What on earth made you think you can do this? And how come you can do this?

First of all, I don't have to like them.

So maybe you put a little too much pressure.

Maybe if you just picked any poem and not just poems you liked, it would have been easier.

You could be like, oh, I read that poem and yuck.

I don't know.

You could just have a real response to it.

And I feel like it kind of speaks to some of what you just said, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

[laughs] I did laugh of course because when you started, I immediately was hearing the alliance and I was like, "Nope, this is one's allegiance," and then came in the alliance, so that was always fun and, um, so sweet to, to have that.

Um, okay.

I'll start with a poem too, and this is one, uh, this is one of my favorite ones to share because, uh, I think more than for the poem itself, it's for the story that goes with the poem.

And the story that goes with it is this.

I had done this podcast and felt at the end of the podcast like I had given my everything to that podcast.

Like, I was so honest, [laughs] I was so open-hearted, and when I was done, I had what they call, like, a vulnerability hangover.

Uh-

Let's do it.

Um, this is "Today's Headline," which, um...

Well, I'll just read the poem.

"Today's Headline.

And then one day, while I read the news aloud to my husband and felt the widening hole in my heart, he raised his hand to quiet me.

I followed his gaze out the window to see in the yard a small fluffy thing with black and white eye spots on its head.

A northern pygmy owl beside our door, stout body, slightly smaller than my fist.

Exactly.

with

like, saying yes to the world as it is.

I feel like the thing in my life that I most would have liked to have said no to was the death of my son, Finn.

That was almost five years ago, August of 2021.

There was no way to say no to it, obviously.

There was no pretending it didn't happen.

One of the things that surprised me the most about the way that grief showed up, one is just how much it changes all the time.

Where do you notice love showing up for you in just ordinary moments?

And I do wonder, how do you, writing poems every day, decide, this is one for this book? You know, what happens there? How do you determine? Oh, yeah.

Well, As the years go by, the process has changed.

But for instance, my most recent book is called The Wonderment.

And that'll come out in September.

And part of what I do is I just take a lot of poems, I mean, hundreds of poems, And I go through them and I, you know, it's kind of like a beauty contest.

Like, yes, you know, you, yes, you know, uh, and you know, and then I'll actually print out quite a few, maybe a couple hundred.

And yeah.

Should

Were you able to find those, and how were you able to find those?

Oh, Eric, that's a good question.

I'll start with maybe just a report [laughs] that even the day that Finn died, even that terrible day, I laughed and fell in love with people, with Life itself.

Even in that most devastated moment, I'm not saying the very moment, but that evening, I remember walking in the Georgia night.

We were in Georgia at the time helping my parents move into their new home, and I was talking on the phone with my beautiful friend Wendy Vidlock, and it was this warm evening, and Wendy said to me, "He has given you his love light to carry." And in that moment she said that, this firefly lit up right in front of my face, and it was magic, right? It was this zing of illogical beauty.

There was no way to say how that could have happened.

It felt important, and it felt [laughs] whimsical.

[laughs]