WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

birds

November 8, 2005

First Snow

A snow-bright morning. Crows, ducks, kingfishers. Glowing spots on the mountains where the sun shines through brilliant clouds. All this on a day that our leaders discuss whether or not we, Americans, will give ourselves permission to torture. Whether we will step even further from the international community. These ducks passed over the guns of… Continue reading

Current Affairs, Noticed, Photos 2005

bird flu, birds, photograph, Politics, sky, torture
April 1, 2004

A Thousand Words . . .

From Sensitive Light, a link to: . . . very touching pictures taken by Wilson Hsu. The text is in Chinese, but you won’t need any words, no metaphors, and no symbolism. Emily Dickinson said "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." These… Continue reading

Critters, Current Affairs

birds, images, photographs

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

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

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

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.

birds

First Snow

A Thousand Words . . .