Author: Mihaela Limberea

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris
  54. Squirrel
  55. Ghosts
  56. The Spirit of Poetry
  57. Nightfall in the Tropics
  58. Journey of the Magi
  59. The City Lights
  60. January
  61. Winter Night
  62. My Heart Has Known Its Winter
  63. Things Said When He Was Gone
  64. Jabberwocky
  65. Expectancy
  66. Surrender
  67. At the Mid Hour of Night
  68. Fog Scheduled for 18th March 2025
Night sky photo with aurora borealis
Photo by Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet considered one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.


To read more poems, click here.



How to Use a Writing Journal

Notebook on a table used as a writing journal with a fireplace in the background
Photo by Rafael Leão on Unsplash

Writing is, indubitably, hard. No one can teach you, really. There are books and rules and what have you, and they can help to a certain extent. However, you have to do the work, day after day, and figure out what works for you eventually. One of the things that has helped me a lot is a writing journal.

What is a writing journal, you wonder. Nothing fancy, I assure you. Mine is simply an unassuming black notebook that I keep on my desk while writing. Every time I get an idea, get an insight, notice a problem that I need to address, or realize I need a synonym, I write it all down in my journal.

Why bother? After all, if you have an idea or learned something, it’ll be right there, in your head, where it came from. And it may be quicker to look up a synonym online, for instance.

Ha! You wish. After spending half my morning looking up better ways of saying anxious and debating the various merits of distressed, nervous, and afraid, I had a light bulb moment. This was a waste of my time. I could always do that later, while editing. Just let the writing flow, while it lasts.

As for learnings, I found that the process of writing it all down and reviewing it later made for better retention. I would simply remember it better and occasionally apply it, too. I am human, after all, and not very good at taking my own advice.

I usually review the previous day’s notes in the morning, before starting a new writing session, and would occasionally flip through pages every now and then.

Notebook on a table
Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash

These are some of the things I wrote down in my writing journal. Not world-shattering, certainly, but that made so much difference to my process. Maybe my writing has improved, or maybe not, but one thing is certain: it’s much faster.

  • End your writing session when you know exactly where you’re going. It’s going to be easier to pick up the thread the next morning. Since you know what you wanted to say, you get a quick and easy start, and then you can just go on from there, gathering steam as you go.
  • Use a printed outline of the book and the chapter you’re working on to remind you of the book and chapter structure so you always know where you are and what the focus should be. Use it as a checklist when editing.
  • Don’t break for small things, e.g., “quickly checking” something or throwing a new load of laundry in the washing machine. They derail your focus and thread of thinking. Plan your known interruptions to coincide with a natural break in your writing flow. My washing machine has a 1 ½ hour cycle, so I attend to the laundry when I’m ready for a break. 
  • Don’t compare your first draft with the finished work of established writers. All first drafts are shitty, as Anne Lamott reminded us in “Bird by Bird“. You don’t see their first draft, only the long-polished final version. 
  • Use a Slush file for text snippets that don’t fit in your WIP but are worth saving. 
  • You run out of steam after a while; learn to notice when you’re spent. There’s no point in struggling more when you’ve reached that point. Just call it a day and be satisfied with that day’s work. 
  •  Don’t write and edit, or you’ll never finish. When you write, you write. Don’t pause. Make a note, and highlight what needs to be checked or changed to know where to go and what to do later. Later is the important word. Highlight words you’ve repeated on the same page in a certain color to go back later and look up synonyms or re-write the sentence when you edit (later). Same for words that don’t feel 100%. Look for the perfect word later.

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The Kraken

  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris
  54. Squirrel
  55. Ghosts
  56. The Spirit of Poetry
  57. Nightfall in the Tropics
  58. Journey of the Magi
  59. The City Lights
  60. January
  61. Winter Night
  62. My Heart Has Known Its Winter
  63. Things Said When He Was Gone
  64. Jabberwocky
  65. Expectancy
  66. Surrender
  67. At the Mid Hour of Night
  68. Fog Scheduled for 18th March 2025
Kraken, abstract photo

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) is often considered the leading poet of the Victorian era in England.


To read more poems, click here.



