Tag: Karly Randolph Pitman

ONE ART’s May 2026 Reading

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ONE ART’s May 2026 Reading

Date: Sunday, May 3
Time: 2pm Eastern
Featured Poets: Phyllis Cole-Dai, Karly Randolph Pitman, Ellen Rowland
Duration: 1.5 hours

Tickets are FREE!
(donations appreciated)

>> Register Here <<

~ About The Featured Readers ~

Phyllis Cole-Dai resides in Maryland. She’s the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the popular Poetry of Presence volumes of mindfulness poems. She invites you to hop aboard The Raft, her online community.

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, poet, presenter, and mental health facilitator who helps people nurture a more compassionate relationship with their struggles. She’s the founder of Growing Humankindness, a gentle approach towards overeating, writes a reader supported poetry newsletter, O Nobly Born, and offers writing and mindfulness workshops to nurture self awareness and self compassion. She lives in Austin, Texas where she’s cared for the underbelly of long covid and autoimmune illness for the past five years. Her journeys through depression and illness continue to soften, teach and open her. In all she remains in awe of the human heart.

Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku: Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, and most recently The Echo of Silence/L’écho du Silence, a bi-lingual book of haiku and tanka. Her full-length poetry collection, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. You can find her writing in ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, Braided Way, Humana Obscura, and several anthologies, including “The Path to Kindness” and “The Wonder of Small Things” edited by James Crews. Her chapbook of after poems, In Search of Lost Birds is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She lives off the grid with her family on a small farm in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram , Facebook and Substack.

Two Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Picking Up the Pieces

Sometimes you wish your life were as tidy
as a jigsaw puzzle, where each piece fits
and finds their place. You want to feel the release
as the jumble of colors come together
into an ordered whole. But it’s tension, not ease,
that holds the pieces together – a puzzle needs
enough difficulty to be fun. You think
a piece fits here but it lives somewhere else.
You get stuck, swap two pieces, and the puzzle
flows again. When there’s an odd shaped piece
you get confused, wonder if it’s in the wrong box.
But as the picture takes shape you discover how
even this stray piece belongs. This fills you with delight,
how something you thought was wrong turns out
to be right, how the puzzle needs every piece
to make sense. After the puzzle’s done these
strange pieces are the ones you remember,
not the ones you assembled quickly out of the box.
As the pieces click into place you wonder about
everything sideways in your life, the disordered
pieces that can’t possibly fit. You wonder
what picture they’re creating, what whole
they complete – how you might fit, too.
You live the puzzle of your life and wonder
what beauty will appear as each difficult,
mysterious, unloved piece finds their home.

*

New Math

“Money, what do you like most? Changing hands.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan

They arrive in the mail in white envelopes,
pleas for medicine and support for elephants.
You slice them open and read their stories –

the pregnant woman riding in the back of a truck
for hours, desperate to reach the hospital where
a surgery will save her life. The family from

Honduras sleeping for months with their four
children on city streets. You want to feed
every hungry envelope with hundred dollar bills.

When you can’t you’re surprised by your delight:
there are ten million charities in the world!
Ten million people who saw a need and said, yes.

There are so many places where people want to help
that you can’t possibly fill every envelope. It will take
thousands of you: I’ve got this one. You take another.

You know, today, there are families fleeing famine,
falling bombs and wildfires. You see the horror.
You also see ten million people lined up to help,

millions more who will send checks. As life
continues with its tragic loss others are already
planning: this is how we’ll take care of each other.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, facilitator and mental health trainer who brings understanding to sugar addiction, overeating and other ways we care for trauma. You can find her poetry at O Nobly Born, a reader supported newsletter, and her healing work with food at her substack, When Food is Your Mother. She lives in Austin, Texas where she does as much as possible with her hands and is writing a book on bringing compassion to food suffering.

Ten Hours at the Airport by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Ten Hours at the Airport
with gratitude for a line from Hawk McCrary

