A poet's job is to observe moments of life closely, and to examine them with intention. The materials of life are often incongruent, yet their intersections and layerings within and without our lives together—of air, sea, earth, plant and animal—create tapestries both beautiful in their terror and terrible in their beauty.  The pictures created grant us reflections: observations and perspectives, which beg us to ask questions, test our answers, converse with them and each other.

As life events accrue, we create new meanings layered onto old. What will they be? What form will our stories take? What mythologies will we make? And what, if anything, will we remember?

Let us join in observation, conversation, creation, and re-creation; memory making, understanding, untangling; and again in laughing, giving, unpicking, and reweaving.

Asking questions, sharing perspectives let us find hope and let us make joy, becoming wise together. Let us think freely and love wildly.

Lila Bakke is a writer and artist who lives on the East Coast with 4 birds and 2 cats.