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Music

Always Be Sunday

I love music. I love to sing it, play it, compose it. I love to write about it (as I’m doing in The Singing Stick, my novel-in-progress). Most of all, I love to listen to…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
December 7, 2021
Mindfulness

Gratitude’s No Joke

“Do you know that awesome feeling when you get into bed, fall right to sleep, stay asleep all night, and wake up feeling refreshed? … Me neither.” So goes the joke. Here’s another: “I’m neither…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
December 2, 2021
Mindfulness

The Lie That Was True

The first lie I can remember telling dates to my first day of kindergarten. The big classroom in our small-town school (long since razed) enchanted me. With a bank of tall windows along one side…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
November 18, 2021
Mindfulness

Are You Friends with Your Hands?

Nightly temperatures have been dipping into the twenties, but at our house, we’re still enjoying tomatoes, thanks to our friend Jim and the small greenhouse he rigged up in our “pandemic victory garden." Whenever I…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
November 9, 2021
Mindfulness

I See Your Golden Feathers

In the hardware store, I select a quart of interior paint from the brands on the shelf. Bright white, for household trim. “My,” the cashier says, as she rings me up, “you’re quite the golden…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
October 26, 2021
Poetry

The House That Love Builds

This week for Staying Power, I sat down to write one thing, and something totally different came out. (Surprise! Ain’t life grand?) What came out was a poem that imitates “The House That Jack Built,”…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
October 12, 2021
Mindfulness

Laughing in the Dark (Again)

Sometimes “once” just isn’t enough. Last fall, during a socially distanced writing retreat in Oakwood Lakes State Park, my friend Ruby and I took a short night hike around a wooded peninsula. Without flashlights. Without…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
October 5, 2021
Grief

Letter to the Mountain of Grief

Air-sucker. Heart-breaker. Life-wrecker. Don’t take it personally, Grief, but under our breath, or deep down inside, we sometimes call you such names. We have as many names for you as for the fallen of 9/11.…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
September 14, 2021
Poetry

Random Notes from a River Raft

After a long, strenuous hike, you happen upon a river. A crude raft is beached on the sandy shore. Tacked to it is a paper that reads: “Take me downstream.” The handwriting strangely resembles your…
Phyllis Cole-Dai
September 8, 2021