Your heart sinks when you see the message –
delayed, again, after one flight had already
been cancelled. But there was nothing you
could do, so you tuck your bag over your
shoulder and trudge through the long alleys.
You find a small bookstore and sit
on the corner of the floor for an hour,
reading a book on ADD and cleaning.
You walk to your gate, unpack your lunch,
eat the cold chicken and yams. When the flight’s
delayed for the third time, you rise to stand
in the snaking line with the others, all those
with somewhere important to go.
The young woman in front of you
clutches her group of paper boarding passes:
Cleveland to Atlanta, Atlanta to Amsterdam,
Amsterdam to Riyadh. Her ill mother waits
for her at the hospital. You catch her wide eyes,
help her talk to the gate agent, stay with her
until her problem is solved. You trade numbers
as a manager brings out bags of food, lays them
out on a table and tells the crowd to help themselves.
Other passengers are huddled together on the chairs,
telling each other stories about their time in the
other’s hometown as they eat the chicken sandwiches.
A grandmother, dressed in her good skirt and shoes,
naps with her head leaned back against the wall.
Strangers before, you’re bonded by your changed plans,
your many hours together. As the day turns to night,
a woman seethes into her phone, demanding a hotel room.
A gate agent calls an angry man darling then retreats,
apologizing, as he bristles – don’t call me darling.
Your new friend, newer to English, whispers to you,
Is darling a bad word? You reassure her it isn’t,
a term of endearment that to this man, wasn’t endearing.
You know the stakes are low for you –
your days of flying with small children are over.
You have room, this day, to be late. You have
your lunch and a book. But in the crowd, you see
every possible response to thwarted plans. Any of them
could be you, or have been, once. When the pilot announces
there’s a slim chance the flight might make it out tonight,
the group lets out a cheer. Hours later, you board in triumph,
your gratitude made deeper by your waiting. You give
the gate agents a standing ovation and they blush,
all smile and shine. At home, your family makes a joke
about how you’ve been in airport hell. A friend corrects them.
No, it’s been airport heaven.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, facilitator and mental health trainer who brings understanding to sugar addiction, overeating and other ways we care for trauma. You can find her poetry at O Nobly Born, a reader supported newsletter, and her healing work with food at her substack, When Food is Your Mother. She lives in Austin, Texas where she does as much as possible with her hands and is writing a book on bringing compassion to food suffering.

Two Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Room at the Inn

         “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans.”
         — from a speech given by Teddy Roosevelt in 1915 *

My great grandfather was a coal miner
in the Pennsylvania mountains. When
the miners went on strike, they didn’t eat.
The Red Cross brought my great grandmother
rice and butter which she buried in the yard.
If they’d brought her flour and olive oil
she could have cooked a feast. At Ellis Island
Zaccagnini become Zack. At the grammar school
Damasiewicz became Demser. At the Ford
Motor Company Poles and Slovaks were told
to abandon their traditional clothing in a giant pot.
They came out reborn, dressed in suits
and carrying American flags. Today a woman
in a worn head scarf stands at the stoplight,
her daughter in a stroller beside her. Another
daughter hides her face from the too fast traffic.
Between her halting English and my broken Spanish
we say hello. As I hand her the cash in my wallet
I picture the women who brought my grandparents rice.
Whatever kindness was given to them, I pray,
shower it on this family. Let them know
there is welcome in this land.

* The quote from Teddy Roosevelt and the story of the melting pot at the Ford plant come from David Dean’s essay, Roots Deeper than Whiteness. Thank you, David.

* 

Growing Sweet Potatoes

It was the first time we’d planted sweet potatoes –
slips of flesh with eyes and fingers, tiny beings
of promise. We planted and prayed for just enough
sun, just enough wet, just enough microbe to sprout
our seeds into harvest. It rained and then it stopped.

It stopped for one hundred days and the sun baked
the earth brown. It stayed hot and became hotter.
The plants wilted and I dreamt they cried for rain.
We decided: what do we let die? What do we save?
If the potatoes die we can buy them at the store.

But I wanted the potatoes to thrive – to create
something useful and good, something as sturdy
as a potato. So I prayed for rain. I sang to the vines.
And months later, when it rained, I stood in my yard
and let the water pour down my face – planted
like the potato, watered like the vine, open in my thirst.

Today we dug into the warm earth searching
for pink orbs. We found five perfect potatoes
and dozens of silvery roots no thicker than a pencil.
I can’t bear to throw any of them away. Six months
of toil and six months of hope that I can’t let go to waste.

Who am I to say the harvest is a failure? That more
should have grown in dusty soil? Who am I to say
that I, sweet potato vine, rain and soil, humus
and hot sun, should be any more than I am now?

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, poet, presenter, and mental health facilitator who helps people nurture a more compassionate relationship with their struggles. She’s the founder of Growing Humankindness, a gentle approach towards overeating, writes a reader supported poetry newsletter, O Nobly Born, and offers writing and mindfulness workshops to nurture self awareness and self compassion. She lives in Austin, Texas where she’s cared for the underbelly of long covid and autoimmune illness for the past five years. Her journeys through depression and illness continue to soften, teach and open her. In all she remains in awe of the human heart.

Three Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Let

after Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come

Let the brown tabby meow, paw
at your door and pull you out
of bed hours before you feel ready.

Let the hot sun bake the sweet
potato plants as you measure what
to water or what to let die.

Let the body buck from another wave
of dizziness as you learn a new way
to ride the body’s labor pains.

