Social media is a fraught and frequently unpleasant environment these days, no debate. We all need to budget and even fully curtail our time spent there, for sure. But it started with a promise of borderless friendliness, spirit, discovery and plain old good things that can still happen. I had a great reminder of that recently.

For 14 years, I’ve had a daily social media practice of sharing my morning poetry reading. I take a snippet of a poem or poems, and post them to Twitter/X (and now other socmed platforms). I identify (and tag, where appropriate) the poets, publishers and/or publications in which I find my daily delights. Sometimes that results in messages of thanks back, from those tagged folks or from others who appreciate discovering and exploring new-to-them works.

For the whole story of how that #TodaysPoem habit started (with mention of some of the other fine folks who took part), check out www.todayspoem.ca.

In February, 2025, one of my #TodaysPoem selections was a poem by Canadian poet Leesa Dean, which I posted to Bluesky. Shortly after I posted it, she reposted it with these astonishing comments:

“@bookgaga.bsky.social tweeted a few lines of one of my poems in 2015. I had totally abandoned that manuscript and her tweet encouraged me to finish it: The Filling Station, published by @gaspereaupress.bsky.social … you never know when you will unassumingly save someone’s book! Thanks Vicki!! ❤️”

Here is the original tweet from 2015.

Thanks to Leesa, I now have that lovely collection, in its gorgeously packaged form courtesy of Gaspereau Press, in my hands. A wee, seemingly ephemeral bit of digital flotsam (sincerely composed and sent, mind you) … turned into beautiful concrete form.

I invite others to do the same. It’s easy to send an observation, a compliment, a thank you out into the ether. It might make just the difference to someone, and might also collectively help to redeem our online commons at a time when we especially need to share beauty, kindness and respect for each other.