Sometimes I like to open the book I’m currently reading to a random page and find a poem hidden there in the pages, peeking around the corners of other words, just waiting to be discovered. It reminds me of Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors, where he and his friends did what they called a “Bible Dip” anytime they needed scriptural guidance. They’d open the Bible and drop their finger onto the page and read the verse to see what wise answers pertained to whatever the matter at hand.
Right now, I’m reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, and I can’t stop turning the pages. It is humorous and heartwarming, and all at once I can go from one breath with tears welling and one to full laughter, the kind where you’re alone in a room in your favorite chair and you know if anyone is watching, they will think you’ve finally gone over the edge. It would pair well with Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus, and already I’m wondering whether I need a box of tissues like I did at the end of that one after I’d bonded with Octavia and found myself overcome with sorrow upon learning her fate. I can feel the faucet of tears coming on now just thinking about it, so I’m shifting gears and doing a Poetry Dip to find some words and phrases on two of Van Pelt’s pages (20-21) and weave them into a poem.
Words are funny like that. They will find you where you are and walk alongside you, knocking on your mind as you sit in thought, demanding attention. My own One Little Word for 2026 continues to salt and pepper moments as I think of all the ways I need to heed its urging and all the ways I can bring its nuances into my own writing. I’ve tried to show the onward movement in today’s poem, navigating the currents of the stages of grief.
Tentacles
tragedies ~
rawness,
despair
clustered,
soaked through
grief
~ cascaded,
etched,
blurred
into a sea
of sunshine
over the crest
Common Threads 