poem to possibility, a love poem to the planet. It's kind of a poet's First Job, isn't it? And you can say that planet poems are a dime a dozen, but that doesn't make the practice or the product any less valuable, now does it? I don't think so, at least.

The Medicine

What if the thermometer itself froze solid 
and the people linked arms and sang in solidarity with the cold?

What if the mercury crossed the endline of 32*
and the crowd of birds and squirrels went wild cheering the runoff?

What if the far-north ice patches receded,
revealing the darts of forebears who shopped at the caribou market? 

What if snow fell "quietly, quietly, leaving nothing out,"
and we each found our one job and did it thoroughly, faithfully?

What if the sun shone, ceaselessly dependable,
and to a person we built a photovoltaic prayer for the future?

What if indoors the gullible daffodils bloomed
and outdoors the bulbs underground kept counting the sunrise?

What if the currents of the wind changed,
and we packed our carpet bags, put up our umbrellas and sailed

to our next appointment, where once again
through elbow grease and a spoonful of sugar we reconnected
                                            all the members of the earthly family?

Instadraft (c) HM 2026

Greeting also to the ever-artful Robyn Hood Black, who is HERE for us in so many ways, topmost as our roundup host today.  Thanks, Robyn, and to you and any others who may not know them, check out

HERE: Poems for the Planet (an anthology) and

YOU ARE HERE: Poetry in the Natural World (Ada Limon's Laureate project)

brief and to the gentle point

Merry February, everyone. There are lots of ways of giving advice: in the form of a command, by demonstration, through constant nagging or subtle suggestion, precisely with details, broadly with general encouragement. For this month's Inklings Challenge, Molly (also our host today!) offered us a prompt she found among those at Audrey Gidman's December Poetry Advent Calendar. It reads:

Write a poem after Wendell Berry’s “Like Snow” — word for word. Choose a subject: rain, a butterfly, granite, the ocean, anything. Berry’s poem is three lines long. Break down each line. In line one, replace the word “suppose” with something else: what if; in spite of; imagine etc., replace the pronoun and the verb, replace “snow” with your chosen subject. Do the same with the second and third lines. Be sure to write an epigraph that reads “after Wendell Berry."

To that Molly added advice in the form of permissions: "I'm not sure if this is easy or not, but it is short! I'd also add that you can just be inspired by this poem and not go word for word in your substitution. Or go rogue and feel free to interpret the prompt in any way that you want! Write about snow! Get inspired by another Wendell Berry poem! Or even choose a totally different prompt from the list."

And then, interestingly, Berry's poem is a kind of advisement, quite gentle; musing, even; a conjecture:

                    LIKE SNOW

Suppose we did our work

like the snow, quietly, quietly,

leaving nothing out.

            —Wendell Berry from “Leavings,” (Counterpoint, 2009)

What if indeed we did our one job, just that thoroughly, humbly, and then...were done with it? How might that change things? I found it a soothing challenge to transform Wendell's nugget of wisdom into something of my own. 

                       Like Progress

       after Wendell Berry

Suppose we flowed forward

like the path, curvingly, curvingly,

leaving straight lines by the wayside.

              draft ©HM 2026

What if indeed our progress is not fighting but flowing, is not a road but a path, is not straight and smooth but curved and not always clearly visible, and requires us to leave some of our driving behind? (Oh yeah: longanimity.) Sometimes you write the poem you yourself need without realizing it until ten days later. Also, didn't someone once say that "the personal is political"?

Furthermore, on the topics of snow and advice, here's a poem from this time last year, before I knew of Wendell's poem....

Many thank to Molly for her choice of prompt, and for hosting us today! Check out the takes of all the Inklings 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