Poet Kim Myeong-ri, who has been praised by critics for her powerful ecological lyricism, depicting the anguish between historical reality and existential life, has published her first collection of prose, compiling long-hidden writings, occasional posts on social media, and traces of her travels to Nepal.
You can encounter poet Kim Myeong-ri's everyday writing, which is lyrical yet deeply introspective and touches the soul, along with photos she took herself.

On the evening of Parents' Day, when the forsythia at the front gate was in full bloom, my mother came home.
It hasn't been long since you said you couldn't live in the quietness of the mountain village and went to visit your younger sibling in Seoul, and settled down there.
Meanwhile, his chronic illness got worse, and even with a cane to support him, he started to walk unsteadily.
Eighty-four years old, he keeps asking where he is. Most of his memories of life have been lost, but the memories of flowers, trees, birds, clouds, the sun, the moon, and the wind remain vivid. He sometimes sits in the shade of a hibiscus flower and hums a song.
So, Marquez is right when he says, “It is a triumph of life that old people forget everything that is not essential.”
Even though my mother has been suffering from progressive dementia for eight years, she still clearly recognizes her children and grandchildren, and the memories of the different sounds of the wind in each of the four seasons and the harp that plays like a flock of butterflies in spring seem as solid as a diamond.
That's right, no old man forgets where he hid his treasure.
Amazing, my mother, who has dementia, hasn't forgotten a single verse of the songs she used to sing!
--- From "My Mom is Here!"

A field of flowers blooming in the morning sun
Among the flowers in the spring yard
A flower that blooms like an explosion of anger

The tears I held back
There are flowers that bloom like they're bursting out of nowhere.

Spring breeze, spring breeze
It seems like everything has backed off now
May, next to the red flower of the azalea

octogenarian mother
Wrinkled eyes
There's a faint pink ripple

Don't cry, don't be sick

After sweeping the sky for a long time

quietly
As if opening the darkness and coming in
There are also flowers that bloom
--- From "The Poetics of the Flower Garden"

I once thought I was possessed by a poetry demon.
During the few months leading up to the publication of my first poetry collection, Atlas in the Water (1988), and the season or two before the publication of my third, The Joy of Extinction (1999), I seem to have written six or seven poems a day, as if someone were calling me to them, as if they were pouring out from within.
Even after submitting the manuscript for my poetry collection to the publisher and going through the public printing process, I was so zealous about replacing dozens of poems that I now look back on it with shame for having made such a fuss about such mediocre poems.
Even though Shima is old, he just sits on the doorstep of someone's house, catching his breath. These days, he misses those passionate moments, those moments when he was overwhelmed just writing down each and every phrase.
--- From "Shima (Poetry Demon)"

The sunlight is warm on the back, and the shaded area is already dreary.
It seems like this is the time of year when it's okay to crouch down and wait for someone, or to hesitate a little longer about whether or not to go, at the boundary between sunlight and shade that blurs and disperses.
The light-filled gait that had been rekindled all summer began to slow down, and as I walked, the sunlight, shade, and scent of autumn flowers were drawn right to my nose.
I open an old notebook and reread “The Autumn I Met Tonight.”
Osamu Dazai once wrote about autumn, “It is what summer has left over from its burnt-out state,” and “Summer is a chandelier, autumn is a lantern, and cosmos is cruel.”
In the yard where no one has ever planted the corpse of a bird beneath the purple flowers of the mugwort... ... In the quiet world, on which early autumn wind did you come, flowers, birds, butterflies that have come to pay their respects?
--- From "Autumn Will Come Soon"

We climbed Dampus, 1,650m above sea level.
Because the weather was cloudy, I couldn't see the clear shape of Machhapuchhre and Annapurna I, but I saw the smiles of the people living in thatched huts on the steep rock cliffs, like blades of grass, and the sunlight flowing through each thick wrinkle like a stream, sparkling.
Cities were built, trade took place, civilizations blossomed, and the small winds carried by the great winds filled my eyes, but they have now dispersed far away and are no longer there.
Because the mountain is there, people, rocks, trees, and the breeze must have lived there like spores, moving through the seasons.

--- From "Damphus"