there’s some wild stuff nearby
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Eklipsis
a ritual for the twenty-third Total Lunar Eclipse of this century © Vincent Hostak, November 7, 2022 Sit by a retaining pond which held back the flood Or, if your hand is steady raise a spoon of clear water one which carried food to your family’s lips. Sit quietly, as you would to honor one… Read more
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The Beetle or the Bellflower
A poem for Emily Dickinson on Her birthday, December 10 In late 2019/early 2020 I wrote the following poem in and around Emily Dickinson’s birthday. “For Emily Dickinson” was published to Sonder Midwest, Issue V in Spring 2020 where it was paired to a facing page featuring the powerful and innovative artwork of Leah Oates.… Read more
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Lessons Before Daybreak from Kwish-kwishee, the Steller Jay
Break from the guard you’ve fastened here
and heave all husks into the air. -
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The Callers + The Called
to bring this fragile earpiece to someone before the tide returns
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FeaturedErondades. Dittany of Crete. Varieties of Love. The view from August.
An essay & original poem from where worlds meet in August heat…and crickets are deceived by shade and call for consorts night and day.
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FeaturedThe Day After the Fourth of July, 1852. Three minute read.
There were no monuments around him. The setting could scarcely have been more modest.
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Isolation, Things Strange & Unforeseen.
Red-wing blackbirds in legions rarely seen, except at dusk, are now making their mating announcement in mid-day sun. Their beautiful cacophony can be heard throughout the valley wetland trails of south suburban Denver. The Los Angeles skyline has been the subject of photographs, like those I took from rugged Damon Runyon Park when visiting a… Read more
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A Prayer On Your Wires March 2020
It is the first day of spring. The gods have delivered inches of snow. A thin line of crocus stalks are teeming at the edge of a flagstone. Life is holding to a stationary orbit but struggling. A minister posted she would pray each morning and asked: How can I pray for you? This is… Read more
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Residence in the Common Stream in a Time of Love and Affliction (2 minute read)
I am seeing a time in the future when we will look back and say: our faiths became what they were always meant to be, our liturgies came from a shared place such that we could see no differences in their structure.
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The Night Shift: Notes from the Underground Library
Tonight I’m on the Night Shift for a another time. We gather at 8:00 p.m. in a church basement–part of network that literally operates underground and in the middle of the night.
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the wolves, the love that is
Less than a month ago, six wolves, as if conjured by the wind into Moffat County in the far and remote northwest in Colorado, have been detected by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The discovery of tracks and a wild animal carcass were followed by tests and estimates. Wolves have not been seen here for nearly… Read more
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Why the World Needs More Chicagos
It is 1 degree Fahrenheit this Sunday morning. I’ve been here in Chicago a full week for a project. A west facing window at a close relative’s house, has an ice veneer over 90% of its surface. It is not even a month past the Midwinter mark and the ground is nearly permafrost. So, why… Read more
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The Eighth Day: A Meditation for Monsey & Texas
Many of us have enjoyed weeks of the warmth of family gatherings, expressing love and hope in life and/or faith practice, and application of our deepest principles honoring humanity. It is important to remember that many members of our human family also share these feelings while they grieve at this time. Over the last weekend… Read more
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Conversation with the Night Sky
on the Solstice, December 2019 Bearing only a sliver of lightso I might know I adressedthe sky at all, I asked: Why must there be more black night?”So I may replenish the color of crow feathers,that wolves may know when to sing,that the moon might casta reflection in black waterand know that it is beautiful.Should… Read more
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Lola vs. The Wild, A Brief Vignette…or Why I May Not Shower Today
Today, I, pridefully, smell like dog. My heroine is black and white and loved all over.
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Of Squirrels & Spruces-A Midwinter Tale
Wild, Abandoned reflected on the active energy present in nature during the winter solstice. Near the eve of the Hibernal Solstice, here’s a vignette on a very near winter world & the relationships of plant and mammals. Neither of the varieties of both hibernate, it seems. In fact, there is a highly energetic relationship between… Read more
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Tilt Farther: The Hibernal Solstice is Here (Revised)
This post was revised to multiple edited posts on December 18. Here’s hoping it reads a bit leaner and humbler. “Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow” This is how poet Christina Rossetti described the natural world to our insufficient senses in “In the… Read more
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Coming Soon, Jan 2020
A tribute to the power of words and a dialogue imagined between two poets separated by a scant 95 years: Mary Oliver & Emily Dickinson.
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December 8, 1980
A Day After Story: John Lennon’s Gone. Stand By Me. I had to work December 9, 1980 at a Mall bookstore in Texas the day after most of us heard about John Lennon. It was also an exhausting week for final projects soon to screen in film school, semester five. Each night project partners would… Read more
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Where is the wild, always? Look up to the wild blue.
In the first week of December, Colorado skies have cleared completely. Cloudless after the Thanksgiving weekend storms and this morning’s sky is black as stout. Stars are widely visible, the air is crisp but not frigid. Mercury can be seen by your eyes unaided. At 35 degrees I can still stand comfortably in a long… Read more
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a tonic: shore erosion in winter
You might call it slowly destructive, but you might also see in shoreline erosion that the variable cycles of sea energy help the shore gain a kind of wisdom. The land recognizes that the ocean, although aggressive as it cracks upon the sand, is its cohort. The rock promintories take the rougher assaults, where the… Read more
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the sacred ibis: “hope is a thing with feathers”
haiku a day to midwinter | world aids day 2019 “Australian White or Sacred Ibis” by magdalena_b is licensed under CC0 1.0 haiku: the sacred ibisswiftest of glidersonce you were swimming this ponda lotus now blooms the story of the african sacred ibis It is estimated that millions of the birds were sacrificed by Egyptians… Read more
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the virtue that produces peace
a haiku a day until midwinter I woke up today knowing this exercise I assigned myself of a haiku a day until Midwinter (December 21) is going to be only about snow and ice without introducing some new variable. They aren’t all going to be gems either. I’m using the form as a piano student… Read more
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FeaturedThe Ash Tree, Thanksgiving 2019
© 2019 Vincent Hostak The trouble with gratitude is the same as its blessing. I begin by thanking the ash tree for being. Then how it looked in the rain when I was once struck by sadness or how its bark felt to the fingers of a blind friend. How it’s branches resisting its gusts… Read more
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Montparnasse, Mon Amour (revised)
There’s a place where on a weekday you can watch Parisians traverse by foot what would be about eleven US city blocks. They are on their way to the Metro, a hotel district, or the regional train station Gare de Montparnasse. They’ll avoid the main street sidewalks, crowded with tourists. They’ll move with the swiftness… Read more
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A poem. Now, let’s go to the Wildest Place: the Heart of All Souls Eve and Day
Now we honor those who slipped beyond the veil. It is my parents I’m thinking about this dimming day and a moment abstracted in a photo.
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Wild, Abandoned: 2021 