Willow Bend is a love song to the willows, who grow and give of themselves so abundantly, gracing the forest edges and meadows and creeksides of so many lands with their gentle, warm tipped presence. Using ones' hands to make beauty feels inextricably linked and vital to a practice of using one's voice to make beauty, especially in the format of weaving community through song. Physically weaving flexible strands of living matter harvested by my own self from the very land in which I live has shaped the way I weave songs in myself and in groups in every way. Willow teaches us to jump up and live again, as she does so eagerly, through the flood seasons that knock her over and carry her downstream, through the human human blades that cut her back and mow her over, through our forgetting she is there and how to weave her into delightful, colorful baskets that hold our songs and dreams.