Poetry Friday: Writing Group

I'm in a new writing group. I can hardly say it out loud. The last time I was in a writing group was when I was still in Haiti. By the time I left there, the members were already in several different time zones. It got too complicated to work out meetings. Now I'm meeting with someone (just two of us so far) in person, across from each other at a real wooden table instead of on Zoom. Is it real? It feels too good to be true.

We've only met once. We shared some work. Then the other group member showed me a poem she'd written in addition to her prose piece. It brought tears to my eyes. I asked to take a photo of it with my phone. She said yes, and I did. I remembered how much I love writing and being around writing, especially now that I'm teaching something different. 

I've written so little since moving here. I make myself do Birdtober and I've participated in the Poetry Month here (March), writing daily. I have a few things in my folder. But maybe I'll have more now.

Here's something I wrote in March. Like my friend's poem, it's about motherhood. Hers was better. But at least I wrote.

Bedtime


Then:
stories
songs
hugs and kisses
quiet

Now:
quiet

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Miss Rumphius has this week's roundup.

Reading Update

Book #2 of 2025 was April's Grave, by Susan Howatch. This is a novel I'd never heard of before, and I thought I had read all of Susan Howatch's work. I found it among used books donated to a Ugandan NGO. Turns out there are a few more novellas like this one, published in 1974 and out of print. You can definitely see the Howatch style at work, but this is short, unlike her usual enormously long works. 

Book #3 was Light on Snow, by Anita Shreve. This is a terribly sad, but ultimately redemptive story of a father and daughter who find an abandoned baby.

Book #4 was The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese. Set in South India, this is a sprawling story of multiple generations of a family. I found it on several end-of-year lists for 2024, and inevitably it was named as a favorite. It was so good and so absorbing that now I will definitely have to read his other book that everyone is always talking about, Cutting for Stone.

Fifteen Years

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Although it was a long time ago now, I still remember the details of that afternoon and evening, and the aftermath, with great clarity. I've written about it so much here, especially in the months I spent with my children in the US right after it happened. I couldn't stop replaying it, thinking of all the different aspects of the suffering it caused. 

Now, of course, Haiti is in a different kind of crisis. Here's RFI's article from today, commemorating the earthquake and describing the current situation.

Poetry Friday: 2025 Bird of the Year

Before 2023 I didn't know that the American Birding Association had a Bird of the Year, but they do! In 2023 it was the Belted Kingfisher and last year it was the Golden-winged Warbler. This year they have just announced that they have chosen the Common Loon. (At that link you can see the beautiful illustration that Ojibwe artist Sam Zimmerman did of it for the cover of Birding magazine.) 

The podcast I listened to about the choice and the article on the ABA website both emphasize the fact that this bird is most known for its sound. The Wikipedia article on the Common Loon includes a list of movies that used its call for maximum creepiness, including many set in places where this bird definitely does not live. (Scroll all the way down to the Popular Culture section.)

 

I chose this wonderful poem to honor the Common Loon today. I especially like these lines: "Their wails like wolves, their/ calls like an echo without origin, their/ calls like an echo of lake, or what makes lake/ lake."

Joy

by Miller Oberman

 

 

Like the time I dreamt about a loon family,

just some common loons—not metaphors

in any way, just real loons in a lake swimming

near each other so it was clear they were a set,

preferring each other’s company in the cold

still lake with its depth of reflected pines.

Here's the rest.

Kat has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Another Heron

Last February I posted about the fifteen heron species I had seen. (I've also seen five kinds of egrets, which are technically also herons, but I'm sticking with the ones with heron in their name.) Over the break from school, I saw a new one, a sixteenth: the Goliath Heron! It's the largest of all heron species, and I saw it on a boat ride on the Nile.

Here's a Galway Kinnell poem about a different kind of heron we have here in Uganda. I took his last line and used it to start my own poem about our boat ride.

The Gray Heron

It held its head still

while its body and green

legs wobbled in wide arcs

from side to side.

Click here to read about the near-mystical experience that came next.

 

 

Possibilities


Could I change into something else?
I wonder

as we sail down the Nile
and our guide Moses explains what’s in front of us
in the last week of the year

I peer at other lives through my binoculars:

Multicolored flying flowers,
the Red-throated Bee-eaters
flit back and forth

A lone elephant
eats steadily,
as it must do up to 20 hours a day
to maintain its enormous size.

Raucous laughter from
Eastern Plantain-eaters.
suggest they’re just tickled with the whole wacky world.

Fish-Eagles
survey their territory
from the top of ancient trees

Black Crakes
rush busily
through the reeds

And there’s the Goliath Heron,
enormous and solitary,
fishing patiently in the river.

Could I be one of them?
New year, new me?
Could I exchange my worries for theirs?

Moses tells us calmly
how lucky we are to see all of these creatures
as we sail back to the shore
where we actually live.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

 

Mary Lee has today's roundup. 

 

 

SJT and OLW, plus the first Reading Update of 2025

Happy New Year! Today is the first SJT (Spiritual Journey Thursday) of the year. Our host today is Margaret (thanks for hosting, Margaret!) and our topic is our OLW, or One Little Word, for 2025. 

 

 

Once again I have given my OLW a lot of thought, and once again I am sticking with the same word. This is the third year I will be using the word Feather. Here is what I wrote about this word in 2023, when it was mostly about lightness, and here are my reflections from 2024, in which I shared a poem by Matthew Brenneman that included the line "there's something to be said/For feathering a kind of heaven/On a few twigs and some frayed bits of thread,/From what she finds that she is given." In 2024 I continued gathering feathers on my birding walks and sticking them in bottles and containers in my house and on my desk at work. At this time of my life they seem appropriate decorations for my empty nest - ephemeral and fragile and yet tough as all get-out. In 2025 all those resonances of feathers will, I imagine, continue to be important to me. I still want to cultivate and collect lightness and beauty and stop taking everything so seriously all the time. But I've just been reading the book below, so here's some more of what I'm learning and thinking about: John Stott, well-known theologian and birder who died in 2011, has a chapter about the passages from the Bible in which God is compared to a female bird who is sheltering her chicks under her wings. Another picture of feathers.

