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Archive for June, 2011

There’s More

Posted in Uncategorized on June 12, 2011| 1 Comment »


And now
what encloses
the heart—
is it hard
like the stone
inside the plum
or tender
like petals
of a lily
the day
before it opens?

Oh my heart
in hiding,
I know
it is fearsome
to be so
vulnerable
but this
is why
you were made.

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Oh, Said the Student, I See, I Mean I Don’t See

Posted in Uncategorized on June 11, 2011| 2 Comments »

I looked up to see the heron glide
through the sky’s door
and my eyes traced the slate wings
until they disappeared beyond
the crown of cottonwood trees.

In those instants of gazing,
a lifetime? I lifted up, felt my self
as bird, a miracle of flight,
a mastery of wing,
untethered, a cageless thing.

Now I look up, as if by looking
I might induce a return—
see the long crooked neck pulling
the great bird like gray thread
through a blue weave of sky.

I am wanting more lessons
in wing, but the sky unfolds only more sky,
and so I must learn from emptiness—
to quiet, to open, to clear,
to connect in this way with every thing.

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After Basho

Posted in Uncategorized on June 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

Frog pond
the boy drops the camera
plop!

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Praying in the Storm

Posted in Uncategorized on June 9, 2011| 1 Comment »


The storm by its nature wants to move on, and the tree’s grace is that it has no hands. –Mark Nepo, “The Book of Awakening”

Oh hands, you have served me,
have held the slender brush
and slowly stroked the paint

to the wood. You have held
the pen and guided it across
the white emptiness, tracing

the cursive flight of thought.
You have stroked the hair
of the sleepless child and

smoothed the veins in the hands
of the grandmothers. You
have kneaded the bread

to form lattices in the gluten
and pulled endless bindweed
from the garden. Oh hands,

you were of course made
for grasping. To hold the rope
as the body hangs above

the canyon floor. To hold
the oars as the boat moves
through the white chaos of wave.

Oh clutching, oh grappling,
oh reaching ones. Let go,
say the teachers, let go

says the head, but hands,
humble hands, you are only
doing what you were made to do.

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How We Go On

Posted in Uncategorized on June 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

The days follow
each other. We
rise and drink
our tea, we eat

our bread. We
walk and we walk
and though we don’t
stop, the journey

changes. We are
like the river,
pulled along.
No. We are

the perfume
of wild roses—
though the flowers
bloom behind a fence,

their sweetness braids
into the breeze
with a beauty
so ungraspable

even sunlight can’t touch it
and darkness can’t find it,
and mygod, it’s sweet,
incomprehensibly sweet.

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Becoming Increasingly Transparent

Posted in Uncategorized on June 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

This is how
we join
into love

like leaves
adrift
in the desert.

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You Will Understand This Or You Won’t

Posted in Uncategorized on June 6, 2011| 1 Comment »

And then one morning
we wake up dead, or near dead.

The flesh still hangs
on the sticks of our bones,

and our limbs still move,
but. (But what? We are

alive, clearly.
Can leap. Can sit. Can

weep and laugh and
ungrasp, grasp.

But. Where is
the woman that

used to be here?
And where the husk of man?)

There are wings
in the sky,

and we are the sky.
There is stone fruit

on the trees and we are the blooms that were
and the deepening roots and the dead leaves

that shift still across the desert’s gray clay.
And we are the ripening fruit.

And we wake up and tell ourselves,
a miracle will happen.

No, we rethink, a miracle happened.
Yes, says a voice

that is ours and not ours,
a miracle now is happening.

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You Say Science, I Say Miracle

Posted in Uncategorized on June 5, 2011| 3 Comments »

Beneath the weight
of our own shit
we fall, we groan,
we break,
but given
time and
given care
the heart composts
and new love
grows from soil
made richer.

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Though I Still See Work to Do, Rumi Comes In

Posted in Uncategorized on June 4, 2011| 1 Comment »

Today, I ferociously scrub through
the layers of dirt and dust and hair and crumbs
that have gathered as dust and crumbs do.

“You know,” says Rumi,” walking
into the closet, and I jump up like
a startled chicken.

“You know,” he says, “you can make
perfume out of dust in the house of love.”

“But Rumi,” I say, “I am emptying
things—making space.”

Rumi laughs. “No need to scrub
everywhere you go,” he says.

I think he must be wrong, but I nod
anyway, and he motions me to the door.

“Leave the broom and the rag,
and walk into the world, the world
full of dust and dirt and crumbs,” he says.

“But Rumi,” I say, “the drawers
in the kitchen are still full of spilled
salt and flour and the floor
doesn’t shine as I like it to.”

And Rumi gives me a gentle shove
into the day and tells me,
“There is no difference between
leaf and crumb, now go out
and stop this scrubbing and dance.”

I am still thinking that it would
be nice to vacuum under the rugs.

“Go on now,” he says, “Oh,
and Rosemerry, remember to sing.
Everything mirrors everything.”

*With some of Rumi’s quotes inspired by “Is This a Place Where Stories Are Acted Out?” translated by Coleman Barks

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Still Life at Dusk

Posted in Uncategorized on June 4, 2011| 4 Comments »

It happens surprisingly fast,

the way your shadow leaves you.

All day you’ve been linked by

the light, but now that darkness

gathers the world in a great black tide,

your shadow joins

the sea of all other shadows.

If you stand here long enough,

you, too, will forget your lines

and merge with the tall grass and

old trees, with the crows and the

flooding river—all these pieces

of the world that daylight has broken

into objects of singular loneliness.

It happens surprisingly fast, the drawing in

of your shadow, and standing

in the field, you become the field,

and standing in the night, you

are gathered by night. Invisible

birds sing to the memory of light

but then even those separate songs fade,

tiny drops of ink in an infinite spilling.

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