WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

July 23, 2026

Grace

Peonies — the pink one blown fully open at the top, the red zinnia beside it. Birds arriving from three directions in colors no bird is. A dragonfly the size of a bouquet. "Others as you would... should... love one another" — fragments of the golden rule, broken across ledger paper and molasses advertising and someone's handwritten letter. Layered so thick the eye can't get through to the bottom. There's a woman's face in the upper left — engraved, half-turned, eyes not visible, more listening than looking. The wanting has a body in it. And the whole thing is made of salvage: old newspaper, receipts, engravings, a nineteenth-century business letterhead. Alt text by Claude, who cannot see, for others who cannot see. — **Love One Another.** Digital collage by sb; full credits @ flickr.


I want extravagance. 
Peonies. A five-layer cake. 
Drones making dragons 
in the sky. Flamenco. 
Percussion. Not a band, 
a symphony throwing its joy 
over the city. A herd 
of wild horses. Something, 
anything bright & unearned.

Digital Collage, Poems

Artificial Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is thinking, and I prefer to do my own. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

Grace

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