It’s an Earth Song

Close up of dew on pine needles

It’s an earth song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for an earth song. 
It’s a spring song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for a spring song. 
    Strong as the shoots of a new plant 
    Strong as the bursting of new buds
    Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother’s womb. 
It’s an earth song, 
A body song, 
A spring song, 
I have been waiting long for this spring song
Langston Hughes (190267)


Happy Earth Day! There are small things we can do in our everyday life to make life on Earth better. It all starts with the small steps we take at home every day, for example, planting pollinator-friendly flowers and shrubs, planting a tree, using native plants, or stopping using chemicals in the garden. So let’s make Earth Day every day!


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It Is an Illusion That Photos Are Made With the Camera

Close up of a dark forest in black and white

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) was a French photographer considered a master of candid street photography.


To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.



A Postcard From the Volcano

  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris
  54. Squirrel
  55. Ghosts
  56. The Spirit of Poetry
  57. Nightfall in the Tropics
  58. Journey of the Magi
  59. The City Lights
  60. January
  61. Winter Night
  62. My Heart Has Known Its Winter
  63. Things Said When He Was Gone
  64. Jabberwocky
  65. Expectancy
  66. Surrender
  67. At the Mid Hour of Night
  68. Fog Scheduled for 18th March 2025

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

Above the shuttered mansion house,

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

We knew for long the mansion’s look

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is … Children,

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems

As if he that lived there left behind

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) was an American modernist poet and an extraordinary stylist.


To read more poems, click here.



We Must Not Be Defeated

Statue of St. Francis of Assisi by Frances Rich at Millesgården

There is, I hope, a thesis in my work: we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody-two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it’s just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats—maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats—but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

Maya Angelou (1928–2014), was an American poet, storyteller, and autobiographer.


To read more quotes, click here.



Youth and Age

  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris
  54. Squirrel
  55. Ghosts
  56. The Spirit of Poetry
  57. Nightfall in the Tropics
  58. Journey of the Magi
  59. The City Lights
  60. January
  61. Winter Night
  62. My Heart Has Known Its Winter
  63. Things Said When He Was Gone
  64. Jabberwocky
  65. Expectancy
  66. Surrender
  67. At the Mid Hour of Night
  68. Fog Scheduled for 18th March 2025
The statue of St. Francis of Assisi by Frances Rich at Millesgården, Lidingö, Sweden.
St. Francis of Assisi by Frances Rich at Millesgården, Lidingö, Sweden.

In my youth the heart of dawn was in my heart, and the songs of April were in my ears. 

But my soul was sad unto death, and I knew not why. Even unto this day I know not why I was sad. 

But now, though I am with eventide, my heart is still veiling dawn, 

And though I am with autumn, my ears still echo the songs of spring. 

But my sadness has turned into awe, and I stand in the presence of life and life’s daily miracles. 

The difference between my youth which was my spring, and these forty years, and they are my autumn, is the very difference that exists between flower and fruit. 

A flower is forever swayed with the wind and knows not why and wherefore. 

But the fruit overladen with them honey of summer, knows that it is one of life’s home-comings, as a poet when his song is sung knows sweet content, 

Though life has been bitter upon his lips. 

In my youth I longed for the unknown, and for the unknown I am still longing. 

But in the days of my youth longing embraced necessity that knows naught of patience. 

Today I long not less, but my longing is friendly with patience, and even waiting. 

And I know that all this desire that moves within me is one of those laws that turns universes around one another in quiet ecstasy, in swift passion which your eyes deem stillness, and your mind a mystery. 

And in my youth I loved beauty and abhorred ugliness, for beauty was to me a world separated from all other worlds. 

But now that the gracious years have lifted the veil of picking-and-choosing from over my eyes, I know that all I have deemed ugly in what I see and hear, is but a blinder upon my eyes, and wool in my ears; 

And that our senses, like our neighbors, hate what they do not understand.  

And in my youth I loved the fragrance of flowers and their color.  

Now I know that their thorns are their innocent protection, and if it were not for that innocence they would disappear forevermore. 

And in my youth, of all seasons I hated winter, for I said in my aloneness, “Winter is a thief who robs the earth of her sun-woven garment, and suffers her to stand naked in the wind.”  

But now I know that in winter there is re-birth and renewal, and that the wind tears the old raiment to cloak her with a new raiment woven by the spring.  

