In Spokane, I feel like depleted soil.

There are birds with pretty songs and birds with ugly songs. I may have an ugly song, but it’s mine, and I am going to sing it.

I’ve been walking the alleys of Walla Walla. I want to see what secrets this town is hiding, given what it puts in plain sight.

In Hiroshima, not of Hiroshima. What I mean is, there weren’t victims of Hiroshima. There were victims in Hiroshima: victims of America in Hiroshima.

People appreciate a polite rejection more than a hesitant acceptance.

The love comes through the suffering, and neither belongs to us.

Jon is in the kitchen singing Zappa’s “The Dangerous Kitchen.”

Our atrocities live in the land, and the land speaks to us of those atrocities.

Sometimes consequence takes its own sweet time.

Living with awe is not the same thing as living in ignorance.

I love us in our frailty, in our confusion, in our stumbling, in our stupidity.

I love us when we try and fail, when we do something good despite our efforts to do otherwise, when I glimpse something inside each of us that is of worth.

I love the man who carries his nineteen-year-old German Shepherd into Lake Superior each night so the dog’s arthritic joints can be supported by the water.

I love the Army Reservist holding a sign roadside for hours that says “I support gays” because he felt compelled to speak out.

I love our calls to help one another and to support one another. I love our cries for solidarity, even if solidarity is impossible.

I love us. For a long time, I was lost from that truth. Now, that truth shapes and guides my life. I love us, despite what we can be, have been, and will be. I love us because of what we can be, have been, and will be.

The deep atrocities need to be ferreted out and addressed, no doubt. But that work must be couched in love, guided by love, and informed our deep love for one another, for all living beings, and for the world we share.

Without love, the tragedy is just a tragedy. Without love, we live in hate, are guided by hate and consumed by hate. Once we lose love and cultivate hate, we are made weak, not strong, and the wrongs we seek to right will never be righted.

When I stopped knowing how to love myself, I turned to us and learned from us. What we do—what we are capable of—breaks my heart every day. At the same time, our beauty and grace astound me.

I am learning to live in service to us, not in service to myself, just as I have learned to love us when I cannot love myself. I am here for us—as voice, as witness. I am bound to us—a slack, invisible rope all that tethers “me” to and separates “me” from “us.” And that is not just as it should be but as it is.

A walk along Mill Creek this morning revealed chokeberries, elderberries, blackberries, cherries and apples.

Nothing like getting a free cremation offer in the mail.

I used to think the whole of my life was about writing. Now I know the whole of my writing is about life.

There is no self in other.

My advice to women: Worry about the size of your heart, not the size of your ass.

I was all exclamation points. He was all commas.

Having a state poet laureate is like having a politician in office who actually cares about her work and the constituents she represents.

I hate the fact that the erosion of our privacy is both embodied in and concealed by the innocuous and mildly aspirational term “sharing.” It isn’t sharing; it’s taking. We haven’t given; we’ve been taken. What we had we no longer have; we’ve been had.

Today I braid the garlic.

Gmail just suggested I change “bodhisattvas” to “bedsheets.” Really, Gmail? My sentence would have read: Bedsheets were placed on this earth, in throngs, for a reason—out of hope, desire, need and love.

I am the day.

This advice is from a wiki entry on how to take erotic photos of yourself, but it works for writing a poem as well: If you don’t like these results, try again in a different room or outfit.

I just had a phonological breakdown / emergency.

Me: I am married to you for a reason. My Husband: I don’t think that’s actually true.

These days, I always smell like sweet onions.

No matter what I wear, I always wind up looking like a soft turnip.

When a cherry fell into my bra on tonight’s glean, I probably shouldn’t have joked about having a third nipple.

I visited with eight alpaca this evening.

Let go and let good.

Today, I mistook a piece of sushi for an old philosopher.

Oh my God, I love the dirt. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I am crying because I love the dirt so much.

I frittered away the afternoon apologizing to the cows.

Here in Eastern Washington, we like our liquor and our weapons concealed.

I feel like the neighbor’s chickens are heckling me.

Normal people seem like they are from TV. — Jon Martin

Hayden smells like one part puppy, one part pineapple chunk, one part grandma, and one part cheese cracker.

My dog wants a dog. This is just like the time my robot wanted a robot.

Dogs: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning. Me: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning.

It makes me sad to think that when I die, there will be nobody left on this earth who remembers, loves and misses my father. I want to live a long life so my love for him will remain in my heart as long as possible.

Digging in the dirt turns me into an emotional, fragile weirdo.

The people in the weekend rental next door are being loud, so I am playing theremin music to drown them out.

Sometimes I am not somewhere until I am no longer there.

I can tell this day is going to be bigger than me, and that’s a good feeling.

I wake today with an awareness that we are not one country. We are many, with many hearts and minds. And some of those minds are closed, some of those hearts shut down.

We talk a lot about keeping our minds busy, but we also need to work at keeping our hearts busy.

When someone starts threatening you, you know you’re onto something that matters. Nobody makes threats unless there’s something to be lost, exposed or both.

What my new and old neighborhoods have in common: children’s laughter, kindness and love.

I found my hair twin at Walmart, which tells you a lot about my hair.

The next time I want to cast aspersions, I will cast a handful of wildflower seeds instead.

Today I am grateful for the kindness of our neighbors, the beauty of the earth and sky, and for sharing a home with a man and a dog I deeply love.

We rarely find happiness in the pursuit of what we think will make us happy.

My heart lives in the past. My mind lives in the future. It is only my soul that lives in the present.

Be the change you want to see in yourself.

You can’t replace yesterday’s lost nutrients today.

I am a delicate balance of Benadryl and caffeine.

I don’t like Walla Walla because I fit in; I like it precisely because I don’t fit in.

The challenge is to think with our hearts and feel with our minds.

If I can love one being as much as I do, imagine my capacity for loving the entire world of beings.

My first language is silence.

The greatest disappointment of my life thus far is learning that we are as isolated in our joy as we are in our sorrow.

Sometimes the kindness thing we can do for one another is remain silent.

I write poems so people I love can come with me into places and experiences I love.

There is a difference between bringing people you love along with you in a poem and trying to do so in real life. The former is improbable; the latter impossible.

Everything said publicly is now said through indirection, secretly—through gestures and nods.

Eternity isn’t something we are deluded into believing. It’s something that, over the course of our lives, we are disciplined out of believing.

The End of Times is perhaps the only way we can justify leaving something as beautiful as the earth behind. Why not shift the responsibility for that misfortune to God? We need a great story to justify such a great loss.