Let me find my grief, my tears, and cry awhile before I continue this comment. I just finished listening to Padraig’s conversation with Marie Howe. A long sigh, then, a joyous out breath, a bit of laughter. Thank you Padraig and Marie. Your conversation expanded my vision. Dare I say that now, at least until my fears, my demons, reassert themselves, I see everything, or at least, feel the willingness to see everything. As a man with a penis I have spent years wishing I was a woman. I was ashamed of this organ. It had a terrible reputation. What humanity has done with this penis. And to this penis. And then Marie’s poem which sings so delightfully, at least to my ears, of a much more well rounded appraisal of this organ. Surely, the penis is not to blame. It is the human mind that orchestrates such harm and damage to us all. Please, no more, blame not the penis. Our thoughts, our attitudes, so thought driven, have raped us all.
So, what do I see? Smell? Each morning now for at least a year I stand at my two living room windows, coffee in cup in hand, and recite Michael Glaser’s poem “The Presence of Trees”. At the end of the poem, recited twice for there are two windows, I glance to the left out my windows to see the actual creek, and finish the poem with the word “home”. And I am, home.
Thank you Padraig and Marie, your conversation has, at least for now, restored my sense of awe and reverence for the Word. Best, David🏮
Wow David, I am speechless to comment. Just overwhelmed by your comments about your penis and penis in general. Thank you from the bottom of my ovaries.
Well said and thank you from a fellow penis owner who shares the burden of…what? guilt maybe…for all the weight that member carries on behalf of mankind (and I mean man-kind)
I sit where I always sit to listen to you, Padraig. The room has three walls of windows, and outside the windows there are bushes where birds land, and five bird feeders - one has suet for the woodpecker. But yesterday as I stood watching the finches at the Nyjer feeder (there was a crowd, and a bit of a feeding frenzy), suddenly a great commotion with birds flying into the windows, into the branches of the bushes, none of them landing. Out of nowhere, out of somewhere. swooped a hawk, and inches from the window plucked a finch out of the air and took off. I was horrified at first, and felt some responsibility for the death of that finch. I thought maybe I should stop feeding the birds, because maybe I was handing them over to a predator that didn’t have to work hard to find food. But the fox that lives in the neighborhood has been eating the squirrels. And I recently ate some turkey soup. And what goes around comes around and someday I’ll be eaten by fire or dirt. Thank you for this listening gift on Solstice Day. My gratitude to you and to Marie Howe.
Your description of your listening and watching window brings to mind a saving grace of my childhood: a window seat in our old house where I could watch the seasons change while always feeling the sunlight or at least finding light. Thank you.
Pamela, thanks for eloquently sharing your bird care. I love to feed our birds - there are suet, three feeders of black oil sunflower seeds, and water cups filled daily. It was heartbreaking to see a sparrow hawk take one of ‘my’ finches (or sparrows - I couldn’t see clearly). That hawk was ‘passing through’ - not a regular resident. The red shouldered hawks who live here eat frogs, small snakes, lizards and mice, not birds. I love the hawks, too. Once I saw a huge black snake climb a tall, wide tree to empty a bird’s nest. I have to accept their survival too. And this would never stop me from feeding the birds - their survival rate with regular feeders is SO much greater. Bless you for splurging on Nyjer seed - sounds like you have a first class ‘Bird Buffet’ as my Dad used to call it.
Approaching the first Christmas since my beloved passed 8 months ago, the days do not seem merry and bright. Loneliness and emptiness better describe what most days are still like. I listened to the podcast Sunday morning, trying to pay attention to what I could see from my pair of windows overlooking Penobscot Bay in Maine. To the north (the left window), the sky was steadily growing more blue, which didn’t make sense, because through the right window I could see that the thick white clouds, filling all of the visible sky when the program started, were moving toward the north from the south.
Maybe it would have made more sense if I knew more about how the air streams operate in the skies beyond my line of sight, and yet what I could see also seemed to illustrate so beautifully what I was feeling. It was a visual metaphor for the confusion inherent in mourning, when in a single day I can remember moments of our lives that seem impossible to co-exist. And then, that was exactly what I could hear, too, in the conversation. I closed my eyes and started to cry when Marie said:
“Well, I feel that we don’t die. I don’t even know what I mean by that, but I just know that we don’t die. Somebody, a cynic could say, “Oh that’s the way you comfort yourself, blah, blah, blah,” but I really do believe we do not die, and that love never dies. Love never dies, love is energy, it’s eternal energy. So we never die. Love never dies, and I think that’s an extraordinary thing to know. It’s so powerful to know.”
