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Eric Colburn

@etherealcolburn.bsky.social
217 followers 82 following 954 posts

Parent, partner, poet, pedestrian (Pedestrian poet? Perhaps…) www.ericcolburn.net

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Reposted by Eric Colburn
alex guenther @guentheralex.bsky.social · 15h
young fool, i trudged around the lake in love with autumn's feigning death; how bitterly i miss the breath i threw away for feigning's sake. #poetry
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Just went to a meet and greet in the French town I'm spending a couple of months in, and the folks I was chatting with started talking about "le parking" and "pistes cyclables." I felt at home, except that these older folks seemed bummed that the bike lanes weren't happening faster--like in Paris.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The twlight darkens, the curlew calls… theconversation.com/slender-bill...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Happy to have a sonnet up at pfpoi, along with a bunch of other good poets. Check out the whole issue: pfpoi.blogspot.com/p/september-.... My sonnet:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It’s true ; Paris is indeed a world-class biking city. There are *tons* of bikes, and much of the space newly dedicated to bikes (along the Seine especially) is amazing. I lived here 30 years ago and never once rode a bike; back for 1 day so far, I can’t imagine getting around any other way.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
When my daughter and @guentheralex.bsky.social’s in-laws agree, you know something big is happening.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
My amazing daughter wrote about the data center pushback at Common Dreams: www.commondreams.org/opinion/hope...
commondreams.org
Finding Hope in Community Pushback Against Data Centers | Common Dreams
​Despite billions of dollars put into trying to change individuals' opinions to fit the needs of corporations, people continue to hold onto values of health, well-being, community, mutual aid, and dem...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Halfway through @luaz.bsky.social ‘s excellent book, Mapless, which is a treasure trove of wisdom and whimsy. Here’s a poem I really enjoyed:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
My son is starting law school this week, planning to try to help people and make the world a better place, and I am very proud of him!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Looked at my step count. Doing okay; hoping to up it this sabbatical year…
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
From Camille Dungy’s new book, America, a Love Story:
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Reposted by Eric Colburn
David Rosenthal @davidrosenthalpoet.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Here’s my latest #poem. It’s called “Poem.” I know, I know, but read it and you’ll see. Thanks to the magnificent @rustandmoth.bsky.social for taking it.
rustandmoth.com
Poem | Rust & Moth
He asked an AI bot to write a poem about the angst that living in these times creates in all of us, set in the home of some untethered soul, with end-stopped rhymes, and wholly built on unlinked metap...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Got a couple of poems I'm fond of accepted into a journal I like. Hooray!
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Reposted by Eric Colburn
Lawrence Moore @lawrencemoore.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains
Become What You Are, an album by The Juliana Hatfield Three.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The smoke from Colorado wildfires wasn't great earlier this month, but it was nothing like what folks in NYC have experienced recently. We should probably try harder to stop warming the planet. www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...
theatlantic.com
Canada’s Forests Will Burn and Burn
Once a wildfire starts, it can spread to an area too massive to control.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
#smallpoemsunday Here's an epigram of mine... (www.tumblr.com/assesofparna...)
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Draft non-sonnet of the day:
Springs Eternal

