Love poems for you

Sage CohenUncategorizedLeave a Comment

Happy Valentine’s Day! On a holiday that invites us to attend to love, I appreciate how the intention of a collective field can amplify whatever we are holding or healing. There are so many ways to love and be loved. Self-love. God-love. Child-love. Beloved-love. Dog-love. Nature-love. Stranger-love (but not the creepy kind!). After-love. I am sharing with you today some … Read More

You’re all I need to get by

Sage CohenUncategorized12 Comments

It happened by accident. I was walking my puppy, Bodhi. The night before, I’d put the man I love on an airplane that would take him to a new, truer life that did not include me. I’d been haunted by this song since hearing it in the movie CODA weeks before. When I noticed myself humming it nonstop, I found … Read More

What they can never steal from us

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In late September, my son’s friend Will got a supercool mountain bike for his 12th birthday. A few weeks later, a man stole it from Will as he was biking with friends. Our parent community was dumbfounded and aggrieved that an adult could inflict such suffering on a child. Will’s parents reported the loss to the police, registered with the … Read More

On being thrown out of the nest

Sage CohenUncategorized6 Comments

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” — Pema Chodron These are awake times, as Pema Chodron describes it. Fear, uncertainty, loss and grief are throwing so many of us out of the nest. So much is at stake. I want to share with you a line from Wallace … Read More

Are you procrastinating enough?

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As we face the blank page of a new year full of good intentions, I am wondering if you might set your procrastinating sights a little higher. Because, let’s face it, we all know you can do better. In fact, why not set a timer for 15 minutes each time you sit down to write—or a half-hour, even—and make sure … Read More

Where did you put the baby?

Sage CohenUncategorized2 Comments

A few years ago, I attended a family science camp at Camp Westwind over a long weekend with my son, Theo, and then-boyfriend, Mark. The small cluster of families met up in the parking lot and together took a small boat across a small body of water where we disembarked and trudged together up a sandy hill into camp. Theo … Read More

How to tell the stories you want to live by

Sage CohenUncategorized10 Comments

At my Aunt Linda’s wedding about 25 years ago, my cousin Shari gave a toast that I will never forget. It went something like this. John, Linda’s new husband, was relentlessly positive and approving of Linda. To the point that Shari suspected he was a fake. After all, how could anyone be so universally satisfied by another person? No matter … Read More

The incantatory consolation of language

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When there is nothing to be done, there is language. More specifically, says poet Gregory Orr, we can turn to “the incantatory consolation of language” to help us navigate our deepest darknesses. In his expansive conversation with On Being’s Krista Tippett about Shaping Grief with Language, Orr speaks about how lyric poetry was his path of transformation through a tragic … Read More

Resilience poetics as life practice

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Do you ever write something down, reread it, and discover something about yourself that’s been there all along? This happened to me when I revisited today’s lesson in my Write a Poem a Day class featuring Jack Gilbert’s Failing and Flying, one of my favorite poems of all time. Like Gilbert, I believe anything worth doing is worth doing badly. … Read More

You can’t get it published if you don’t send it out

Sage CohenUncategorized2 Comments

At a recent writer’s conference, I was talking to a poet who mentioned wanting to be published for the first time. “How many poems have you sent out to literary journals so far?” I asked. “None,” he replied. “How many of the poems you never submitted do you think might get published?” I countered. He was stumped for a minute, … Read More