Behold: THINGS

photography and poetry by Tracy Engle

[poetics-tracy]

I have a website now!

Eclectic Sunlight

Poetry, Prose, and Photos

[poetics-tracy]

June is liminal, a question

suspended

in humid air. I cannot

give words to this,

but I am answered

by fireflies, gently

rising and falling

above the grass.

June days are bright

and hot, but the brightness

that means something

happens at twilight.

I listen

to a cicada chorus,

and I think: how different

summers have become, how

different I have become,

standing on my porch

in tears because I thought

fireflies were gone,

and yet, here

they are, and here I am,

and we are all somehow

alive together.

I hear my neighbors living:

squeaking porch swings,

calling out, closing doors,

and I am oddly satisfied

with unworded questions

and unworded answers.

I need nothing else

from this moment.

I breathe, and the air

tastes like recently bloomed

flowers and mowed grass.

Everything is enough.

[poetics-tracy]

April is the cruelest month,

her seeds of hope burying deepest

when the sun shines on blooming

underbrush and trees still bare

from winter. When the sky darkens

and the wind blows, those seeds take

root, stretching out below the surface.

April promises better days to come,

though I know May to be so often filled

with tragedies, and tornado sirens are

already becoming familiar again. I want

to build wings in April, to fly toward

sunrises. I want to bury my old self

in the damp earth, to cover her with moss

and wildflowers. I want to walk into a room

and think, I belong here. April whispers,

persistent as the wind: alive, alive. Each day

is different than the one before. Newness

and birdsong. I see overgrown lawns,

and I think that maybe change is possible,

that better days will come after all. I forget

the nearness of winter and the approach

of summer. I forget that we stand between

extremes, that time is becoming

an ouroboros, and soon it will be fall

and then spring again, and no amount

of weightless awe will keep sunrises

from sunsets. April is not purposely cruel,

but she is a placeholder for dreams

that will soon be forgotten.

[poetics-tracy]

This poem is now on Medium, here!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

US Book ban on LGBTQIA books

The Nationwide Book Ban Bill Moves to the House: How to Take Action Now

The nationwide book ban bill, HR 7661, has progressed out of committee and into the House. Here's what you need to know to take action.

At least hit the shiny repost button if you're going to do nothing else. This should not stand.

Stop the bill dead in its tracks. LGBTQIA people have a right to be represented in books.

[poetics-tracy]

The first day of March is a cold

breeze and sunny sky. A veil

of mourning has been lifted from

my face. I am finally able to see

again. The sound of crows forming

a murder turns my head, and I am

inconceivably light, as if I have grown

both feathers and audacity, as if I

could join the crows in celebration

of coming spring. It is not here yet,

but I am here. Winter has held me

in her frosted hands, and I survive,

as usual. I watch a crow fly away

and lean my head back to admire

white clouds and blue sky. I am not

seeing anything new, but I am seeing.

Spring is whispering my name, softly,

and she tells me to keep looking.

[poetics-tracy]

If you have a Medium account, this poem is also on there!

Crows and Blue Skies

a short poem for March

[poetics-tracy]

February starts with a stutter:

People keep talking about love,

but not the kind that we need.

Breathe into the cold air

a fog of togetherness.

Look toward the warm days -

they are coming.

[poetics-tracy]

January never feels real until the end,

when I have finally released my frozen

grip on December and accepted

that the snow on the ground belongs

to a new year. I belong to a new year

now, and the first delicate days

are already past. Like always, I wait

for a thaw, for a true renewal. I am

cocooned until spring, and that is

as it should be. I am processing who

I will be when the time comes, who

I am now, bundled up and apart

from the world. There is goodness here,

even though a longing for the past

still remains. Change is necessary,

and it always comes to me, even if I don't

emerge promptly to greet it.

[poetics-tracy]

For 2022

I've decided that it's not about

how you say goodbye to the old

year, through which you've suffered

and sacrificed and survived: it is enough

that you release it, exhale and inhale

and grieve, maybe, because time

carries us along wine dark waves,

and we can never return, should we

ever crave the safety of prior lives.

I am following through on a promise

to be gentle to myself, to ride the sea

where it takes me, to cry when I can,

to rest and rest and rest because I am

making this journey with my bones,

and I deserve my own compassion.

I think it's about how first impressions

create a narrative before any words

are spoken. I am whispering in the new

year without expectations. I am offering

hope instead of making demands.

I want this to be enough.

[poetics-tracy]

I am in the Midwest in December,

and I am eating a little orange picked

long before it was ready and not quite

ripened enough while shipped. My nails

claw at the thin rind, and I am overcome

with a desire to return home to California,

to go to the mandarin orange festival

I had never been able to attend. I want

to eat fresh fruit outside roadside stands

where I used to get a discount for being

pretty or young or kind, where I would

still pay full price because I can't handle

being perceived. When I was young,

before I became allergic, I would buy

flats of strawberries - ripe and deep red -

every summer from a boy at my favorite

farm stand. Once, when we were both

teenagers, he gave them to me for free.

Those strawberries filled my mouth

with something like adoration. Gramma

methodically sliced them into a big bowl

of sugar and let them chill into a syrup

that we would pour over my grandpa's

homemade vanilla ice cream. I would

sit silently near my grandpa on the back

porch, and we would watch humming

birds fight over a feeder. My grandpa

complains about not being able to get

Midwestern corn in California, but I can't

find good fruit in the Midwest. I can't

find the giant dragonflies or the wild lilies

or the glint of gold in a creekbed. I am

holding a badly ripened orange, and it

feels like I am in mourning for myself,

for a place I used to know.