Powerful indeed. The moment Marie repeated for the third time, “So were never die. Love never dies,” I could suddenly feel the sun come out for the first time this morning, its warm glow touching the tears on my face even though my eyes were shut. The conversation today and the poems felt like a gift that had been personalized just for me.
Our house is at the top of a hill. I stood at our bedroom window listening to the interview. As Iooked all I could see were houses, the occasional car driving past, nobody walked. Then as I carried on listening a gull soared over the roofs and I noticed it also soared over the trees and shrubs in gardens and towards the trees on the hill opposite. It also soared through the hundreds of invisible electronic conversations flying through the air around it.
I remember once someone talking about peeling layers of yourself away, like with an onion, as an exercise of self development to get to your core self. I thought to myself ‘no, just take the whole onion'
Truth be told, I went to a Poetry Unbound to listen to the podcast this morning before I read the newsletter. I felt as I always do with Marie Howe, whether reading her poetry or simply listening to her speak… She is raw and unfiltered and takes me to a place inside myself where I long for that kind of honesty. Her work feels both incredibly simple and incredibly complex at the same time, spare and full. The visual that comes up for me around her is "digging for gold". I so envy artists who are this true to themselves… Thank you for this lovely conversation.
I listened twice yesterday. The first while I was cutting vegetables for a stew I will make for friends later today. The second on my way home from a holiday gathering, the fog so thick o made a wrong turn on the well worn way home. In that dark and fog there was an intimacy to the second listening, as if you were in a small, dimly lit restaurant and I was in the next booth, eavesdropping. Her is, is, is, is, is reverberating in my own heart. Thank you for this space, for Poetry Unbound. I wish you and your team, everyone here, everyone, everywhere, (all of it, as Marie would say) peaceful holidays tinged with joy.
I have a problem with your reference: “Nadia Bolz-Weber once said that when she’s in a congregation that is reciting a creed, she doesn’t feel like she has to believe all of everything that’s said.” - I never recite a creed or a pledge in which I do not believe. Do we do recite a speech by someone but gloss over the Christian nationalism part? Or the patriarchal part? Or do we go along to get along so we can keep our ministerial standing, job, or denominational grant? I got great flack when I broached this subject 18 years ago in that same church I still serve. But we explored it together. And dropped the creedal group recitation of things like Jesus going to hell for three days and coming back. Huh? Where did that come from? Don’t ask, just recite, gloss it over, be one of the many. No thanks. -Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter
A brief nod of support to those whose holidays are not all merry and bright: The yearning for wholeness is embodied in the advent (meaning the the beginning, anticipation) of Christmas echoed in the hymn of waiting, awaiting, longing, and yearning in which we hear and may even sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here…” And so, at Christmastide, I enjoy the “tra -la-la-la-la” but I also acknowledge mourning, loneliness, and exile from which hope is birthed and from which wholeness comes. Accepting life on life’s terms in a daily discipline, no matter the day. This I believe. Peace, Dwight Lee Wolter.
What did I see? Outside, a giant open armed oak tree, that lives here in Central Florida among the palms, and has survived many hurricanes and storms, and hot humid summers, and whose arms open to welcome me and shield me in my second floor apartment. The tree is now a welcome, constant friend.
The light … there was no light at first as I began to listen, then the lightly golden rays appeared against a building in the courtyard, my favorite buttery light of the day.
Inside? My twinkling holiday lights in multiple colors.
I listened, as I often do, on a Sunday walk with my dog. Church not church. I saw the toys close to the street where those boys always play, I saw women walking home from the Catholic church, I saw the footprints of my husband and dog when they accidentally walked in still wet concrete in the dark a few summers ago. I felt the cold Colorado air (should have brought the scarf) and felt my tummy asking for breakfast.
I cried as she read, I laughed as she read. I was present as you spoke to each other. I am grateful for poetry and the sharing of it.
As hard as I try, and as much as I wish to, it becomes impossible for me not to separate (myself) humans from Nature. After listening, once my tears have dried, I can look at the sky where one cloud has formed a white leaf out of small almost pixelated puffs where a wide-winged bird is flying through. What does that bird sense within its transcendent mind, so high above mine down here, having evolved as it surely must have! I rue my association with the supreme of Earth’s (and now Space’s) Natural ruinous predators. The choreography of the lake in my view, mesmerizes me; “luminous” Marie presents the “mythology” of her life, much of which I share and understand as her contemporary—even recalling my lessons on how to properly fold and slip that letter into its envelope; so that when the receiver removed it from its sheath, it would open from the top down, instantaneously, courteously, readable — just so. The width and depth of Marie’s intuitive sight! And now, after writing these very few words, the clouds have gathered together, all leaning and facing forward to travel on their darkened grey rafts in a slow sea-parade, reminding me of my early childhood sight of clouds: The pure awe. And this, followed by the treacle resonance in Joni Mitchell’s voice as she sings about them; along with the fear I felt before the forest paradise out my window was paved to put up a parking lot. And now, here, how the mere touch of the gallinule’s beak is enough to set rings outward into the lake water surrounding around him: How Marie has set rings around all of us who have listened to and loved her ever-expanding replies to your magnificent questions . . . on this Sunday morning. Bravo Padraig!!!
