Darby Lyons
LightNews LightNews
banner
darbylyons.bsky.social
Darby Lyons
@darbylyons.bsky.social
1.7K followers 990 following 4.1K posts
Retired English teacher, poet. Book and music lover. Midwesterner, kind of (Army brat, IYKYK), with Appalachian roots. MFA, Sewanee School of Letters. Senior editorial assistant, Cincinnati Review.
Posts Replies Media Videos
darbylyons.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you're from:
The film poster for "A Lion in the House." Children with cancer and some of their parents in a collage of photos.
November 24, 2025 at 12:10 AM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Here's a free link to the New Yorker piece by Tatiana Schlossberg. Harrowing. I can't imagine how it feels to be dying of cancer while a family member sets out to destroy healthcare. She addresses that. archive.ph/d6AQl
The Weekend Essay A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family. By Tatiana Schlossberg November 22, 2025
November 22, 2025 at 9:57 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
My parents and my aunt and uncle gave me copies of old pictures for my birthday. Me, my mom and my brother when I came home from the hospital; my Granny and me at my cousin's wedding (late 1980s); my mom and her parents (early 1980s).
A young mother holds a baby in her lap and a little boy sits next to them, wearing a cowboy hat and sticking out his tongue An older lady and a young woman wearing pink dresses sit together at a table An older man and woman stand on either side of a gorgeous middle-aged lady in front of the entrance to a home
November 22, 2025 at 1:36 AM
darbylyons.bsky.social
FYI, I earned a "rude" label re this subject:
My skeet labeled as rude. It says "People who are just learning what a creep Keith Olbermann is, where the fuck have you been?"
November 19, 2025 at 1:55 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Beginning of our interaction on election night End of our interaction on election night
November 14, 2025 at 7:32 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Drove around beautiful & historic Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum w my parents yesterday. When we noticed the chain on the door of this mausoleum, my mom said, "Wow, they really want Otto to stay in there." Cracked up me & my dad who'd only thought of keeping out grave robbers. She's a funny lady.
Large white mausoleum with ornate doors with a large chain holding them shut. Across the top in the name Otto Armleder.
November 14, 2025 at 5:00 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Northern lights over my apartment building.
Purple light in the night sky over an apartment building
November 12, 2025 at 3:17 AM
darbylyons.bsky.social
My favorite veteran, when his military career started and when it ended. 28 years. He also happens to be the best dad ever.
Collage of a young man in Army uniform and the same middle-aged man in uniform standing next to his wife and daughter (me!)
November 11, 2025 at 4:10 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Louise Glück on a #smallpoemsunday that's supposed to bring our first real winter weather.
Snow Drops Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring- afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy in the raw wind of the new world. -from The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück Ecco, 1993
November 9, 2025 at 3:48 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
So I'm old and/or scattered enough that I need to put small task reminders on my calendar as things occur to me. And it makes for some notifications on my phone that crack me up:
Screenshot of my phone with the face of a smiling toddler as wallpaper and on his brown hair, white letters say "Buy hairspray in 20 mins"
November 8, 2025 at 3:44 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
😳
Screenshot from weather app says WinterCast: Be prepared and track active snow and ice events Underneath the WinterCast announcement is an illustration of a cloud with snowflakes falling from it and the words "Starting Sunday evening"
November 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Google Photos just reminded of my dad's book signing at Lexington's Joseph-Beth 15(!) years ago. After he retired, he researched and wrote a book about American overseas WW2 cemeteries and the stories of those buried there. So proud of him!
A balding gray haired man in a blue shirt and khaki pants sits at a wooden table signing a book with a couple of stacks of books in front of him.
November 4, 2025 at 3:55 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
From an email I just got from West Elm about Christmas tree ornaments. L.O.L.🤦🏼‍♀️
Photo of a real eggplant next to a shiny eggplant ornament with text saying Small Ornaments, Big Personality
November 4, 2025 at 1:10 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
"Sitting at Night on the Front Porch"
from China Trace
Wesleyan University Press, 1977
Sitting at Night on the Front Porch Charles Wright, 1935 10:45 and no moon. I'm here, on the dark porch, restyled in my mother's chair. Swing down, on the canyon floor, to the sea. Below the house, car lights In this they resemble us, Dropping like match flames through the great void Under our feet. In this they resemble her, burning and disappearing. Everyone's gone And I'm here, sizing the dark, saving my mother's seat.
