It is a new month, a new season – summer is already pummeling us in Texas, and the kids are out of school. Even small transitions can make me reflective, and the news from Uvalde and Ukraine and elsewhere has me asking again how it is we are supposed to live our lives. This poem, which I first encountered through the wonderful Parker Palmer, offers ways of reflecting beyond the big transitions. How did we live our day?
Here is some of what we know about how the poet, Jeanne Lohmann, lived her days: She continued to mentor poets in her community into her 90s, opened her home as a gathering place for writers, and her poems can be found in the woods and walkways at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, WA. Her obituary opens, “She was a mother, sister, wife, poet, lover of literature, social justice, beauty and cooking!”
“What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again?”
