Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: cinnamon bears Sound: thrumming; Throng!; death squeak; a sitar Smell: cinnamon bears; puppies Sight: sunlight through rain; shadows; blood drops on concrete; heart-pounding; an ornate sitar Touch: shaking shovel; impact; sharp puppy teeth Extra: "Who we are with dogs is who we are as people. Every cruelty, embrace, neglect, indulgence, shows us the measure of ourselves when no one is watching. Who would we become as a species if we try to see them anew, for their sake? We'd be an animal I would be glad to know." — Alexandra Horowitz of the Dog Cognition Lab in "Our Dogs, Ourselves" Grateful for: puppies

Some 20 years ago, I took a few whale watching tours with the Mosquito Fleet out of Everett (a perk provided by my hyper-local workplace). These tours were long, at times dull, journeys across grey waters, but on one occasion, we saw a super pod of orca. That fantastic experience made the trip. Unlike Monika Wieland Shields, the author of Endangered Orcas: The Story of the Southern Residents , and the people she writes about, I did not, after my whale experience, devote myself to whales and research. I went on about my life ashore and, largely, forgot them. I read reporting by Lynda V. Mapes of  The Seattle Times  about the orcas, watched Blackfish , and heard calls for Lower Snake River dam removal , but I was not attentive. This year, I read Flash County Diary and went to see author Darcey Steinke speak at Town Hall Seattle alongside marine biologist Dr. Deborah Giles. The topic: menopause and whales! It caught my attention. Coincidentally, weeks later, I went on a ...

Taste:  maple, coffee Sound: Coffee & Wine and Friends by Jinkx Monsoon Smell: pine Sight: hot air balloons; two lambs — one black, one white with long tails Touch: the weight of a cat; the weight of the sun Extra: "and everything is words and words and words"; How can we try to recover what we have lost?; a dream: becoming a bat, with gills Grateful for: co-workers; Pasado's Safe Haven; being under the sun; rain hibernation

Taste: sweet corn Sound: "Podling justica!"; mother's voice Smell: vanilla bean; puppy Sight: puppy hops through tall grass Touch:  fall rain Extra: lost puppies, calling a code red, lost in London at night walking in circles, walking in squares; ladies assisting a wax shop, candles, a purple door; not helping wanting to help; "What did you think, that joy/was some slight thing?" — "Visitation," Mark Doty Grateful for: poetry; grey skies; autumn

As soon as I picked up Here: Poems for the Planet, edited by Elizabeth J. Coleman and published by Copper Canyon Press , I knew I wanted to savor it, to treat every poem as treasure. Here was another slow-reading project. From May 5 to September 8, 2019, I read one poem a day. My rules were: One poem a day until the end (two poems if you forget a day). You may go back and read any poem already read. You may not read ahead. Although, peeking ahead is permitted. Here includes 128 poems divided into five sections, a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and A Guide to Activism by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, we have the capacity to protect it," writes the Dalai Lama. It's an international volume which includes a selection of poems written when the poets were between six and eighteen years old. As I read there were so many poems I reread, lines which captured my attention, and images that caugh...

Taste: baked potato with curry and chickpeas; vindaloo Sound: licking, nomming - Mary Shelley cat having breakfast; hearing voices long distance on the radio Smell: rotting apples, fermenting apples, cider Sight:  wiggles; puppets Touch: vertigo; warrior pose; her paws on my neck -- a dog hug Extra: a park, trees and floating; getting lost, a failure of navigation Grateful for: anchors and anchoring, a place in the world