   The ridgeline like a giant baby boy,
   squeezed tight against the nursery wall of sky,
   sleeps lazily along the city’s western edge.
   Its lower peak might be the baby’s head,
   its cheek upturned, a drooling river— but
   its clear the highest peak’s the baby’s butt.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Wedding anniversary today. 28 years of very happy marriage, 30+ years of spending nearly every possible minute together—even if we seem to be pretending we didn’t know each other in this photo in her college dorm:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Published a bunch of poems this month. Here’s one I wrote as part of a dialogue with a brilliant young poet at my school: pfpoi.blogspot.com/2026/06/ques...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
This afternoon I worked in our tiny backyard: built some planters to hold extra dirt and redid the patio pavers. It looks a bit better.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Cleaning out my garage, I found a sonnet I wrote when I was nineteen:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I’m happy to have a poem up today at Some Words. My youngest brother died 6 years ago, and I’m still always thinking about him. somewords.boards.net/thread/162/e...
somewords.boards.net
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Reposted by Eric Colburn
Jenevieve Carlyn @coastalpoet.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
👏 Pushing caretaking roles on women is also tied to a broken healthcare system. My mom ended up a caregiver bc private-pay home-health nurses weren't affordable. My parents also had no Longterm Care insurance. My dad got to live at home til the end, but my mom & I bore the weight of a broken system.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
My daughter wrote a piece for The New Feminist about how sexism and destroying the environment go together; I think she's basically right. thenewfeminist.co.uk/2026/06/retu...
thenewfeminist.co.uk
The return of the tradwife and the soaring profits of big oil are part of the same system - The New Feminist
The rise in energy prices and the rise of the trad wife seem to be unrelated - but what if that isn't the case? There is a deep connection.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
We should all write thank you notes to people we appreciate; one of the nice things about being a teacher is that a lot of kids do it—their parents probably make them, but it is really nice to get them!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Sunset from the Mass Ave Bridge tonight:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Found this cleaning out the basement. Those were the days—back when I was a “FODR”!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I have an ebike without a battery (a radmission i bought with a discount from @crschmidt.net) that I need to get rid of. Bikesnotbombs won’t take ebikes without batteries; do I just put it out for the trash?
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Glad our trip to Brooklyn to help our son move out of his apartment coincided with the knicks’ victory. We ended up standing around a pet food store that had set up a tv on the sidewalk. Community!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
The community garden plot/dacha is coming along!
Garden plot with bench in the sun
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
On the bike bus this morning I heard some middle school kids railing against AI—and now I see this from my wise colleague and her wise students. Heartening!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Thrilled to have a few poems in Paradoxa, a new anthology from Solid Food Press; my copy arrived yesterday from BC and is a model of the bookmaker's art, beautifully printed and handbound:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Recipe (h/t my 9th gr. students): Preheat the desire to fit in; ... add 1C loneliness, 1 childhood bff, 1/2C trauma/hardship and societal limitations; ...1/2C hope, 3/4T antagonist; move from old world to new, use mentor to stir, add community to taste, bake until happy ending.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Today’s small victory: replaced the condenser fan in my fridge. Now it doesn’t sound like a jet plane is being tortured in my kitchen. Absurdly difficult to get the old one out and the new one in and wired up, but I maybe succeeded?
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
RIP Marjane Satrapi, whose book I just saw on my bookshelf with an odd assortment of other excellent volumes:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
In my classroom today I overheard a student say she only liked “THAT kind of poetry”; I went over (they were supposed to be discussing the comparison papers they’re working on) and asked what kind she meant. “You know, the kind with rhyme and meter.”
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
A poem from the most recent issue of Blue Unicorn that evokes the way the most transcendent experiences sometimes come back to us in alienated majesty, in a minor key, or… something. Here it is:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Planning our visit to our daughter in Colorado this summer, looking at airbnbs, and after 15 of them I see a living room with BOOKS!!!!! Gotta reserve it…
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Found this photo from Joshua Tree National Park in 2016, when my daughter was almost 12 and didn’t want to go for a walk—and thought of this poem:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Pleased to have a couple of poems in the new Blue Unicorn, both about the joy and mystery of being alive. Here’s one:
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Author of NYT op-ed about AI and writing uses AI to do her "light copyediting"--and the AI messes it up. Oy vey.
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Beautiful poem from @janezwart.bsky.social
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
J-T is on substack!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Building a door for a bike shed; wondering if anybody has advice or wisdom. I think maybe @bikepedantic.bsky.social and @crschmidt.net have bike sheds more less near my NoCa house--how worried should I be about the strength of my lock etc.? (Won't be super fancy e-bikes in there, but still...)
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Draft experimental #sonnet --gotta get back in the habit. I not infrequently see dead friends' faces in the crowd--why don't I see the living that way? Hm...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Sign: “Non-motorized bicycles only”!
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Here's my poem from the new issue of Forgotten Ground Regained (thanks to @rhunedhel.bsky.social):
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Good stuff in here…
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
They're having a meeting next month and I have to decide whether to go or not. I'd be way more likely if some other bike-friendly and apartment-building-friendly neighbors were going to be there too...
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Eric Colburn @etherealcolburn.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Draft #sonnet that I'll never publish elsewhere:
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