Birdbrains in Ballard!
I’m reading with several others at It’s About Time at the Ballard library next Thursday, Sept. 10, at 6 p.m. and would love to see you there.
Wendell Berry (1934-2026)
I’ve so many posts unposted, and a million distractions…but it seems important to share a Wendell Berry poem this morning.
To Know the Dark
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.–Wendell Berry, from The Selected Poems
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/wendell-berry-dead.html
Also see Poetry Foundation, and this page at Grateful Living for a poem I’ve read dozens of times these past few years, Berry’s “Our Real Work.”
My Pilgrimage
I am away from home—away from vacuum cleaners and dirty dishes and laundry and cats-needing-fed and all things routine. Let’s not call it a “trip” (even if it is trippy), but a pilgrimage: to Amherst, Massachusetts, to hang out with Emily Dickinson. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and years, and never quite managed, until now. 
On the first leg of my journey, my dissertation advisor and Dickinson scholar, Dr. Vivian Pollak, met me in Amherst. Vivian and I spent three days exploring together—visiting not only the Emily Dickinson Museum, but also Smith College (where Vivian attended about a year behind Sylvia Plath) and Chester (where a friend of the Dickinson family and correspondent of Dickinson, Joseph Lyman, was born). I also enjoyed sampling local restaurants with Vivian and her husband.
Emily’s iconic white dress and writing desk (in corner)
Emily Dickinson’s gravestone in West Cemetery, Amherst. All photos by B. Reid.
The Mount, Lenox, MA
On day four, when the Pollaks decamped for Boston, I headed west, to Pittsfield and Lenox. My aim was to tour the Berkshire home of Edith Wharton, The Mount (heady stuff). Although Herman Melville’s Arrowhead was closed, I also visited that property, walking around the house and grounds and trails, catching a view of Mt. Greylock, which is said to have played a role in the creation of Moby Dick (written at Arrowhead in “the bitter winter of 1850-1851.”)
Now I am back in Amherst, staying at a historic bed and breakfast and immersed in what I am defining as the writing-retreat phase of my pilgrimage. Thanks to Vivian, I had an hour alone in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, scribbling (with a pencil—no ink allowed!) madly. On the 11th, I have a two-hour group session in the same locale.
Today I am at Mt. Holyoke College, visiting their special collections. On Monday, I have an appointment to visit Amherst College’s Dickinson holdings.
I carted along a number of books, and thought I would catch up with blog-reviews on this trip, but some sort of magic seems to be underway and I find myself hard at work (or at play) with my own manuscript, making discoveries, figuring out what my new book of poems is about.
Thank you, spirit of Emily Dickinson.
I’ve done some exploring around Amherst, too, discovering that a number of writers have called Amherst home (including Robert Frost, who taught at Amherst College). I’ve also visited the Eric Carle Children’s Picture Book Museum (oh my!). And, on one of my long rambles, discovered a mill pond and a water fall, completely unexpected and magical. Like the whole trip. 
I think this blog post has come out all a jumble, with the photos not staying where I placed them. But I’m exhausted! Thank you, for listening. Enjoy the photos!
You can explore Emily Dickinson’s home virtually at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/
To learn about Edith Wharton’s The Mount, hop over to this link: https://edithwharton.org/.
Herman Melville’s Arrowhead is included here: https://berkshirehistory.org/.
Terri Cohlene’s A CONSPIRACY OF BLACKBIRDS
A CONSPIRACY OF BLACKBIRDS, Terri Cohlene, MoonPath Press 2026.
I want to describe Terri Cohlene’s long overdue debut poetry collection, A Conspiracy of Blackbirds, as a hodge-podge, but only if you understand hodge-podge as that strange little store crammed with ancient washing machines, pitchforks, maybe a statue of Cupid or a wrought iron hen with her clutch of chicks, maybe a bag full of unexpected gems. In this collection of poems, you never know what you’ll find, and you’re sure to find exactly what you need.
Cohlene’s subjects include old photographs, old work boots, mothers, daughters, MS, bronzed baby shoes from decades 
back, lost checkbooks…I could go on. As Patrick Dixon describes it: A Conspiracy of Blackbirds is “a book of surprises.” Somehow—how does she do it?—it all comes together, even the hard stuff transforming into occasions for delight. In “Finally, I Become What You Always Wanted,” addressed to the poet’s mother, we find these instructions: “Cut me open, / count the rings.” One expects such a poem to end with scars, instead—apple blossoms.
Remind me to make a copy of “On the Table” for my massage therapist. It’s a list of all the places old hurts have secreted themselves (an ex-husband, a third-grade teacher, a bully…), and ends:
Then there’s my estranged
mother, lodged like a lizard
around my sternum—
a reminder of why bones
are needed to protect the heart.
On the back cover, poet Sandra Yannone offers the perfect precis: “A Conspiracy of Blackbirds chronicles how one woman breaks free from a multi-generational cycle of abandonments to reach for the sky in a transformative murmuration of stunning flight.” Exactly so. Cohlene—an artist, children’s book writer, playwright, and more—offers a a map to the healing and sustaining power of art. These are poems that do not merely show their maker to be surviving, but with her sense of playfulness and capacity for wonder fully alive.
Tailor
If I put my mind to it,
all my poems could fit into a thimble.They are, after all, merely the alphabet,
randomly stitched together
in repeating patterns.And if I choose a font
small enough, say .05,
they would probably
slip through the eye
of a needlewith the dangle of trim,
casual embellishment
of button, bead, fringewaiting there to be discovered
by the occasional
unsuspecting elf.—Terri Cohlene
Visit Terri Cohlene’s website to learn (much) more, and to purchase her book. You can also find her book at MoonPath Press, and on bookshop.org.
photo by Bethany Reid