Let the hollow of grief come up for air
so the tears that are stuck in the corners
of your eyes can drop their heavy load.

Let the fridge empty. Let the dust gather
on the bookshelves. Let the to do list
unravel in the light of what is possible
instead of what you hoped would be.

Let help come. Let friends bring you pots
of soup, jars of tea and prayer flags, tied
on a string. Let the doctor insert the needle
that makes you tremble.

Let yourself fall. Let yourself weep. Let
yourself shatter, let yourself know you
don’t have to be any braver than you
know how to be.

The early rising brings morning flowers.
Sweet potatoes bring grace. The body
brings breath. Grief brings tenderness.
Unraveling brings silence. Help brings ease.
Shattering brings relief from holding up
what needed to break.

Let everything happen to you, Rilke says –
as if you’re given a choice, as if let is optional.
What if everything happens? What if this
is what I can trust? What if this is the way
that trust holds me?

*

Opening the Package

The medicine arrives
wrapped in paper, tucked
with care like a present,
folded triangles laid on top
of each other so that
opening the package
feels like receiving
a gift. You feel blessed
by this extra attention,
as if the person sending
you your medicine
whispered a prayer
on your behalf
as they packed up
the box for shipping,
a prayer that arises
to meet you now
as you slice open
the box with a knife,
spread apart each
cardboard flap,
and unwrap each vial
with a yes, yes.

*

Communion

This is my body, broken for you.
These words arise as I greet
the morning sun, my bare feet
sinking into the soft earth. All
my dead lie below me, their bones
feeding the soil, feeding the plants
and animals that make their way
to my dinner plate. Today I feel
their strength beneath me, holding
me up. Others have walked before
me. Others have shared my sorrow
and struggles. Others have wept
my tears. “Help me,” I pray,
offering myself to their bodies,
to the soil that grows me, to the sun
that warms my skin. Their bodies
were broken, too. They knew pain
and illness, loss and grief. They knew
the sting of betrayal and the ache
of failed dreams. I feel their broken
open bodies underneath me, the
cracked seeds of their hearts, each
body given to me this day so I may
rise, resurrected, to live.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, poet, presenter, and mental health facilitator who helps people nurture a more compassionate relationship with their struggles. She’s the founder of Growing Humankindness, a gentle approach towards overeating, writes a reader supported poetry newsletter, O Nobly Born, and offers writing and mindfulness workshops to nurture self awareness and self compassion. She lives in Austin, Texas where she’s cared for the underbelly of long covid and autoimmune illness for the past five years. Her journeys through depression and illness continue to soften, teach and open her. In all she remains in awe of the human heart.

*

Karly is teaching a workshop for ONE ART this month (July 2025)!

Writing Through Illness
Instructor: Karly Randolph Pitman
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2025
Time: 6:00-8:00pm Eastern
Price: Sliding Scale
Event will be recorded
>>> Register for Karly’s workshop <<<

Writing Through Illness: A Workshop with Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Writing through Illness: A Workshop with Karly Randolph Pitman

“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Go home and be there for all of these things.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh

Illness – of all shapes and forms – is a complex threshold. As we journey through her doors, we meet change, loss, fear, pain, grief, fatigue, gratitude, wonder, awe – the full mystery of what it means to be human and to live in a human body.

In this online playshop, we’ll explore, write and share our way into a more generous, deeper connection with the complexity that arises when we host an illness in our body’s ‘guest house.’ We’ll use writing practices, presence, and poetry to meet these guests and nurture a more regenerative, curious, and compassionate relationship with our bodies, hearts, and minds. 

What might illness have to share with us? How might it meet us? How might we meet it?

This workshop is open to anyone who’s been touched by illness – their own, a loved one’s, a friend’s – and all kinds of illness – physical illness, mental illness, chronic illness, sudden illness. All levels of writing experience are welcome.

If you can’t join us live, we’ll record our time together so you can explore it later at your own pace. 

***

An image, like a poem, powerfully conveys where we’re headed.

Let Your Grief Wash You to Another Shore 

Used with the kind permission of the artist, Eddy Sara.

Find more about Eddy Sara on his website.

***

Writing Through Illness
Instructor: Karly Randolph Pitman
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2025
Time: 6:00-8:00pm Eastern
Price: Sliding Scale
Event will be recorded

>>> Register for Karly’s workshop <<<

***

~ About The Workshop Leader ~

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, poet, presenter, and mental health facilitator who helps people nurture a more compassionate relationship with their struggles. She’s the founder of Growing Humankindness, a gentle approach towards overeating, writes a reader supported poetry newsletter, O Nobly Born, and offers writing and mindfulness workshops to nurture self awareness and self compassion. She lives in Austin, Texas where she’s cared for the underbelly of long covid and autoimmune illness for the past five years. Her journeys through depression and illness continue to soften, teach and open her. In all she remains in awe of the human heart.