Love, love, love Poetry Unbound. Thank you, Padraig and Marie. Always a feast of words from you both. Thank you for your courage to speak. In the longest night of the year, like always, you glow with love luminous and living.
With family & friends in Providence/@Brown, Melbourne/Sidney who holiday @ Bondi, a colleague living on Gibbs Street/Brookline, and dear ones living in Israel/Gaza, it's been too close for comfort.
One hell of a Chanukah week filled with murder & mourning.
No exit.
Today, I will sit at my messy kitchen table to look out the window as the Sunday sun rises. Your podcast promises to be good company, offering a balm of Gilead for a better day.
Here's to A Brighter Eighth Night, Merrier Christmas, Happier Kwanzaa & a Peaceful 2026.
Debra, yes and yes….from my verrry messy kitchen table…May Peace and Compassion move us. We cherish these moments from Padraig, Marie, Krista and team.
My country is suffering like never before in its history. It’s as if all the greed, lust for power, ugliness of colonization and genocide itself is compressed into this vile time and the evil regime that have revealed it. Lord have mercy.
Let me find my grief, my tears, and cry awhile before I continue this comment. I just finished listening to Padraig’s conversation with Marie Howe. A long sigh, then, a joyous out breath, a bit of laughter. Thank you Padraig and Marie. Your conversation expanded my vision. Dare I say that now, at least until my fears, my demons, reassert themselves, I see everything, or at least, feel the willingness to see everything. As a man with a penis I have spent years wishing I was a woman. I was ashamed of this organ. It had a terrible reputation. What humanity has done with this penis. And to this penis. And then Marie’s poem which sings so delightfully, at least to my ears, of a much more well rounded appraisal of this organ. Surely, the penis is not to blame. It is the human mind that orchestrates such harm and damage to us all. Please, no more, blame not the penis. Our thoughts, our attitudes, so thought driven, have raped us all.
So, what do I see? Smell? Each morning now for at least a year I stand at my two living room windows, coffee in cup in hand, and recite Michael Glaser’s poem “The Presence of Trees”. At the end of the poem, recited twice for there are two windows, I glance to the left out my windows to see the actual creek, and finish the poem with the word “home”. And I am, home.
Thank you Padraig and Marie, your conversation has, at least for now, restored my sense of awe and reverence for the Word. Best, David🏮
Wow David, I am speechless to comment. Just overwhelmed by your comments about your penis and penis in general. Thank you from the bottom of my ovaries.
Well said and thank you from a fellow penis owner who shares the burden of…what? guilt maybe…for all the weight that member carries on behalf of mankind (and I mean man-kind)
I sit where I always sit to listen to you, Padraig. The room has three walls of windows, and outside the windows there are bushes where birds land, and five bird feeders - one has suet for the woodpecker. But yesterday as I stood watching the finches at the Nyjer feeder (there was a crowd, and a bit of a feeding frenzy), suddenly a great commotion with birds flying into the windows, into the branches of the bushes, none of them landing. Out of nowhere, out of somewhere. swooped a hawk, and inches from the window plucked a finch out of the air and took off. I was horrified at first, and felt some responsibility for the death of that finch. I thought maybe I should stop feeding the birds, because maybe I was handing them over to a predator that didn’t have to work hard to find food. But the fox that lives in the neighborhood has been eating the squirrels. And I recently ate some turkey soup. And what goes around comes around and someday I’ll be eaten by fire or dirt. Thank you for this listening gift on Solstice Day. My gratitude to you and to Marie Howe.
Your description of your listening and watching window brings to mind a saving grace of my childhood: a window seat in our old house where I could watch the seasons change while always feeling the sunlight or at least finding light. Thank you.
Pamela you have painted a dramatic scene. I love your awareness at the end. But oh that hawk! That finch!
In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed an apple tree.