And in my youth I would gaze upon the sun of the day and the stars of the night, saying in my secret, “How small am I, and how small a circle my dream makes.” 

But today when I stand before the sun or the stars I cry, “The sun is close to me, and the stars are upon me;” for all the distances of my youth have turned into the nearness of age;  

And the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great, has turned into a vision that weighs not nor does it measure.  

In my youth I was but the slave of the high tide and the ebb tide of the sea, and the prisoner of half moons and full moons.  

Today I stand at this shore and I rise not nor do I go down.  

Even my roots once every twenty-eight days would seek the heart of the earth. 

And on the twenty-ninth day they would rise toward the throne of the sky.  

And on that very day the rivers in my veins would stop for a moment, and then would run again to the sea.  

Yes, in my youth I was a thing, sad and yielding, and all the seasons played with me and laughed in their hearts. 

And life took a fancy to me and kissed my young lips, and slapped my cheeks.  

Today I play with the seasons. And I steal a kiss from life’s lips ere she kisses my lips.  

And I even hold her hands playfully that she may not strike my cheek.  

In my youth I was sad indeed, and all things seemed dark and distant.  

Today, all is radiant and near, and for this I would live my youth and the pain of my youth, again and yet again.

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) was a Lebanese-American artist, philosophical essayist, poet, and novelist.


To read more poems, click here.



How To Kill Your Darlings

Close up of a red squirrel
A squirrel photo I couldn’t delete.

I take hundreds, if not thousands, of photos but keep only a handful. The selection is an exercise of self-restraint. Photos of flowers or other static subjects are easier to delete but wildlife? It’s not easy. You cannot predict whether the animals or birds would come, and if they come, what they’d do. Getting good quality and interesting photos of wildlife is challenging. So, when I finally get some images, I find it hard to delete them. (Besides, squirrels are so cute that it’s almost impossible to delete any photos!).

But this is nothing compared to deleting something I have written.

Kill your darlings.” Of course, I’ve read about it* and wholly agreed with it, especially in other writers’ works. But, oh, so hard to do in one’s own text! I loved a short story I had waved at the beginning of the chapter I was working on, and it broke my heart to delete it. But it had to be done; it was good, but it had no place in that chapter. But there’s a Band-Aid for your bruised little scribbler’s soul: create a Slush File.

A Slush File?

What’s a slush file, you ask. This is where the killed darlings go, or all seducing ideas unrelated to your current work. Don’t have the heart to delete a clever paragraph? Remove it from the text and save it in a separate document. See, you can still eat your cake and have it! Your text will thank you, and you’d still have your fabulous fragment. You may even use it another day; have a glance at your slush file a few chapters later, and you may save yourself some typing. Who knows?

Or: got a great idea for a different project? Write it down quickly and return to the project you were working on. Once you’ve finished it, visit the slush file, and pick a new project. The idea is not to go chasing new shiny things but to stay focused on whatever you were working on at the time. Get rid of that thought quickly, good as it was, and go back to work.

Close up of a red squirrel eating
Look at that mischievous look! I couldn’t delete the photo, could I?

Keep It Simple

My slush file is very straightforward: a folder called Slush (duh!) in the Scrivener document I’m currently working on, and a simple bullet point list in Apple’s Notes app for ideas and new projects, points grouped by project. Something like this:

  • End of the world story, a prepper & his cousin.
    • “Prepper John” has a so-called shack middle of nowhere, in fact, a well-stored bunker. Remote island?
    • Cousin (she), a journalist, meets him at the shack for an interview on prepping.
    • Zombies.

I keep the Notes app easily accessible on my phone’s home screen. I don’t need to search for it or open folders and files. As soon as I get one of those tempting ideas, I just write it down quickly in Notes and resume whatever I was doing at the time. 

Once I’m done with the project, I transfer the remaining Slush text fragments to a Word document called Slush. Obviously.


* About killing your darlings. The saying has been attributed to many authors, from Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner to G.K. Chesterton, Chekhov, and Stephen King. 

King leads this attribution game nowadays, very likely due to this sentence from his excellent book On Writing: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Most scholars point to British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.“If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’”, he wrote in his book On the Art of Writing.


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Happy Easter!

A red squirrel in the grass together with a chick on a red egg and the text Happy Easter!