This image of God's protection is a complicated one, because I always think of the people around the world who suffer so much, who are seemingly abandoned by God's lovingkindness. In Haiti, for example, over 700,000 people are internally displaced, chased from their homes by ruthless gangs. And those are the people who have survived the massacres of this past year. Oh God, extend the shelter of your feathers to these innocent victims! 

 

Book #1 of 2025 was The Birds Our Teachers by John Stott. This book appears to be out of print, so I've linked to the least expensive version I can find on Amazon. I bought my copy at a warehouse of used books in Mukono, Kampala. The books were shipped here from other countries where they were donated, and they are being sold by an NGO to fund their work. I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. Is it fanciful to imagine that some kind of providence brought it here to this city where I unexpectedly find myself? Can I believe that and at the same time hold room in my brain for people living with next to nothing on the streets or in the parks and schools and gymnasiums of another city where I found myself for 25 years? And living there not because of an earthquake, as happened in 2010, but because of their own countrymen? How can I believe that God's care for me goes as far as to send me the books I need to read exactly when I need them, and yet other people don't even have the modest places to live that they used to? I'm not sure, but I'm grateful that one of the boxes I went through looking for books for our school library had this one, and that for a few thousand shillings, I was able to bring it home.

Reading Update plus What I Read in 2024

Book #73 of the year was The Cliffs, by J. Courtney Sullivan. I really enjoyed this book about family history, inheritance, houses, alcoholism, and other things. It was quite woo-woo.

Book #74 was Counting Miracles, by Nicholas Sparks. This was my first Sparks novel, and I read it with my book group. Prior to this, I had read one of Sparks' books, but a non-fiction one, Three Weeks with My Brother (the link is to what I wrote about it at the time, in 2009). The story was a little slight (it felt as though the conflict was manufactured just to keep the plot going), and the back-story was super-traumatic (wait, I though this was just going to be a fun read!), but overall it was entertaining. Plus, our discussions are always great, no matter what we read. Looking forward to another year of reading with my book group buds!

Book #75 was The Unwedding, by Ally Condie. It was a murder mystery set at a wedding, and I do seem to have read a lot of this kind of thing this year, rather forgettable page-turners. Maybe time for a little upgrade in 2025?

Book #76 was Playground, by Richard Powers. I've never read a Richard Powers book that wasn't very much worth reading. I think maybe my favorite is still the first one I read, The Echo Maker. But this one was terrific too. It's about the ocean, AI, long friendships, and climate change. Highly recommended.

Book #77 was The Five-Star Weekend, by Elin Hilderbrand. This was my third Hilderbrand book. They are all beach-y books, but with something a bit more, making them less forgettable. This one is definitely fluffy, but I can't stop reading books about friendships.

Book #78 was in our library at school. It's out of print, and I enjoyed it a lot, so I'm including it even though it took me less than half an hour to read. It was Have You Ever Heard of a Kangaroo Bird?, by Barbara Brenner.

 

Book #79 was The Lioness, by Chris Bohjalian. This was probably not the best book to read right before going on safari. It's about an actress in the 1960s who goes on safari in Kenya, taking a collection of her favorite people. Dreadful things ensue. 

 

Book #80 was Home Front, by Kristin Hannah. Jolene flies helicopters for the National Guard, and her husband isn't supportive. He's especially not supportive when she gets deployed to Iraq. The family (which includes two kids) suffers horrendously but the book is ultimately redemptive. This was my fifth Hannah book. I think three of them were this year.

Book #81 was How to Stay Married, by Harrison Scott Key. The subtitle is "The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told," which is a lot to live up to, but it is definitely an insane love story. I really couldn't believe his wife was OK with him telling all these details, but he says she was. It's a good read.

Book #82 was Absolution, by Alice McDermott. McDermott wrote one of my all-time favorite books, That Night, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read anything else she's written. This was very good. Set mostly in Saigon, different points of view, looking back over life - just very good.

Book #83 was Chanson Douce, by Leïla Slimani. I read the English translation of this, The Perfect Nanny, back in 2019. At the time I said what I liked best about it was the setting in Paris. I'm not sure why I liked that best, since it's definitely the underside of Paris, what it's like for people who can't afford the good life. It's just a horrid story, given that the first line is: "Le bébé est mort." (The baby is dead.) It's well-written, though. 

Books #84 and 85 are ones I've read every year for a while, Savor, by Shauna Niequist and You are the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen. 

I think that's it for this year, though I'm in the middle of a couple of books, so the first update of the new year is probably coming soon. I've already mentioned in this post that I'd like to read fewer forgettable books in 2025. I did read a lot of good stuff (see below), but there were quite a few I wouldn't even know I'd read if I hadn't posted about them. I'd also like to read more paper books. Practically everything I've read this year has been on my Kindle. I like reading on my Kindle, but I'm accumulating paper books that I just never pick up. Yes, in spite of vowing not to buy more books, I have bought more than intended. It's a sickness. But I'm not ever again going to reach the enormous number of books we had in Haiti. At least, that's my resolution. 

Here's the rest of what I read this year. 

Books #1-6

Books #7-12 

Books #13-20

Books #21-26 

Books #27-32

Books #33-47 

Books #48-60

Books #61-72