Pamela, thanks for eloquently sharing your bird care. I love to feed our birds - there are suet, three feeders of black oil sunflower seeds, and water cups filled daily. It was heartbreaking to see a sparrow hawk take one of ‘my’ finches (or sparrows - I couldn’t see clearly). That hawk was ‘passing through’ - not a regular resident. The red shouldered hawks who live here eat frogs, small snakes, lizards and mice, not birds. I love the hawks, too. Once I saw a huge black snake climb a tall, wide tree to empty a bird’s nest. I have to accept their survival too. And this would never stop me from feeding the birds - their survival rate with regular feeders is SO much greater. Bless you for splurging on Nyjer seed - sounds like you have a first class ‘Bird Buffet’ as my Dad used to call it.
Approaching the first Christmas since my beloved passed 8 months ago, the days do not seem merry and bright. Loneliness and emptiness better describe what most days are still like. I listened to the podcast Sunday morning, trying to pay attention to what I could see from my pair of windows overlooking Penobscot Bay in Maine. To the north (the left window), the sky was steadily growing more blue, which didn’t make sense, because through the right window I could see that the thick white clouds, filling all of the visible sky when the program started, were moving toward the north from the south.
Maybe it would have made more sense if I knew more about how the air streams operate in the skies beyond my line of sight, and yet what I could see also seemed to illustrate so beautifully what I was feeling. It was a visual metaphor for the confusion inherent in mourning, when in a single day I can remember moments of our lives that seem impossible to co-exist. And then, that was exactly what I could hear, too, in the conversation. I closed my eyes and started to cry when Marie said:
“Well, I feel that we don’t die. I don’t even know what I mean by that, but I just know that we don’t die. Somebody, a cynic could say, “Oh that’s the way you comfort yourself, blah, blah, blah,” but I really do believe we do not die, and that love never dies. Love never dies, love is energy, it’s eternal energy. So we never die. Love never dies, and I think that’s an extraordinary thing to know. It’s so powerful to know.”
Powerful indeed. The moment Marie repeated for the third time, “So were never die. Love never dies,” I could suddenly feel the sun come out for the first time this morning, its warm glow touching the tears on my face even though my eyes were shut. The conversation today and the poems felt like a gift that had been personalized just for me.
Oh Deborah,
From Snatnam Kaur-
May the long time sun shine upon you
All Love surround you,
And the pure light within you,
Guide your way on, guide your way on….
https://youtu.be/lZ5v_118NUc?si=i7j3x1EGDSx6ocbU
Our house is at the top of a hill. I stood at our bedroom window listening to the interview. As Iooked all I could see were houses, the occasional car driving past, nobody walked. Then as I carried on listening a gull soared over the roofs and I noticed it also soared over the trees and shrubs in gardens and towards the trees on the hill opposite. It also soared through the hundreds of invisible electronic conversations flying through the air around it.
I remember once someone talking about peeling layers of yourself away, like with an onion, as an exercise of self development to get to your core self. I thought to myself ‘no, just take the whole onion'
Truth be told, I went to a Poetry Unbound to listen to the podcast this morning before I read the newsletter. I felt as I always do with Marie Howe, whether reading her poetry or simply listening to her speak… She is raw and unfiltered and takes me to a place inside myself where I long for that kind of honesty. Her work feels both incredibly simple and incredibly complex at the same time, spare and full. The visual that comes up for me around her is "digging for gold". I so envy artists who are this true to themselves… Thank you for this lovely conversation.
Jane, you eloquently expressed my impression and feeling about Marie. Thanks for your comments!
I listened twice yesterday. The first while I was cutting vegetables for a stew I will make for friends later today. The second on my way home from a holiday gathering, the fog so thick o made a wrong turn on the well worn way home. In that dark and fog there was an intimacy to the second listening, as if you were in a small, dimly lit restaurant and I was in the next booth, eavesdropping. Her is, is, is, is, is reverberating in my own heart. Thank you for this space, for Poetry Unbound. I wish you and your team, everyone here, everyone, everywhere, (all of it, as Marie would say) peaceful holidays tinged with joy.
I have a problem with your reference: “Nadia Bolz-Weber once said that when she’s in a congregation that is reciting a creed, she doesn’t feel like she has to believe all of everything that’s said.” - I never recite a creed or a pledge in which I do not believe. Do we do recite a speech by someone but gloss over the Christian nationalism part? Or the patriarchal part? Or do we go along to get along so we can keep our ministerial standing, job, or denominational grant? I got great flack when I broached this subject 18 years ago in that same church I still serve. But we explored it together. And dropped the creedal group recitation of things like Jesus going to hell for three days and coming back. Huh? Where did that come from? Don’t ask, just recite, gloss it over, be one of the many. No thanks. -Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter
The sun again
Dec 21, 8:14 am
the rising sun is exactly
in the middle of the double hung eastern window,
Blazing over the center of the bar across the lower sash,
Illuminating the real branches
And the curtains’ embroidered leaves
As if they were on the same tree,
as if the months
had pushed back to early summer
When leaves had opened upon those branches,
and had not yet fallen off,
before Ed died
and Margo and Dan were burned out
and my husband lost
the use of his legs
and then gained the use of them again.
