Jason Michael Harlow
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jmharlow.bsky.social
Jason Michael Harlow
@jmharlow.bsky.social
54 followers 35 following 570 posts
hardware engineer, writer, spouse, dad, treehugger, sociable hermit, kitchen tool enthusiast

my opinions are my own
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jmharlow.bsky.social
I just finished the poetry collection "Indigo" by Ellen Bass. She writes so well about death, sex, the complexities of human relationships. And, I super admire the way she writes about nature. Here's one I feel moved to share.

"How can this be necessary?
Yet it grows and is making more
of itself"
Fungus on Fallen Alder at Lookout Creek by Ellen Bass Florid, fluted, flowery petal, flounce of a girl’s dress, ruffled fan, striped in what seems to my simple eye an excess of extravagance, intricately ribboned like a secret code, a colorist’s vision of DNA. At the outermost edge a scallop of ivory, then a tweedy russet, then mouse gray, a crescent of celadon velvet, a streak of sleek seal brown, a dark arc of copper, then butter, then celadon again, again butter, again copper and on into the center, striped thinner and thinner to the green, green moss-furry heart. How can this be necessary? Yet it grows and is making more of itself, dozens and dozens of tiny starts, stars no bigger than a baby’s thumbnail, all of them sucking one young dead tree on a gravel bank that will be washed away in the next flooding winter. But isn’t the air here cool and wet and almost unbearably sweet?
November 1, 2025 at 6:44 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
Making chicken stock in autumn is something I look forward to for months, collecting bones and vegetables in our freezer throughout spring and summer.
The photo shows a glass mug of chicken stock on a wooden butcher block.
October 26, 2025 at 3:32 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
I was surprised to see this graffiti along Route 7 in the Vermont town where I grew up.
A road sign for the stores Family Dollar and Dollar Tree has graffiti on it that says "FEED GAZA" in stenciled red letters with a red heart below the words.
October 23, 2025 at 8:25 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
The news is bad. I needed a break from it. So, my son and I went to the Baylands Nature Preserve, one of the largest tracts of marshland in the S.F. Bay. It soothes the soul to see the wildlife that resides there, especially the birds. And it reminded me of a short poem I wrote in 2019.

#poetry
"The Baylands Marsh" by Jason Harlow A jackrabbit’s ears bob above the tops of wild fennel; he bounds a clever path shielded from view – then, searching for food or mate, wriggles out into the open to pause by the edge of the marsh where a harrier glides overhead.
August 4, 2025 at 12:14 AM
jmharlow.bsky.social
Feeling proud: I wrote a poem for my mother-in-law on her birthday. She's Lebanese, by way of Louisiana. I chose the form of a ghazal. It's the first time I've written one, and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. But more so, I am so glad she appreciated the gift and was moved by it.

#poetry
Grape Vine (by Jason Harlow) Does the vine these grape leaves are from still feel its roots in Lebanon? A cutting went to the bayou with your forebears when they moved on. Then, it arrived in Menlo Park to be adornment for your lawn. Through the years it has grown and spread with countless tendrils as its spawn. Oh, to be the fence it entwines – wrapped like the dolmas we feast on. In time, what divides neighbors’ yards will fall from the vine’s steady brawn. We gather, sharing memories of kinship that is never gone. By this I see the home you make to which many loved ones are drawn is a heritage more sacred than the land an Azar builds on.
July 25, 2025 at 8:23 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
A favorite piece of art in the house where I grew up is this copper plate etching. Seeing it again recently inspired me to write a poem about it.

Five horses gallop
past Currituck Beach Lighthouse.
Going by the dunes
with their hoofbeats on damp sand,
they fade into the sea spray.

