It is cold, oh,
it’s so, so cold,
and still the lover
says find the door,
walk out and come
to me. My breath
hangs in the air
between us, then
disappears. I shiver,
and the lover says
take off your clothes
and walk to me.
There are no promises
of warmth. Come here,
says the lover,
and take your time.
This is not how
I pictured it.
Why is it I’m sliding off
first one sock,
then the other,
my skirt, my slip,
my definition of bliss,
and letting them fall
in a heap to the floor.
Where’s the door?
Oh woman, be brave.
And if you cannot
be brave, be foolish.
And if you cannot
be foolish, then
hush and let the legs
just start walking.
Posts Tagged ‘losing the self’
I Say Lover Because I Don’t Know How Else to Say It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged expectation, losing the self, love, poem, poetry on March 24, 2013 | 4 Comments »
Five Lessons in Disappearing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disappearing, haiku, losing the self, poem, poetry, tanka on February 12, 2013 | 4 Comments »
mostly fallen down
the barbed wire fence—
what’s it to the birds?
*
listening
for the moon—
sound of a heart
*
that hyacinth leaf—
staring at it until it is
no longer leaf
*
in the window
the boy waves at himself
saying he won’t stop
until the other boy
stops waving
*
poet, can you rhyme
with the cherry tree
in spring
At the Edge of the Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, losing the self, pinecone, poem, self on January 24, 2013 | 4 Comments »
Like a pinecone
after it’s been trod on
and snowed on and
summered and rained on,
that is how I find myself.
Softer now, and with less
sense of separateness.
The earth has a fine way
of saying here, here.
And gravity, it makes things
so easy. I would not have thought
it sounded so good,
all that wearing down,
lessening to dust.
I could not have imagined
sharing my browns, much less
losing my sharpness, my articulate
serration, spilling my seeds.
Though spilling, that is what seeds
are for. And the opening beyond.
And losing the self, that is perhaps
what a self is for.
Five Reframes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, beginning, haiku, losing the self, name on December 25, 2012 | 2 Comments »
on the wall
those shadows so much larger
than our problems
*
in the frost
on the window she writes
her name
*
recalling all those
prayers
I never learned
*
like a worm in kale,
something nibbling
all night on her dreams
*
air, snow, shadow, wind
she loses any names
she has been given
Do you believe in always, the wind said to the rain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, couplet, infinite, losing the self, rhyme, tetrameter, unlearning on October 12, 2012 | 8 Comments »
—poem on a line from e.e. cummings
Rubble, smoke, sparrow, stone,
she wakes in darkness all alone.
Angel, master, docent, thief,
she wears the scars of love and grief.
Furrow, honey, Chopin, moss,
those are veils that are her loss.
There’s more, there’s more to be undone—
milk, lattice, lily, plum.
While Making Dinner with Rostropovich: Three Haiku and a Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cello, losing the self, loss, music, poem, Rostropovich on June 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »
It is Bach
I tell the broccoli
knife keeps quarter beats
*
all my empty spaces
alive with cello and silence—
every loss
has made it possible
this breathtaking resonance
*
the music touches
me everywhere, everywhere
purple gladiolas
*
in the kitchen
I am being spun, whirling
the cello bows
Six Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, circling, freedom, losing the self, poem, poetry, sound on June 29, 2012 | 5 Comments »
So busy watching my feet
move over the small stones,
dried leaves, paths of ants,
it is a long time before
I see the birds.
*
What is it I am circling?
What is this longing
to name it?
*
The slats of shadow
and light only look
like prisons.
We slide through the bars
like song.
*
The bell does not ring
when we call it bell. It rings
with the playing of it.
*
And what is playing me,
this too-solid bell of a
flesh called woman,
Hollow me, I am
diligently practicing
my one note
in the symphony.
*
All these obstacles,
and still
the unspiraling line.
What Happens When We Sing Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chanting, losing the self, music, poems, poetry, singing on February 15, 2012 | 5 Comments »
In a ring of song
I hear your silence
I breathe in your silence
in a ring of song
I lose my singular voice
and become
what is unwritten,
unwritable, endlessly sung—
in the ring of song
there is no note
not worth singing,
there is no tone that’s wrong
in the ring of song
in the ring of song
the song rises and falls
all around us, it rises
and falls inside of us
I breathe in and pull
into my lungs the song
where it mixes with the unborn song
still forming
on my tongue,
in the ring of song
I am no one and if
I am anyone at all
I am one being sung.
Five Unlearning Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, kiss, letting go, losing the self, mine, poem, possession, relaxing, sky, stars, uncertainty, unlearning, wind on February 4, 2012 | 1 Comment »
That wind always tries
to undress me … today
it took my name, too.
*
It’s hard to be
serious when you’re kissing
my elbows.
*
What’s that? It’s only
supposed to have seventeen
syllables? But the sky today deserves at least twenty-five.
*
Erase the word mine
from these lips. Replace it with
nothing.
*
Tonight the stars
are just stars, the lines that link
them all undrawn.
fifteen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dreams, haiku, lily, losing the self, loss, meditation, moon, parenting, real, snow, stars, sufficient on January 17, 2012 | 5 Comments »
blank field of snow
just after the blizzard
tracked up in minutes
*
driving sixty
while the tears on her cheeks
went eighty
*
these deep scars
I wish I could forget why
you can’t see them
*
even when I sit
very, very still, God sits
stiller
*
the trees pushing green
and in me a longing to
lose everything
*
even though I know
they won’t fit, I try them on
her mood rings
*
those gossamer dreams
when was it that they became
nooses?
*
all I want to know:
when I am with you, can I
be myself?
*
watching that star
I forget which of us
is moving
*
though all the petals
fell, the lily pistil still
dripping
*
come morning my hair
all tangled after a night
of tussling with words
*
no one says to
the lily, hey, one more petal
would look better
*
these haiku
perhaps I can scrawl them on
bits of DNA
*
more poem sprouts?
said the tears—but we just
started plowing
*
quarter moon
the boy says, it’s broken,
mommy fix it?
*
these dead willow sticks
beside me are so beautiful
I am beautiful