My favorite farm stand, on the corner

of Fiddyment and Baseline, was sold years

ago. The surrounding fields are now filled

with houses I could never afford to live in.

[poetics-tracy]

December is all anticipation,

waiting for weather, for time,

for packages, for the water

to warm up, for the kettle

to boil, waiting for inevitable

nightfall. When the time comes,

I feel like I am still waiting,

holding on so tightly in the cold

my fingers are stiff and bruising,

aching long after I've let go.

There's so much coming. I can

hear bells at a distance.

I approach the darkest night

with caution. I ask it to be gentle.

I bring my own lights. Renewal

is coming, but it's a long way

down the road, and December

is trying to teach me the value

of providing my own warmth

and seeking it in others. Patience,

patience, and shelter from the wind.

[poetics-tracy]

Monterey Bay Aquarium's Deep Sea December 2025

Day 1: Snow

Bits of the world drift

into darkness, pulled down

into pressurized depths,

become food for creatures

who have never seen the world

above. Can you imagine

never knowing the sky?

Marine snow carries a taste

of the beyond: a hint of sunlight,

a whisper of shining blue

surface. Marine snow, if uneaten,

finds its way to the bottom

of everything, where hunger

still exists, where the cycle

of life can continue.

-----

I'm late to the party because it's finals week in graduate school, and I don't do actual art, but I ADORE the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so I want to participate with poetry.

@montereybayaquarium @mbari-blog

[poetics-tracy]

December is all anticipation,

waiting for weather, for time,

for packages, for the water

to warm up, for the kettle

to boil, waiting for inevitable

nightfall. When the time comes,

I feel like I am still waiting,

holding on so tightly in the cold

my fingers are stiff and bruising,

aching long after I've let go.

There's so much coming. I can

hear bells at a distance.

I approach the darkest night

with caution. I ask it to be gentle.

I bring my own lights. Renewal

is coming, but it's a long way

down the road, and December

is trying to teach me the value

of providing my own warmth

and seeking it in others. Patience,

patience, and shelter from the wind.

[poetics-tracy]

I am in the Midwest in December,

and I am eating a little orange picked

long before it was ready and not quite

ripened enough while shipped. My nails

claw at the thin rind, and I am overcome

with a desire to return home to California,

to go to the mandarin orange festival

I had never been able to attend. I want

to eat fresh fruit outside roadside stands

where I used to get a discount for being

pretty or young or kind, where I would

still pay full price because I can't handle

being perceived. When I was young,

before I became allergic, I would buy

flats of strawberries - ripe and deep red -

every summer from a boy at my favorite

farm stand. Once, when we were both

teenagers, he gave them to me for free.

Those strawberries filled my mouth

with something like adoration. Gramma

methodically sliced them into a big bowl

of sugar and let them chill into a syrup

that we would pour over my grandpa's

homemade vanilla ice cream. I would

sit silently near my grandpa on the back

porch, and we would watch humming

birds fight over a feeder. My grandpa

complains about not being able to get

Midwestern corn in California, but I can't

find good fruit in the Midwest. I can't

find the giant dragonflies or the wild lilies

or the glint of gold in a creekbed. I am

holding a badly ripened orange, and it

feels like I am in mourning for myself,

for a place I used to know.

My favorite farm stand, on the corner

of Fiddyment and Baseline, was sold years

ago. The surrounding fields are now filled

with houses I could never afford to live in.

[poetics-tracy]

The moon follows me

on my long drive home

She peeks into my windows

after I arrive. I cannot

accommodate a moon.

I ask her why she is here,

shining into my life

I have done so little

and there's nothing I can do

for her. She says, the night

is dark, and I don't want

you to feel alone

[poetics-tracy]

This November, I am thinking

about Novembers past: cold

Novembers, safe Novembers

full of food and laughter

and the knowledge that the sky

darkening does not mean

there won't ever be light again.

I yearn for that again - belief

that light will eventually overtake

the darkness, that the darkness

is a gift, the world resting

for a time so she can awaken

with vigor. I believed in renewal,

in warmth following the cold,

cold following warmth. Now

I am silently begging the leaves

to come away from the trees.

They are lingering beyond

what I've ever seen. I want

to see skeletal trees, I want

to hear the cold echoing hollow

that lets the sound of laughter

carry so far into the dark.

I must remember old Novembers

in order to remember myself.

An abyss of darkness might be

coming, but people will light

the way with candles and bulbs,

and maybe I will shine brightly, too.

[poetics-tracy]

October sings a love-song

to November. Offers up the last

leaves and blows them like kisses

at November’s gentle smile. Compromise

turns them both to wind and rain

and foggy confusion, but they are

comfortable with it - they are settling

down for winter, like plump squirrels

in naked trees, they curl together

and vanish beneath white blankets

and dark skies. Time always passes

this way, bitter sweet and quiet

clattering of leaves, seeds, change.

[poetics-tracy]

daylight lingers less as we cast

ourselves into shadow: old realms

beckon, shaking the last colors loose

and accepting them as sacrifice. red

fire burns at twilight, and we take on

the scent of wood and herbs. we ask

for warmth in cold, light in coming

darkness, health despite biting reminders

of mortality. we are visited these days

by voices that once knew us, who know

us still. we must tread carefully across

this veiled fog, or we could become trapped.

we hide our faces in a search for ourselves,

throw our voices into an already whispering

wind. change is inevitable, but we must not

vanish, absorbed by past seasons. we tend

our roots and shed our burdens and find

the strength to hold on through winter.