Gifts of Stones

Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage of sorts to find the memorial to Rachel Pollack, a teacher and mentor with whom I had the privilege of studying mythology and poetry while at Goddard College, and then later in a few of her Tarot workshops. It was my first time choosing to visit the grave of someone I knew personally, and it was a powerful, symbolic, life-force-filled experience. 

Together with my friend Lauren, we went past a tree-shaped gate and were guided by a barred owl into the shady woods of the natural burial ground, then we followed a winding path back out into the open, grassy cemetery, where I relied on guidance from my friend Carolyn to find Rachel’s headstone.

The stone itself is shiny and black. I remember at one point, Rachel said that the color black is often seen as void, or an absence, but it can alternatively been seen as holding infinite potential. This stone is so polished that it acts as a mirror, encouraging contemplative reflection and offering surprising, unexpected images.

The Shining Woman from Rachel’s Shining Tribe Tarot dances on the headstone. From one perspective, she appears to be reaching her left hand toward the small stones on a neighboring headstone. Rachel often saw faces, animals, and other symbols in stones that she found or that were given to her. Similar to the works of Philip Pullman, her stance was that the entire world is alive and imbued with meaning.

When we arrived at the site, I knelt by the grave and touched the grass to greet the spirit of Rachel that was there along with her remaining, buried molecules of matter. On this sunny, summer afternoon the grass was so very warm, it felt extra alive. I opened my arms, turned up my face, and drank in the sunlight (for a short time before retreating to the shade of a nearby chestnut tree).

I had wanted to bring a small stone to place on the headstone, in the Jewish tradition that Rachel grew up in, but I didn’t find one that felt like the one to bring. So instead I placed my “Gift of Stones” card and left it there until the wind blew it off, as if returning it to me. I thanked Rachel for the gifts she’d given me, and it felt like the gifts reverberated and reflected each other, bouncing back and forth, seeming to go on and on.

We sat under the tree’s shade for a while and I read aloud some of my poems that Rachel influenced, including Statue of Artemis of Ephesus. When I got to the line, “your wild strength is timeless as marble,” the words took on new meaning and I felt the wisdom that Rachel embodied and shared with so many people, living on in a timeless way through all of us who remember and still speak of her.

30 Poems in November 2025

Well, I did it! I drafted 30 poems in 30 days, and I met my fundraising goal of $300+ to support free English classes at the Center for New Americans! I could not have done it without my wonderful donors, the encouragement and daily prompt emails from Nerissa Nields, and the community of other writers I felt around me as I held space each day, usually over breakfast or a sometimes with a nightcap, to collaborate with my unconscious and see what surprising word combinations we could playfully craft.

Here’s my poem from Day 23, based on A Center by Ha Jin.

As Daylight Wanes

Rise in the quiet, dark morning.

Do only what’s necessary.

If someone calls you obsessive or a flake,

Let them go on misunderstanding.

If another praises your achievements,

Don’t rest on that—but hold it close.

Only your own heart is a lasting friend.  

Stay awake in the long, dark evening.

Don’t go to bed without a song.

If you can’t imagine the sap

Coursing through the nearby maple,

Trust that as years go on and on and on,

When you become older than your mother

Ever was, the wisdom of heartwood

Will come to you in Dreams. 

Image made by Smith College student Diana M. for this fundraiser.

Who’s Who in “Black Socks and Bouquet”?

My debut poetry chapbook, Love Letters to Ghosts, was published last month! It’s available for sale via online retailers including Bookshop.org or directly from me. What I’m writing about today is the beautiful cover image, why I chose it, what I see in it. 

When I learned that my publisher, Meat for Tea, was open to writers selecting their cover art, I really wanted to use something by my friend and collaborator, Lauren Kindle. I love the vibrancy, joy, and colorful contemplation of her paintings, collages, and drawings. She even has some that depict letter-writing, either with a figure in the act of writing or with a piece of mail as an object in a still life. 

As I looked through Lauren’s online portfolio, I found many beautiful maybes. Then I saw a monotype called “Black Socks and Bouquet” and I knew it was the one. 