The poet asks
“What was the light doing?”
And the sun moves slightly to the
south,
Still low in the sky,
But will be higher tomorrow.
Elizabeth A Rodgers
December 21, 2025
This poem helps me feel the edges of existence a little bit more, thus letting me catch a deep breath. Beautiful. Thank you.
A brief nod of support to those whose holidays are not all merry and bright: The yearning for wholeness is embodied in the advent (meaning the the beginning, anticipation) of Christmas echoed in the hymn of waiting, awaiting, longing, and yearning in which we hear and may even sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here…” And so, at Christmastide, I enjoy the “tra -la-la-la-la” but I also acknowledge mourning, loneliness, and exile from which hope is birthed and from which wholeness comes. Accepting life on life’s terms in a daily discipline, no matter the day. This I believe. Peace, Dwight Lee Wolter.
What did I see? Outside, a giant open armed oak tree, that lives here in Central Florida among the palms, and has survived many hurricanes and storms, and hot humid summers, and whose arms open to welcome me and shield me in my second floor apartment. The tree is now a welcome, constant friend.
The light … there was no light at first as I began to listen, then the lightly golden rays appeared against a building in the courtyard, my favorite buttery light of the day.
Inside? My twinkling holiday lights in multiple colors.
What a show! What an episode!
Ah. I am grateful.
I listened, as I often do, on a Sunday walk with my dog. Church not church. I saw the toys close to the street where those boys always play, I saw women walking home from the Catholic church, I saw the footprints of my husband and dog when they accidentally walked in still wet concrete in the dark a few summers ago. I felt the cold Colorado air (should have brought the scarf) and felt my tummy asking for breakfast.
I cried as she read, I laughed as she read. I was present as you spoke to each other. I am grateful for poetry and the sharing of it.
As hard as I try, and as much as I wish to, it becomes impossible for me not to separate (myself) humans from Nature. After listening, once my tears have dried, I can look at the sky where one cloud has formed a white leaf out of small almost pixelated puffs where a wide-winged bird is flying through. What does that bird sense within its transcendent mind, so high above mine down here, having evolved as it surely must have! I rue my association with the supreme of Earth’s (and now Space’s) Natural ruinous predators. The choreography of the lake in my view, mesmerizes me; “luminous” Marie presents the “mythology” of her life, much of which I share and understand as her contemporary—even recalling my lessons on how to properly fold and slip that letter into its envelope; so that when the receiver removed it from its sheath, it would open from the top down, instantaneously, courteously, readable — just so. The width and depth of Marie’s intuitive sight! And now, after writing these very few words, the clouds have gathered together, all leaning and facing forward to travel on their darkened grey rafts in a slow sea-parade, reminding me of my early childhood sight of clouds: The pure awe. And this, followed by the treacle resonance in Joni Mitchell’s voice as she sings about them; along with the fear I felt before the forest paradise out my window was paved to put up a parking lot. And now, here, how the mere touch of the gallinule’s beak is enough to set rings outward into the lake water surrounding around him: How Marie has set rings around all of us who have listened to and loved her ever-expanding replies to your magnificent questions . . . on this Sunday morning. Bravo Padraig!!!
Love, love, love Poetry Unbound. Thank you, Padraig and Marie. Always a feast of words from you both. Thank you for your courage to speak. In the longest night of the year, like always, you glow with love luminous and living.
Thank you for this grounding, Padraig (& Marie).
With family & friends in Providence/@Brown, Melbourne/Sidney who holiday @ Bondi, a colleague living on Gibbs Street/Brookline, and dear ones living in Israel/Gaza, it's been too close for comfort.
One hell of a Chanukah week filled with murder & mourning.
No exit.
Today, I will sit at my messy kitchen table to look out the window as the Sunday sun rises. Your podcast promises to be good company, offering a balm of Gilead for a better day.
Here's to A Brighter Eighth Night, Merrier Christmas, Happier Kwanzaa & a Peaceful 2026.
Debra, yes and yes….from my verrry messy kitchen table…May Peace and Compassion move us. We cherish these moments from Padraig, Marie, Krista and team.
Thank you for pulling me back into myself
My country is suffering like never before in its history. It’s as if all the greed, lust for power, ugliness of colonization and genocide itself is compressed into this vile time and the evil regime that have revealed it. Lord have mercy.