"My Friend, Lost" (partial) from The Cortland Review
"Now the hand was still,
though he spoke in dreams, saying,
"Look for the sign."
He came back with a clatter in the kitchen,
scramble of animal behind a wall
in a room filled with the sound of cicadas,
rising and falling, immortal."
"Now the hand was still,
though he spoke in dreams, saying,
"Look for the sign."
He came back with a clatter in the kitchen,
scramble of animal behind a wall
in a room filled with the sound of cicadas,
rising and falling, immortal."
"The Gift" from Maine Arts Magazine
"Not having much, Mainers share what is intangible. One is left satisfied by the small, lovely gift of the everyday, not always wanting more, which strangely, despite the sumptuousness, often occurs at the beautiful food store. That’s what the commodity culture demands, the endless, impossible search for something better.
You come down to essence here. You lean into Maine, not vice versa. This brings humility, a great gift in a culture where self-aggrandizement is presented as an ultimate virtue. Settling in as a person and an artist requires the ability to listen and learn and for that, humility is necessary.
Before I got serious about writing, I danced around it. I obsessed. But I didn’t write. However, I walk by the river each morning. One day, waving at pickups on their way to work, I suddenly thought, in the Maine way: a plumber plumbs, a roofer roofs.
A writer writes.
"Not having much, Mainers share what is intangible. One is left satisfied by the small, lovely gift of the everyday, not always wanting more, which strangely, despite the sumptuousness, often occurs at the beautiful food store. That’s what the commodity culture demands, the endless, impossible search for something better.
You come down to essence here. You lean into Maine, not vice versa. This brings humility, a great gift in a culture where self-aggrandizement is presented as an ultimate virtue. Settling in as a person and an artist requires the ability to listen and learn and for that, humility is necessary.
Before I got serious about writing, I danced around it. I obsessed. But I didn’t write. However, I walk by the river each morning. One day, waving at pickups on their way to work, I suddenly thought, in the Maine way: a plumber plumbs, a roofer roofs.
A writer writes.
"Commonplaces" from Image Journal's "Good Letters" blog
"How is it we never notice the great bowl of sky above us? In their trucks going to work at the State, every third person smokes. Layoffs projected. The blue smoke going up through the cracked windows, making its way to the heedless clouds.” I continue to keep my commonplace book of the everyday, which, strangely, is helping me understand the memoir. The latter’s images: a church like a Byzantine jewel box in a city of thundering mills. The blood of a small boy run over by a snowplow. A Eucharistic monstrance created from the gold of melted wedding rings. The close air of old Kate’s Mohan’s tenement, her parlor’s marble-topped mahogany table. The wild Atlantic waves beating a spit of land called Galilee."
Ann contributed almost 40 literary essays to "Good Letters," a multi-blogger online blogger online platform; her subjects include art, Maine, nature, disability and work.
"How is it we never notice the great bowl of sky above us? In their trucks going to work at the State, every third person smokes. Layoffs projected. The blue smoke going up through the cracked windows, making its way to the heedless clouds.” I continue to keep my commonplace book of the everyday, which, strangely, is helping me understand the memoir. The latter’s images: a church like a Byzantine jewel box in a city of thundering mills. The blood of a small boy run over by a snowplow. A Eucharistic monstrance created from the gold of melted wedding rings. The close air of old Kate’s Mohan’s tenement, her parlor’s marble-topped mahogany table. The wild Atlantic waves beating a spit of land called Galilee."
Ann contributed almost 40 literary essays to "Good Letters," a multi-blogger online blogger online platform; her subjects include art, Maine, nature, disability and work.
"Refuge" from Commonweal
“Jack!” Gert would yell, when she got one of the AA calls. Fr. Jack came down to the kitchen from the front office to take them. They lasted a long time. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I watched my uncle’s usual reserve soften. He became animated, ending the conversation with a jolly “Buck up now and get to a meeting!”
It would be almost suppertime by then. “All right, Gert, let’s get this show on the road,” Fr. Jack would say, pushing through the swinging door to the dining room, where the curates waited.”
“Jack!” Gert would yell, when she got one of the AA calls. Fr. Jack came down to the kitchen from the front office to take them. They lasted a long time. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I watched my uncle’s usual reserve soften. He became animated, ending the conversation with a jolly “Buck up now and get to a meeting!”
It would be almost suppertime by then. “All right, Gert, let’s get this show on the road,” Fr. Jack would say, pushing through the swinging door to the dining room, where the curates waited.”
"The Rosary" from Image: "Notable" in Best Spiritual Writing
"My brothers and I walked through the remains of the factory. My brothers talking, the beating sun outside, in the silence. I opened drawers, one by one. In each, I found jewels, trays upon trays of scarlet, green, fire, diamond beads. They were not melted, but overflowed in a startling opulence.
There were thousands of them, all illicitly mine now, in this unexpected place.
"Hurry up now, Ann," Terry said, for it was late afternoon now; we were bounded in our explorations by my father's return home. It was hard to leave. Among the ruins, I believed, I had entered a form of Aladdin's cave, filled with jewels, shining in the darkness. I scooped my hands full of beads and felt the cool of the room. I knew outside was the hilly street and a quiet world.
I fingered the beads. When I tentatively touch the rosary now, I think of the burned beads glowing luminous, in the ashes. I see the ancient world of sorrow. I see my mother watching, unseeing, uncomprehending, on her deathbed, her face like the fairy tale Snow Queen watching Kay from a window. "I do not know how long Kay struggled under the northern lights to solve the Ice Puzzle of Reason, pushing the letters over the earth to form the word 'eternity,'” writes the poet Susan Prospere, "but I know as long as his heart was pierced with a fragment of evil, the work he did was useless."
"My brothers and I walked through the remains of the factory. My brothers talking, the beating sun outside, in the silence. I opened drawers, one by one. In each, I found jewels, trays upon trays of scarlet, green, fire, diamond beads. They were not melted, but overflowed in a startling opulence.
There were thousands of them, all illicitly mine now, in this unexpected place.
"Hurry up now, Ann," Terry said, for it was late afternoon now; we were bounded in our explorations by my father's return home. It was hard to leave. Among the ruins, I believed, I had entered a form of Aladdin's cave, filled with jewels, shining in the darkness. I scooped my hands full of beads and felt the cool of the room. I knew outside was the hilly street and a quiet world.
I fingered the beads. When I tentatively touch the rosary now, I think of the burned beads glowing luminous, in the ashes. I see the ancient world of sorrow. I see my mother watching, unseeing, uncomprehending, on her deathbed, her face like the fairy tale Snow Queen watching Kay from a window. "I do not know how long Kay struggled under the northern lights to solve the Ice Puzzle of Reason, pushing the letters over the earth to form the word 'eternity,'” writes the poet Susan Prospere, "but I know as long as his heart was pierced with a fragment of evil, the work he did was useless."