Kelly Lenox

Writer inspired by the Earth I walk.

Poetry, Lyric Essay, and Translation

Mama Ephemera’s Muddy Feet

You can read my short essays on Substack. Each month I publish a new reflection on life, science, nature, poetry, essays, fiction and whatever else inspires me. Subscribe and read for free, or take the option to support my work with a paid subscription. See below for the most recent essays!

Meeting My Past in a Wilderness

It is weather-warning hot and unusually humid. We set off on the hike anyway. Climb the shadeless logging road, then turn off to follow a trail into the woods. Almost as quickly as I remember, we arrive at the ford. Again, I cross without falling.

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Metamorphic Pebbles

Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Never be unseated by the shying of that undependable brute, life...” —Virginia Woolf

To think that Virginia Woolf wrote the diary entry above1 while she was working on To the Lighthouse—a book that, when I read it in 12th grade, ripped apart my view of what writing and books were about and replaced it with an entirely new world, different from anywhere I’d ever been before.

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Translation: A Seduction

If I had to pick a god or goddess of translation it would be Eros. Anne Carson begins her book Eros the Bittersweet by naming Sappho as the first to call Eros bittersweet. Carson says, “Eros seemed to Sappho at once an experience of pleasure and pain. Here is contradiction and perhaps paradox. To perceive this eros can split the mind in two.”

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The Brightest Rock

My debut poetry collection

Published work

To read poems and lyric essays available online

Columbia River Gorge from Crown Point, Oregon. Photo by Chris Laskowski.

Thanks for visiting my website. Use the links above to learn more about my essays, poetry, translations, and latest publications.

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Who is Mama Ephemera and why are her feet muddy?

She is me and I (Kelly Lenox) am a writer and student of Earth who finds the natural world to be rich with lessons for living, in the rough places as well as the joyful. The infinite variety of life strategies among Earth’s critters and physical processes of the planet offer instruction, guidance, inspiration. However ephemeral or head-in-clouds I may be at times, my feet are sunk in life-giving mud. It feels so good between my toes.

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Recent Publications