Photo of a penny farthing bicycle, front wheel much larger than the back wheel, in front of a poster that reads at the top "In my merry Oldsmobile".

Serendipity: What happens when you’re paying attention. Serendipity: My method for finding poems for the various collections I curate. Oddity: How often someone who walks, bikes, and takes transit for the majority of her gettin’ around runs into poems about…Continue Reading

Close-up of a very weathered wooden sign post arrow pointing to the right with no words on the arrow. Above, text reads "what if the detour is the path? At bottom, credit for the image to HollieHolden.me

Still Walking, More Poetry

In talking about active transportation safety I often point out that a driver who gets out of a vehicle immediately becomes a pedestrian (as long as we’re labeling people by modes) and needs places to move along and across the…Continue Reading

Photo taken looking into the sideview mirror of a car showing a sunset against a flat horizon.

How We Get Where We’re Going: Transportation Poems

I’m beginning to think I’m editing a poetry book, what with all these poems on transportation I’m collecting. The images of being on a journey, the physical acts involved with driving or riding a motorcycle, the human relationships and interactions…Continue Reading

Photo of a path through flat, empty land with hills and pinkish clouds in the distance ahead. Text on the photo: “If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.” – Hippocrates

Walking Poems

“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” –Steven Wright Walking comes up so often in poems it’s nearly a cliché. Poems inspired by taking a walk. Poems about things noticed on a walk. Odes to walking, the original…Continue Reading

More Poems on the Bike Rack

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.” — Christopher Morley Those bicycle poems keep showing up. I rounded up a first post and within about two days spotted the next one. I don’t…Continue Reading

Not long after we moved to Olympia I discovered the town has a poet laureate program, which is simply delightful. Sady Sparks, poet laureate 2019-2020, created poetry “maps” to guide people to various locations around town where they could find…Continue Reading