#amherst
They begin as paper,
the kind meant for notes, for maps, for keeping track
of where you are.
Folded once, then again,
creased with care until grief learns a new geometry.
In the quiet of a library,
where history usually whispers from shelves,
hundreds of birds gather.
Not flying, not fleeing,
just staying together long enough
to be counted.
Each crane holds something unspeakable
without tearing.
A witness shaped small enough
to fit in the hand,
light enough to hang without falling,
patient enough to wait for company.
Maps nearby remember borders before they hardened,
rivers before they were renamed,
homes before erasure learned efficiency.
Paper knows this story.
Paper has always known.
People arrive carrying questions they cannot phrase,
and leave having folded something instead.
Grief moves from chest to fingertips,
activism from anger to action,
hope from abstraction to practice.
No bird claims the sky.
That is not their work.
Their work is accumulation,
the courage of repetition,
the quiet insistence that peace
is built by hands willing to fold again.
Feb 5
Feb 5, 2026 at 1:16 PM UTC
On a winter afternoon the town loosens its collar,
February holding its breath just long enough.
Drums arrive first,
not asking permission,
only reminding the pavement
that it has always known rhythm.
The lions come alive between storefronts,
cloth and color learning how to breathe,
eyes blinking awake to a new year
that hasn't decided what it will be yet.
They bow to doors,
to windows steamed with tea and laughter,
to cooks pausing mid-chop
to receive a blessing made of motion.
Luck moves on four legs today,
prosperity dances sideways,
joy is loud enough to echo off brick
and still gentle enough for children
holding mittens too big for their hands.
The street becomes a calendar you can walk through.
Each stop another promise,
each drumbeat stitching past and future together.
Not spectacle for tourists,
but a living practice,
carried forward because someone cared enough
to keep the steps memorized.
By the time the lions sleep again,
Amherst will feel subtly rearranged,
as if good fortune passed through
and straightened a few things
we didn't know were crooked.
Feb 5
Feb 5, 2026 at 1:03 PM UTC
I sat on the rock,
With the statue of Robert Frost,
And thought.
I laid on the stone,
With the metal cutout of Emily Dickenson,
And cried.
Jan 10, 2025
Jan 10, 2025 at 10:34 AM UTC
"A blue and gold mistake",
Wrote Emily from inside her room,
A self-inflicted tomb,
About a path she could not take,
Into the month of June.
Let others stroll beneath its cerulean sky
And thank the sward, on which they lie,
A lunging into voluptuous play,
Yet blinded to the rushing by
Of sultry month and jovial day.
Did the poet’s being kept apart
From worldly joys well-made,
Or from crystal pools and glaucous glades,
From brilliant sun that fashions shade,
Embitter her admiring heart
To look askance at anything that fades?
Did she not care that
One month, though doomed to end,
Was also made to reappear
After the long march of winter’s year
As the sun came round again,
To loose us from our unlocked pens?
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 10:46 AM UTC
I never thought it possible to ache
for a place like a person
or time
I miss the skies wider than space
I miss endless sheets of electric blue
Blanketing my every worry
Anxiety swallowed whole
Skies that left me unknown happiness
A feeling I no longer know
I miss the leaves
crunched between finger and thumb
specks of sand and muck that stain my skin
I could live with such stains for eternity
If it meant a life simple
Amongst the trees and scorching sun
I miss the sense of knowledge
knowing I had found
Where I belong
The thrill of discovery
Upon finding a missing puzzle piece
Lost long ago
I pluck it from hot tarmac
of a street walked years before
Pocketed immediately
Never again
will I let it go
I miss cricket filled nights
And days of smiles unexpected
Warmer than the air clinging to my skin
On even the most humid of summer afternoons
I long for this place
Three thousand miles away
Please save me from suburbia
Where I can't pick apart the days
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 7:30 PM UTC