Category: Writing
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Full contact listening—writing about it keeps me resilient
When I was little, I was convinced the old white pine tree next to our home and the puffy clouds in the sky were telling each other the most amazing stories. I thought that if I could just figure out the right way to listen, I’d be able to hear them. Tell me. You’re so…
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Sometimes it really is all too much…and that’s OK.
I originally published this article in January of 2012, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Back then I was a life and business coach. Certainly my current work of facilitating writing workshops has me holding space for folks in a different way, but vicarious trauma can happen to anyone in any line of…
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moving with the stirring stillness
Spring is here whispering in my ear about possibilities and growing and how much she (somehow, I always think of spring as a young woman) loves waking up after a nice, long sleep. She’s so close, you know. Closer than the still monochrome landscape reveals. She loves this bit. The almost-ness of it. The yearning.…
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{poem} in which I outwit my muse
(1st thought) The last one wrung me like an old washer. Left me flapping thin and ragged on the line. Transparent. Insubstantial. Unraveling. So I’m afraid, dear blank page, that the good ones have all been written. You’ll get no more wordscapes from me. (2nd thought) Unless… That wind-swooped strand over there. If I can…
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{poem} in which a woodpecker saves me
Into the aftermath of blaring car accident near misses, thrum of impatience covered with sheepishly-offered smiles of good people pushed into temporary belligerence drops the tiniest sound full of curiosity and glee because late season goodness was found tucked into tiny gray-brown caverns in gnarled tree bark. she-tree slumbers on, roots holding fast aware she’s…
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{poem} in which my muse outwits me
it’s not always exact, this making of poems, word pictures written rhythms soundimagescapes in black and white. sometimes they just don’t gel. © 2021 Tracie Nichols
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Fourteen Years After
I watched them run into the rubble, smoke and confusion. Saw them disappear through the doors. Running in when everyone else was running out. I remember thinking, “They’re so brave. We’re so lucky to have people like that willing to help.” Then the screen filled with billows of gray-black smoke, the camera angle pulled back…
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In the Belly of the Moon
I’ve written more poems by the glow of the bathroom nightlight than have ever passed through these fingers in daylight hours. With children and a husband sleeping, my options for daytime writing—and nighttime writing without waking anyone—are limited. So, the bathroom nightlight and I are long-time writing friends. Last night my mind was yadda yadda…
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It’s not your fault…or mine.
Life flows tidally.It seems we’re always navigatingincoming or outgoing waves of change. Tracie Nichols In my just-before-sleep reading these past few nights, I’ve been settling my roots into the paradigm-shifting goodness that is Sharon Blackie’s book If Women Rose Rooted. It’s one of those books, you know? Where one reading only scratches the surface. Anyway,…
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Revenge of the muse
a poem a day. what was I thinking announcing it to the world? did enthusiasm or foolhardiness cadge control of my mouth? perhaps this is my muse declaring “Payment due.” for all those inspirations offered and declined. Daily Poem Project 2018 – day 2 © 2018 Tracie Nichols – all rights reserved image credit: Tracie…
Tracie Nichols 