a cloud beneath us–
powder day brings heaven home
as flakes float our love
Seasonal Adore Disorder
peace
Color Me Home
sometimes blue linings
found high above the city
make silver feel frail
A Bright Spot
no matter how cold
this tainted world can be
he’s here to hold me
Colorful Contributions
Do refugees contribute to our society? You tell me.
This was Mohaddeseh’s FIRST oil painting. Her family had to leave a U.S.-instigated war in Afghanistan to try Iran, where they were ostracized, to Turkey, overburdened by refugees, and finally came here.
Look at this art. This art show, all the cultures and colors and beauty of the world.
This beautiful painting next to this beautiful human could be the world we live in.
Just put yourself here. There.
With us. #withrefugees
Sing, Sing a Song
my school’s world peace:
with every type of choir
my school’s world piece
Just After the Storm
on a bluebird day
my oldest learned to snowboard
by a lesson’s luck
(we three skied all day
basking in twenty degrees
of fresh powdered sun)
The Sun Will Still Rise Tomorrow
no matter how cold
my pup and i feel the sun
bringing warmth home
Christmas Cards
snail mail still brings joy
with a holiday handful
stamped for those we love
Drifters for a Day
from desert to sea
in a day’s drive through one state
(miracles exist)
rainforests between
to prove heaven lives on earth
(nature is my god)
we found our daddy
after cherry shopping; lake;
beyond evergreens
a driftwood dinner
no one could have predicted
in another life
yet here we’ll find sleep
all together in one room
at earth’s clouded edge
Views from the Road
The beauty of the road is so much more than views. It is the elevation loss and gain that sneaks up on you as quickly as the road snakes its way along the Snake River.
It is the surprise of the desert that has made its rural-America mark in southeastern Oregon.
It is the spontaneity of stopping at state parks for a peek at history and scenery so breathtaking you feel you’ve stepped into a mini Grand Canyon.
It is the trail our ancestors walked upon that you place your weary soles on now, however twisted and stolen it may be. It is still a silent beauty resting behind a sleepy Americana town, waiting for rediscovery and firsthand learning for three young women.
It is the creek sparkling in the hotter-than-expected northwestern sun, and the quick dip that makes an afternoon sparkle just as brightly.
It is the curve that moves from summit to limitless landscapes, to the expansive end of the Oregon Trail, played out in a quilt of farm fields, and the hope they held for a better life.
The road brings beauty, and within this beauty lies everything you’d expect and wouldn’t expect: children bickering, bits and pieces of trash and clothing piled up in the backseats, state lines that bear no stoppable signs, audiobooks and downloaded movies, snapshots taken from a moving vehicle, trucks that hog both lanes, treeless mountains and endless vineyards, poverty and wealth found behind fences and up on winery hilltops.
The road brings more than views of tall pines, sagebrush-only molehills, and sleepy rivers. It brings us all a new world view where we search for ourselves and find ourselves in each other. Where children find joy in only their siblings’ company, where the road promises a pool at the end of the day and a reality check about small city poverty to remind us of what we have.
Can you see it from an airplane, from a train ride, from a walk down the block?
Never quite like the views you’ll find when you hit the open road. The views of nature, of civilization… of yourself.
You just need one set of keys, a whole lot of gumption, and a pair of soul-searching eyes, and you can find yourself a whole new world view.
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