Tag: #HumanSpeed
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A Grammar Older Than Roads
The monument is simple. Stone and cement. It holds its ground the way a place does when it has nothing to prove, like The Old-Style Place. For a moment, I was elsewhere, stepping down thirty-three wooden stairs to a Wisconsin lake where loons call. Then the veil lifted. I was back on the bluff, walking…
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The Wood Duck Drum: A Father’s Measure, A Son’s Keeping
At the cabin, the work begins with what has fallen. A lightning-struck oak, opened by time and water becomes a drum. I stand in the lake and carve, an eagle circles overhead then leaves. I keep the rhythm and circle through hand, attention, and rhythm.
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A Northwoods Practice of Stillness, Light, and Listening: When Small is Beautiful
Stories Emerge Like Bears is a forthcoming lyric memoir by Gregory Ormson, set in a Northwoods cabin where attention, labor, and place shape a life lived at human speed. Snowmelt drips from the roof. I watch long enough to feel the pace of winter loosening its grip, giving itself to spring. The water drips without…
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Prime the Pump: What a Northwoods Cabin Taught Me About Learning and Attention
To get anything from my students I had to prime the pump. They were just like the pump, squeaking and whining before finally being coaxed out of their shells to participate.
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everything was NOISE and splinters
Thanks to Brief Wilderness for publishing. Direct link https://briefwilderness.com/2025/07/19/everything-was-noise-and-splinters-by-gregory-ormson/ Growing up, everything was noise and splinters; and while I didn’t think I was fat or stupid, my mother said I was. She didn’t say it all the time, but enough that it registered. I never felt the full weight of this ridicule until I wrote…
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Rhiannon Giddens and Liberation Songs: When the Blackbird Talks to the Crow
What I’d give to sing just one song in hope-filled voice with Rhiannon Giddens. I’d heard her in Michigan when I sat on the ground; right, there, ten, feet, away — watching and listening — my mouth agape, ears drunk with the power blasting from her body, her banjo, and her SOUL as the Carolina…
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Ghosts Are Full Here as the Hungry Half Moon Rises
Thank you to PORTLAND REVIEW. Publishing Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956 And so am I, full with the imprints of time and memory. I am rich in soul, yet I’m hungry for more. It’s not a feast I want: I want what singer Sam Garrett wants, “More life, more blessings; more peace, more unity.”…
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The Black Box of America, a poem by Gregory Ormson
This poem and image was originally published November 20, 2024 by Oddball Magazine. Editors calling it “a monster piece.” The Black Box of America, a poem Few people called a spade a spadebefore the country went up in flames.-Anon No one missed that countryMen were soft, angry, and violentLife was brutal and unforgivingPretentious and vacuous…