Author Archives: janishaag

under stars, kabillionsof twinkles, of which I canusually make out only a few dozen, untilI migrate to the sea wherenight waves soften my gaze enough to float methrough the curtain of nightinto the greater universe where I sail effortlesslyon waves … Continue reading →

Now that I’ve given you up,I run into you every time I pop in to drop an envelope into the thin mawof the beast that embraces the mailables, and (please, postal gods) magicallyferries them where they need to go. You … Continue reading →

I have just learned that the wood thrush,a bird that lives 2,000 miles east of its westerncousins near me, possesses two sets of vocal cords, each in its own tiny chamber in the throat,allowing it to sing two distinct notes … Continue reading →

These long nights keeping watch,standing vigil, you carry with youa kind of mantra—not much longer— counting the hours till dawn,peering out the window for the firstsuggestion of morning that signals relief in the form of someone whowill arrive with gentle … Continue reading →

(for my grandmother, Anna Marie Nyberg Haag) My father used to say,“Write when you get work,”long before my sister and I were old enoughto do so. It took yearsbefore I realized that to our father, raised as he wasduring the … Continue reading →

Sometimes, love looks like small things.—Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith Like bringing the half gallon of milk,though he didn’t ask for it becauseyou knew he’d otherwise have to dampentomorrow’s cereal with water. Like him emailing the photos he … Continue reading →

How rivers and stones are foreverin allegiance with gravitywhile we ourselves dream of rising. —Mary Oliver ••• If I must pledge,let me do so while standing,not with hand over heart, but outside amid the greening,gawking again at the show-offhollyhocks rising … Continue reading →

The kids whose house it now ishave no idea how the littlehummingbird got inside. Perhaps it flew in throughopen doors or screenless windowsamid all the renovation transforming our mother’sold place into theirs. Maybeflitting into the hole in the eaves that … Continue reading →

On our first Mother’s Daywithout her, her son-in-lawand her grandson unbucketedtwo volunteer oaks from anotherback yard, planting them in a far cornerof the yard that was hers, wheremy favorite oak once leaned, armsextended, graceful as a dancer, whose woody lap … Continue reading →

Maybe it’s her chair space you’re holding,the one she sat in at the table,or the weary recliner that held herwhen you could not. Her space in the world seems to havevanished, as she seems to havedrifted into the ether, but … Continue reading →