Passing Lane is another 2014 August Postcard Poem, but this one reflects a life firmly back home after my visit to Mexico, firmly into the routine of taking walks in my Hillman City/Seward Park neighborhood, learning the names of local plants (which may not be local) and diving back into the daily competition/domination exercise the locals call “freeway driving.” The last line is a reference to a line from Charles Potts.
We need to learn from Fujitaro and see the gardens that can grow from our wastelands, from the Pacific trash heap to the City of Seattle dump to the logged former forestland to the filled in estuaries of rivers like the Duwamish that make the Port of Seattle or Marshlands that make Baltimore’s inner harbor to the sprawl of LA and suburbs around all cities in this country to the merciless businesses of insurance and pharmaceuticals and lobbying and media (social, in particular) and AI and bottled water and so on.
A workshop for poets interested in making the most out of the summer Poetry Postcard Fest and the end of fest daysong, day-long writing ritual,
Writing poetry in a time of crisis, Ukraine, postcards.”War tries to destroy culture because culture sustains identity and memory. Literature is not only a victim of war, it is an instrument of survival, resistance, witnessing – and, sometimes, welcome refuge…”
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