Last summer, when I visited a museum and saw Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Women Crossing the Fields for the first time in person, I felt a tug of recognition. It wasn’t just that I had previously seen reproductions of this work, but I felt I had seen it in life itself. It took me a […]
My favorite daily “indulgence” is not really very extravagant; I call it my faux chai tea, which is actually spiced-up green with skimmed milk to provide the latte. It’s pretty healthy and not much of a luxury, except in the sense that it is rich with memory and meaning. It feels to me as though I’m […]
In the week preceding Easter, journeys with friends reminded me of the joys of childhood’s egg hunts. On these adult expeditions, we searched for–and found–secret glories which we could have easily missed. My friend Betty and I delighted in finding the cross vine pictured below and the happy turtles pictured above at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in […]
I stood at the French door in my bedroom looking out at a spring storm early last week, the sky greenish gray, the rumble of thunder booming. I was hoping for rain–here in the Texas hill country we’re in extreme drought–but we received, instead, only rather scary wind. I watched our cedar elms thrash large […]
The Chinese new year just began, and according to the reports I read, this is the year of the wooden horse, which reminded me again of Tony Boy, the gift my parents made for me when I was a child and which I wrote about in my last post. Yesterday that was still on my […]
I’ve been quiet lately–since about Thanksgiving, actually, and have been wondering why I don’t seem to have a writing voice. It happens to writers far more prolific and skilled than I, so I haven’t worried much about it, thinking the shorter days had brought a time of gathering, of rumination. So yesterday I was a […]
i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes –E. E. Cummings Nothing in nature represents “yes” to me more than trees, and I often repeat these lines of poetry from […]
. . . We can sit still, keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore, the river, the stone call themselves by whatever they call themselves, their own sounds, their own silence, and thus may know for a moment the nearness of the world, its vastness . . . –Wendell Berry, from his poem “Words” […]
Last week a friend phoned and asked, “Do you have any time left?” At least, that’s how I heard it at first. And thought–Gee, I hope so. Then I chuckled to myself when I realized what she actually said and meant was, “Do you have any thyme left?” Her own patch had faded, and, a […]
The smell of Dove soap can evoke memories of my maternal grandmother, even though she died fifty years ago when I was in first grade. When I see a red rose bush, I think of her garden, and the taste of rainbow sherbet reminds me of her gentle kindness. Two of her former possessions grace […]
Studies in Color and Composition
Radical Retirement
A Glimpse into My Life & Passions
Joann Pensabene
Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
pursuing a life of purpose
Writing our way to awareness
Living life outside the lines
A Story Circle Network blog for and by women
A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America
Practicing Wonder 