#tanka #obx
A copper plate etching titled "Hoofbeats at Currituck" shows five horses galloping, right-to-left, along a beach. Shown in the upper right of the etching is a brick lighthouse.
July 9, 2025 at 7:25 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
This bougainvillea grows along a fence between our driveway and our neighbors'. I look forward to seeing it each time I go out there.
There are several magenta bougainvillea blossoms on a vine that grows along a wooden fence with vertical slats.
June 27, 2025 at 6:52 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
This clump of irises in the back of our apartment has flowers that open in the morning, then close again in late afternoon.
The photo shows a clump of irises in bloom. The flower petals are mostly white with some dark yellow and light purple near the center of each blossom. The plants are in a patch of dirt surrounded by a brick patio.
June 26, 2025 at 5:50 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
For father's day, I went out with two of my brothers-in-law and my father-in-law to a brewery that was new to us all: Blue Oak, in San Carlos. I had a flight, and my favorite was the one on the right in this photo, a hazy IPA called "Social Media Distancing". I might need a growler of that stuff.
Six stemmed glasses of beer are on top of a barrel, with sunglasses in the lower left foreground. The four glasses of beer in a row in the front are a tasting flight, labeled left-to-right: "Hefe", "Francois", "Inky" and "SMD".
June 16, 2025 at 11:16 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
Stone fruit season! YUM. Part of today's haul from the farmers' market.
A bowl on a wood table with apricots and peaches in it. The bowl is white with a dark blue rim and a dark blue fleur-de-lis on the side.
June 1, 2025 at 8:45 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
It’s mental health awareness month, a time to remember we all have stuff we’re trying to manage within ourselves. I wrote this poem 8 years ago, after starting psychiatric meds. I'm fortunate meds helped me find equilibrium with few adverse side effects, though speed and scope of thought decreased.
"Root Beer" by Jason Harlow Lips pursed around the straw for the first sip, my gullet floods with bubbles and sugar. That sassafras-flavored beverage also brings me a dose of caffeine. A few slurps later, I feel effervescent. Like an ice-cold soft drink in a plastic cup, my elevated mind begins to fizz. Thoughts occur unbidden. Ideas burst. It is a pleasant sensation, a taste of how life was going ten years ago before mood stabilizers slowed me down. Now my internal world is more sedate: a stoneware mug half-full of warm water with a lemon wedge garnishing the rim.
May 7, 2025 at 4:57 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
U.S. politics is to me complete and utter Calvinball.
A boy wearing a black eye mask and a red shirt with black, thin, horizontal stripes chases a volleyball while carrying a tennis racket. Behind him, a tiger also wears a black eye mask and carries a croquet mallet while riding a purple hobby horse. This is a depiction of the game Calvinball from the comic "Calvin and Hobbes".
April 23, 2025 at 9:48 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
The boy and I read eight Frog & Toad stories together this morning:

The Kite
The Garden
Cookies
A Swim
Ice Cream
A Lost Button
Spring
The Letter
A brown toad wearing a dark green jacket and sage-green pants reads from a book of poems to the flower seeds he wants to grow in his garden.
April 19, 2025 at 4:47 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
dinners for the week
A scrap of white paper is held to the side of a refrigerator with a circular magnet. On the paper is written a list of dinners: Eggplant and lentils cod with cherry tomatoes sesame noodles and broccoli gallo pinto The lower right corner of the list bears a red rubber stamp of an ankylosaurus's hindquarters. Above the list is another magnet. It is blue and shaped like a sperm whale mother and her calf.
April 13, 2025 at 1:51 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
In honor of National Park Service
Poem titled "Weeping Rock, Zion Canyon" by Jason Harlow: More than a thousand years ago, a storm passed over the mesa and rain soaked into the high ground. During an era, gravity, with its constant draw, urged water to take a gradual course down through layers of porous limestone, where now the ancient liquid seeps out of a jut off the cliffside, an alcove with lush moss and ferns in an otherwise arid land. It falls as a steady shower on the foreheads of parched tourists who stand in the canyon and gaze at a marvel of the ages: rock many millennia old weeping to make an oasis. Each droplet that sprinkles their brow is a respite from sunbaked heat. In this habitat, they’re surprised how columbine can flourish here – the way it thrives beside the trail in clumps topped by delicate blooms cantilevered on slender stems, the flowers like little red bells ready for the breeze to ring them, as if survival in a harsh environment makes it joyful.
February 24, 2025 at 7:13 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
Helpful map for folks who don't live here. My current home is at the intersection of Tech / Hippies / Wine, but I like to frequent the zone of Sea Otters.

