As a writer, poet, photographer, street-outreach advocate, and Librarian, my life is an intersection of language, words, symbols, metaphors, and story — healing and courage can emerge through naming our personal narratives and living in a world of attention and gratitude. Everything we feel and encounter becomes part of a poem.

As Annie Dillard says, “the line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years’ attention to these things, you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls; they have to stay, or everything will fall down.”

I write because I must - never have I known a time when my soul did not call out to a poem or when a poem wasn’t calling out to me. Whether experiencing our world in a very literal or poetic or surreal way, our inner world and outer world will always join in beauty and sorrow. With the regularity of breath, words and language comes pouring out of these places I find myself. Love rises grief and grief rises from love. Both find their place in my poems.

In my poems, I explore themes including nature, urban life, homelessness, identity, queerness, relationships, grief and loss, trauma, mountains & ocean, sea life, and more.

Whether you love reading poems, or you are a writer yourself, I hope we’ll find common ground through language. Thank you for stopping by to see my poems.