The subject line is from “Stebbin’s Gulch,” a poem in Mary Oliver’s Blue Horses. I read aloud all the poems in the book to my honorary mama last month, and will be reading “Owl Poem” at her memorial service in June.

(She would’ve grinned at the video at the Owl Poem link, too — especially on the day before Easter.)

She was not a simple woman, and she was so much fun. JR Solonche’s elegy for a “simple” woman at Autumn Sky is also providing pleasure to me this morning. Simplicity contains such multitudes.

The word simple for me is inextricably bound to Kentucky, where I was raised, where an arrangement of “Simple Gifts” was part of my first experience of singing in an SATB chorus, where my dad used to take guests to Shaker Village, and where public school teachers are protesting the legislature’s late-Thursday-night pension shenanigans. The system in my home county (where some of my former classmates are themselves now educators) issued a succinct yet eloquent statement about closing schools yesterday. #APensionIsAPromise