An aside: would be cool to see a version of this map from pre-1970.
A map of California. Different regions are labeled with silly characterizations of what each of those regions is known for.
February 18, 2025 at 6:23 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
I needed to write this yesterday. I don't want to wait for workshop feedback or submission responses before sharing, though I bet I'll keep editing it over time.
A poem titled "The Next Frontier" by Jason Harlow. It starts with a quote by William E. Stafford that says "the darkness around us is deep". Here is the text of the poem: There are people who profit from hatred. This is nothing new. To pit us against one another makes for brisk business. Two hundred years ago, the folks who sold rifles to settlers expanding west also hawked them to Native Americans. Foreign influence was not a concern. Maybe the U.S. army got models from Europe that had better precision – maybe not. The aim was to foment war. Over a century has gone by since armed conflict spilled blood across our country. But weapon peddlers are still in force, now drawing on a rich stockpile of words they persuade us to use in daily talk. Lob lies like grenades into a debate and subterfuge will cloud established facts. Snare your opponent in a straw man’s clothes, then stab them with sharpened discussion points. Never mind how they are not relevant, the crowd cheers at such evisceration with a thousand red-heart affirmations and reposts to myriad followers. Meanwhile, advertisements flicker around the digital arena: more content, more ways to conceive of one another as a problem to be solved, instead of as a person who deserves careful thought. Join me in denying them their market. Choose friendship. Risk love. Speak with kind intent.
February 13, 2025 at 8:07 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
When I lived in San Jose, California eight years ago, there was a great horned owl in the neighborhood who I could hear in the evenings, and I was inspired me to write a poem about it.

#SuperbOwlSunday #poem
This is a poem in the form of a saraband by Jason Harlow titled "Sultan of Dusk". The text of the poem is: Even with all my windows closed, I could still hear the great horned owl make his territorial hoot. I hoped he would tell me his name, but he declined to reveal it, saying instead the moon’s his crown and the stars are his vast treasure.
February 9, 2025 at 11:55 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
The little Meyer lemon tree in our backyard has branches laden with fruit, so my son and I made lemon bars to share with our neighbors.
This photo shows a small Meyer lemon tree growing in front of a fence whose branches have many ripe lemons on them.
February 8, 2025 at 11:06 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
The question of existential dread that haunts me most often these days:
A goose stands in a field of wildflowers beside a small, round table with a cup of tea on it and asks itself this question by thought balloon: "What if I'm not silly enough?"
February 7, 2025 at 10:20 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
dandelion break brb
A Bloom County cartoon from 1982 shows Opus the penguin getting overwhelmed by the news on TV, then turning off the TV, and taking a self-care break outside in a patch of dandelions next to a tree.
February 6, 2025 at 4:06 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
Leveraging a well-stocked spice drawer to make slow-cooker chicken tikka masala for the week ahead.
This photo, taken from above, shows a fully extended kitchen drawer that is filled with bottles of various spices used in cooking food.
February 2, 2025 at 7:29 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
A person wearing a periwinkle dress and sandals holds a very large bundle of sage while standing in a field. The caption above her says "The proper amount of sage for 2025..."
January 24, 2025 at 4:39 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
I last hiked Tomales Point in 2018, and wrote a poem about the elk there:
This is a poem in the form of a sonnet about the elk who live on Tomales Point. It is titled "Elk of Tomales Point". Here is the text of the poem: Rain has collected inside a basin at the bottom of a hill on a spit of land between wind-whipped Tomales Bay and an ocean shoreline pounded by waves. Mirror-flat, reflecting a cloudless sky with serene, blue stillness, it is precious as a source of freshwater for the herd of tule elk who linger around it. The males are crowned with huge racks of antlers, bleached by the sun a pale tan like driftwood. On the hill above them sits a paddock, wound with rusty wire, abandoned for years. Dairy farms thrive inland from their preserve where fences enclose acres of meadow.
January 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM
jmharlow.bsky.social
A cinquain poem by Jason Harlow titled "The Day's Last Glowing Hour": Sunrays in November shine from a low angle on the trees' auburn leaves before they fall.
December 1, 2024 at 1:37 AM