Two human figures, depicted gently with just a few strokes of black ink, gaze at one another across a gray distance. The person in the background has just stepped through an arched doorway. They hold an outrageously large bouquet of flowers, bright and radiant in the gloom. The foreground figure seems ready to move out of the space, with one shoulder obscured by a curtain or doorway, but she is looking over her other shoulder toward the flower-bearer as if suddenly captivated.

Who, in this picture, is the lover, and who is the beloved? Who is the letter-writer, and who is the ghost? 

What captivates me is the power of the connection between the two figures, as shown in their locked gazes and the way their bodies are turned toward one another, combined with the atmospheric magic created by the monotype method. The texture and tonality of the ink gives the image a surreal quality, while the few spots of color sing out in surprise.

I imagine that the foregrounded figure is remembering or dreaming of someone bringing her a (real or metaphorical) bunch of flowers. If that’s what’s happening, then the person with the bouquet is the “ghost” who lives in memory or imagination. But the opposite could also be true; maybe the person with the flowers is the dreamer/rememberer, and the person hovering on the edge of the frame is the ineffable one being wooed with flowers into lingering a little longer. 

Either way, I revel in the ambiguity. 

The poems in Love Letters to Ghosts make both kinds of movements. Some of them are based on sweet (or bittersweet memories) of a person who once brought me flowers and called me their beloved. Through those poems, I look back at people over my shoulder as I move into another space. 

Other poems were written to the receding “ghosts” of my younger self: the dream of becoming an astronaut or a painter, the dream of a world where it’s easy for people to get along. By writing about them I am asking them to linger a while longer, even as I know they have to leave, no matter how big a bouquet I offer them. 

A Note on the Title

My book title was influenced by the work of Carolyn Cushing, who proposes writing love letters to the dead to “keep up the loving flow,” and by Janet MacFadyen, whose poetry book Love Letters to the Wild is forthcoming in 2025 from Dos Madres Press.  

Poem of Sadness and Horror

It feels to me that hope for a ceasefire in Gaza is shrinking every day. People of conscience are still advocating for it, and I was relieved to read in the Guardian’s email newsletter this morning that “the US withheld about 3,500 bombs owing to concerns that they would fuel killing in Rafah.” I am glad for this incremental change, although it’s a tiny step in a much larger, more confounding horror.  

Recently I shared a poem about the world I’d like to see more of in the Middle East and everywhere. Today I’m sharing the other poem I wrote at the invitation of a friend who was sending them as an anti-war action to our congressperson’s office. It’s a poem of horror, sadness, mourning. It grew out of a prompt in a writing workshop to inhabit the body of a character. One of the characters I’m exploring in a new manuscript is Lot’s wife from the Old Testament. Someone else in the workshop had shared earlier an essay that meditated on salt, which gave me the idea of writing in the voice of Lot’s wife after she was turned into a pillar of salt.

You can see her on the left side of this painting, looking at the burning city. Not only is she unnamed in the story, she's not included in the title of this image or many others in which she's depicted.

De vlucht van Lot en zijn dochters uit Sodom (The flight of Lot and his daughters from Sodom)

When looking for a poem to respond to the war in Gaza, I settled on this one, with its connection to the sadly perennial acts of violence documented in the scriptures and stories of our Abrahamic religions. Posting it here feels about as useful as shouting into a thunderstorm. But, as Sharon Olds wrote about a different type of violence, “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.”  

 

When I Became Salt 

 

The god made  

in my husband’s image 

wanted to destroy the city 

in peace. He could feel me 

watching, couldn’t stand it, 

calcified my mother-grief. 

 

My caring was welcome  

in our city with its wells and 

trees, but I was pillared  

to salt for turning to witness  

the price of my family’s  

freedom. 

 

Turn me to salt if I forget. 

 

I am sister to Daphne 

the laurel tree, disobedient, 

punished by desire. Like salt we are 

essential yet dangerous, treasured  

and feared, savored 

but scorned. 

 

Some said, “It was better 

to be enslaved in Egypt ...”  

I say: It was better to sin in the city  

than to immolate daughters,  

sons, grandchildren  

in the desert. 

 

Turn me to salt if I forget.