Harvesting the Lavender by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments

Harvesting the Lavender

When the lavender dies in the winter storm
you strip the dried leaves from their stems.
The pall of their aroma stains your fingers
as you open a drawer, looking for
an envelope. You think you’ll mail them
to a friend. But you smile when you see
the address written across the front:
Montana Department of Revenue. You
dream of sending scented leaves
with your tax return, picture the look
on the face of the clerk who opens the flap,
reading your note: I’m sending you
my portion of the income I grew on Texas soil.
You like to imagine that the lavender leaves
can do as much for Montana as the dollars
and cents printed on your check. You see
a new mountain road in her future, poured
pavement to a rural school, a bike path
where children ride their bikes in
the early morning light. There’s fresh
concrete and alongside, lavender fronds
waving their hands in the summer wind.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, facilitator and mental health trainer who brings understanding to sugar addiction, overeating and other ways we care for trauma. You can find her poetry at O Nobly Born, a reader supported newsletter, and her healing work with food at her substack, When Food is Your Mother. She lives in Austin, Texas where she does as much as possible with her hands and is writing a book on overcoming food suffering.

Market Day by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Market Day

On market day
my father unfolds himself
inside his plaid coat
and his black ball cap.
Vietnam Veteran, it spells
across the brim
dotted with army pins and buttons.

We walk the stalls. The fruit
vendor offers a slice of
orange and he takes me to the
deli that makes his favorite
sandwich. He’s interrupted in line
by a stranger’s handshake:
“Thank you for your service.”
My father nods and replies,
twice, “Thank you.”

Sometimes a man will bound up
and grasp his elbow, forearm
to forearm. He smiles wide and finds my
father’s eyes – “Welcome home, brother!”

I was born after my father’s war.
It was not his war, either.
Was it anyone’s? Yet he went.
He arrived in country in November.
When he returned the following year
his mother’s hair had turned white.

On the flight home, in his battle fatigues,
the other passengers ask
to be moved to another part of the
plane. Each trip to the market
he gets back on that plane.
Fifty-three years later, the
passengers have returned
to their seats. They see
the uniform and see what he saw,
now buried deep: “Thank you
for your service.”

Another piece of him returns.
His mother’s hair turns grey,
then ash, then brown:
radiant, alive.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is the founder and steward of Growing Humankindness, a soul sangha of the heart. She’s a mother and mental health advocate, wonderer and writer, teacher and craftswoman who does as much as possible with her hands. She lives in Austin, Texas where she walks among gnarled oak trees and tends her ancestors, those kin of family and community. Through each trip to the underworld, she remains in awe of the human heart.

Two Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Blessing

              “Even the bird with a broken wing is a prayer.” – Ashley Gates Jansen

Every oak tree holds within it the acorn,
the bud of longing and becoming.
And every acorn holds the whisper
of the promised oak, grand perennial.
But sometimes the acorn does not blossom
but remains tight, a closed bud.
And sometimes mighty oak trees fall
felled by disease, or wind, or storm.
I yearn for my aliveness to unfurl –
to feel strong and sure and sturdy like the oak.
And I long to feel the pull of opening,
the chrysalis cracking open of seed.
Bless the acorn and oak tree within.
Help me, Mercy,
to hold the acorn with as much kindness
as much reverence
as much esteem
as the mighty oak.

*

Stopping for Peaches on a Sunday Afternoon

The day I held my friend as she wept on my shoulder –
the pure white stone of grief –
I played with a baby, snuggled on my hip.
He laughed as he dug his fingers in the dirt and
tugged at the charms of my necklace, each one a new discovery.
On the drive home, I stopped the truck
when I saw the sign for fresh peaches.
I bought a bag, took one,
and held it to my nose,
inhaling the scent of sun and summer.
Is there anything more helpless than burying a child?
Any pain more exquisite than the sharp knife of loss?
And yet I still smell the ripe seduction of peach,
bloomed and fed by days of sun,
the soft fuzz that tickled my fingers.
My shirt carries the milky haze of the baby I held,
soft and warm in my arms.
To live this life: our hearts break, and yet we keep going.
Our hearts break, and again, and again, we love.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is the founder and steward of Growing Humankindness, where women come together to bring understanding, compassion, and tenderness to the ‘not beautiful’ ways they care for trauma. She’s a mother and mental health advocate, wonderer and writer, teacher and craftswoman who does as much as possible with her hands. She lives in Austin, Texas where she walks among gnarled oak trees and tends her ancestors, those kin of family and community. Through each trip to the underworld, she remains in awe of the human heart.