In every moment, there is a car
and an infinite hill and the chance
you will roll down that hill. With no brakes.
Backwards. When grief first yanked me
into its old beater, I was too stunned
to try to stop gravity from doing what
gravity does. Mostly, these days,
I forget what can happen. Mostly,
there’s a rope attached to the car
that keeps it from careening, a rope
made of friendship, of family,
of trust in the self that has grown over time.
The rope is a lovely illusion.
Sometimes I fool myself into believing
that the stability I feel is because
the brakes are fixed and I’ve become
better at parking, even in the steepest zones.
I fool myself into thinking the rope can’t be cut.
That is why, perhaps, it’s so surprising
when I feel the lurch, my stomach rising
into my chest. So surprising to see loss
is sitting in the driver’s seat looking
at me with its uncompromising gaze
as if to say, No, sweetheart,
that seatbelt won’t do you any good.
If you pray, now’s a good time for that—
but don’t bother to pray for the car
to stop. Pray to be able to laugh
as we speed down the hill.
Pray that as the world blurs by,
while terror squeezes your throat
what is most alive in you also notices
how radiant the sunset, how briefly
it shines, that tender pink.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, car, control, grief, safety | Leave a Comment »
after “Flower in a Field” by Dario Cvencek
A mother is still a mother
even in an empty house,
even when there’s not a child
hanging on her hip or leg,
she’s still a mother even when
the floors are clean, devoid
of Legos and Monopoly houses.
Even when silence
fills the spaces where once
rang laughter, crying, singing,
even when the cake stays exactly
where she left it in the fridge,
when her car doesn’t leave the drive
for days because no one needs
to be taken to school or to dance.
Even then, she’s a mother,
when the phone doesn’t ring,
when her child can no longer
walk in the room, can’t say hello,
can’t even breathe, even then,
even then when there is no damn way
she can care for her child, that sad
fact does not change the fact
that she’s a mother, just as a tree
in the field is no less tree when the saplings
that came from its seeds are cut down,
just as a happy memory might still
make you happy even if it arrives
amongst tears. She is no less a mother
when the only thing that fills her arms
is tenderness for other mothers with
empty arms, when instead of holding
anyone, she lets herself be held.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged grief, loss, mother, mother's day | 5 Comments »
That women can run for office and win.
That a song is a great way to wake a child.
That, in fact, there is a song for every
moment of the day, from packing a picnic,
to washing your hair, to saying yes when
you ought to say no.
That scrambled egg sandwiches
are a fast and easy meal
and fresh herbs make everything taste better.
That it’s worth staying up way too late
if it means you can get to the last page
of your book.
To write handwritten thank you letters
for just about everything.
To make your bed every morning.
That my body is not a machine
and it matters that I care for it.
That it’s nice to have just the right glass
for drinking water or wine or tea.
She taught me to learn new games,
to make new friends, to try new foods,
to enjoy growing old.
That it matters to say grace
every time you sit to eat.
That no matter how different our values, our votes,
there is always a foundation for love.
That if I lived a thousand lifetimes,
in every one, I would choose her as a mom.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged mom, mother's day | 4 Comments »
for Noah Hoffeld
With the long slow pull and push
of the bow on the strings
in so few notes he carries
the unsayable into the room
till the air rhymes with loss
and honey and amethyst sky
and every verb I’ve ever known
slips out of the clunky shoes of its syllables
to sit at the foot of the cello
saying, “teach me.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cello, music, poem, rhyming | 6 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged concrete poem, garden, glen velez, gong, music, silence | 5 Comments »
Over four years after his death,
I still sleep with Skinny Puppy, the lovey
my boy treasured and slept with each night,
even into high school. Flat with no stuffing,
a soft square body with a small round head.
Every night in the dark, I tuck its worn,
brown fabric beneath my left arm,
let it nestle up against my heart.
Every morning, it’s still there.
I make it into the bed. I feel no shame
in wanting its slight weight against me.
Such simple comfort.
Not that I need an object for him to be with me.
I carry him inside. Close as breath.
But four years after his death, I like
the reminder he was here. I like
to remember how he loved soft things.
How he was capable of such tenderness
in the ways he held the world,
this world that could not manage to hold him.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged grief, stuffed animal, toy | 4 Comments »
Just because it is simple doesn’t mean you
can depend on good results. There are tricks
to make sure they pop. Preheat the buttered
pan at 450 degrees. Bring the eggs to room
temperature. Whirl them with salt till the whole
mixture froths. Warm the milk, but not too hot.
Melt the butter. Be stingy with flour. Mix only
as long as it takes to sing the first verse of Blackbird.
But do not invite guests to show off your prowess,
to boast how light, how airy, how balloon-ish-ly
your popovers rise. Pride will slip in and spoil
the batch. Pride, an ingredient so strong even
what’s foolproof goes flat. And even if the popovers rise,
that pride, oh my friend, you’ll taste it. You’ll taste it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged baking, humility, instructions, popovers, pride | 3 Comments »
Just let the world amaze you.
—Augusta Kantra
I want to know these brittling bones
and sleepless nights as transformation,
my life an expression of the fundamental power
that drives the universe to dramatically change—
as bud becomes bloom becomes fruit
becomes soil; as star dust becomes
protoplanetary disks becomes asteroids
become planets; as girl becomes woman becomes
slower till she’s silence. As dinosaurs become fossils
and dodos become story. All transforms.
With no end, the universe remakes itself out of itself
again and again and again. Looking in the mirror,
I see in these wrinkles the chaos of early Earth
barraged by space rocks, then a million years
of rain, rain, rain, that somehow evolved
into this world of earthworms, and aspen leaves,
the spiraling song of canyon wren,
silk worms, pianos, cardamom tea, age spots,
night sweats, gray hair, cellular senescence,
and I entirely belong to this wild miasma
that is ever becoming, each morning,
each wrinkle a kind of transcendence,
a path to a place I’ve never been.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, transformation | 18 Comments »
More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, impossible, love, mother, prom | 3 Comments »