November 3, 2025 at 3:38 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
"Ancient of Days"
by Charles Wright
from Caribou. FSG, 2014.
ANCIENT OF DAYS There is a kind of sunlight, in early autumn, at sundown, That raises cloud reflections Inches above the pond water, that sends us packing into the chill evening To stand like Turner's blobbed figurines In a landscape we do not understand, We know about it. whatever and everything Unworldly and all ours, it glides like the nineteenth century Over us, up the near hill And into the glistening mittens of the same clouds Now long gone from the world's pond. So long. This is an old man's poetry, written by someone who's spent his life Looking for one truth. Sorry, pal, there isn't one. Unless, of course, the trees and their blow-down relatives Are part of it. Unless the late-evening armada of clouds Spanished along the horizon are part of it. Unless the diminishing pinprick of light stunned in the dark forest Is part of it. Unless, O my, whatever the eye makes out, And sends, on its rough-road trace, To the heart, is part of it, then maybe that bright vanishing might be.
November 2, 2025 at 9:26 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
This is the time of year for Charles Wright poems. Crisp nights, rattling leaves.

Plus, I love listening to his voice, like in this recording of "Clear Night."
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47821/...
Clear Night BY CHARLES WRIGHT Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky. Moon-fingers lay down their same routine On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys. Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls. I want to be bruised by God. I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out. I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed. I want to be entered and picked clean. And the wind says "What?” to me. And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say "What?" to me. And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark. And the gears notch and the engines wheel.
November 2, 2025 at 1:08 AM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Not gonna lie... I love babies as pumpkins. A few from the archives:
A baby boy inside a pumpkin A baby girl inside a pumpkin A toddler girl dress as a quilted pink pumpkin
November 1, 2025 at 12:12 AM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Big sister, little sister, friend's dog. It's a Wednesday Halloween.
Little girl dressed as Wednesday Addams Littler girl dressed as Wednesday Addams Dog dressed as Wednesday Addams
October 31, 2025 at 3:16 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Just received a notice from bookshop.org that they're refunding me. I canceled Amazon, but looks like it's in stock at the nearest B&N. I'm determined to get a copy!😊
You were refunded for one of the following reasons: 1) You requested the refund. 2) Your backorder did not fill within the 90 day backorder window. 3) The publisher has notified us that they will be unable to fill the order, or our distribution partner has notified us they no longer stock the title.
October 31, 2025 at 3:04 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Thinking about my favorite punny Halloween costume.
A woman in jeans and a black shirt. There are pieces of white tape going down the front of the black shirt, spaced out like lines on a road, and there's a white plastic fork held onto the shirt by one of the pieces of tape. "A fork in the road" costume.
October 30, 2025 at 12:57 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Rest easy, Ellen Bryant Voigt.
Love her poetry, but these two offerings got me through my MFA thesis, and I'm forever grateful.
Book cover: The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song, by Ellen Bryant Voigt Book cover: Poets Teaching Poets Self and the World Edited by Gregory Orr and Ellen Bryant Voigt
October 24, 2025 at 9:12 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Afternoon reading/writing spot
A wrought iron table and chairs in a garden with large bright art in geometric shapes.
October 22, 2025 at 6:10 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Tracie L. Maryne, "Brigid-Fire Goddess"

At the National Quilt Museum in Paducah KY
A quilt that depicts a woman with fire for hair She is holding fire in her hands.
October 22, 2025 at 5:45 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
My little getaway town
Gazebo with large pumpkin decoration in the foreground The Ohio River from the Paducah river walk A sign that says Port of Paducah, KY Welcome
October 21, 2025 at 11:51 PM
darbylyons.bsky.social
Louise wrote some bangers!
This one's not quite as small, but is my favorite:
Leave-Taking By Louise Bogan I do not know where either of us can turn Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other. I do not know how we can bear The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon, Or many trees shaken together in the darkness. We shall wish not to be alone And that love were not dispersed and set free— Though you defeat me, And I be heavy upon you. But like earth heaped over the heart Is love grown perfect. Like a shell over the beat of life Is love perfect to the last. So let it be the same Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another; Let us know this for leavetaking, That I may not be heavy upon you, That you may blind me no more.
October 20, 2025 at 12:35 AM