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Archive for August, 2011

At August’s End

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on August 31, 2011| 3 Comments »

We change and change
and change and change
and change

Tell me
how is it that we
are so very much
the same
?

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What’s Real

Posted in Uncategorized on August 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

On a hot summer day
mowing the lawn
I am thinking of

I do not know what,
probably replaying
an old conversation

and thinking of wittier
or more loving things
I could have said.

Instead, I was probably
defensive and small,
so that now, pushing

the mower and trying
to find the cut line,
it is easy to believe

that I could do better
next time I converse,
and just as I think

of the perfect whatever
to say several days ago,
the sting. And sting. Sting.

And I am animal clawing
at air. I run. I swipe my arms
crazed and wild to clear a path

to the door. But the bees
follow me through the yard
and sting me twice more

on the elbow and wrist.
They bit me! I shout,
then correct myself to

the air. They stung me!
The air does not care
what the bees have done

or if I have said it
the way I should.
And I do not practice

new ways of speaking
nor worry one bit
about conversations I

did not have as I pull
out the stingers and
feel as how the body

responds to the venom
as the body does—without
thinking, and my

wrist, elbow, thigh
and inner arch begin
to swell.

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No Garlic Either Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized on August 30, 2011| 2 Comments »

All night my hands
deep in tomatoes
preserving
what is missing
sweet basil.

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Note to Self

Posted in Uncategorized on August 29, 2011| 2 Comments »

Take the picture
from the desk
and put it
in the drawer.
It was true
to a moment
that was before,
but now as
lightning unzips
the sky and now
as the moon
is wholly new
you are no longer
the one the camera knew
with smile aslant
and lashes half-mast
in dreamy fringe.
It’s okay to cry,
to want to grasp—
it’s so human to want
to frame the past
and then attach it
to the fridge or set
it shrine-like on the shelf.
It is not so sad,
tell yourself,
to put the image away.
Notice how
much more you
look out the window.
Notice how much
more you look
at the vase.
And who is
doing the looking?
If sadness comes,
invite it for tea
and drink the dark
cup together. Take
turns sipping, take
your time. You’ll
reach the bottom
soon enough.

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Tanka Not About Carrots

Posted in Uncategorized on August 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

They are too fat,
too woody, and too far gone
these carrots I
have so patiently
been waiting to dig.

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Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized on August 26, 2011| 2 Comments »

Running on the long
dirt road, it is four miles
before my mind
slows down enough
to join my body.

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What are we left with?

Posted in Uncategorized on August 26, 2011| 1 Comment »

We are all left with the necessary risk to starve the ego—that in us which believes it can control the world—so that the unseeable music of being may rise and carry us.
—Mark Nepo, Book of Awakening

In the sand
my daughter digs
a hole. I help her,

absently pawing
at the ground.
Our hole deepens.

There are no thoughts
that stick, except
perhaps that the softness

of sand under
my fingertips
is pleasant.

I realize she’s changed
the game to
fill the hole.

It is a moment
before I join her.
I am still in the routine

of scraping out.
How soon
a habit forms.

So we fill. And pile.
And soon it is time
for digging again.

It goes on this way, and on,
only I no longer resist
the transitions from digging

to filling, from doming
to digging. I scrape sand roads
from one mound

or ditch to another.
A whole day could blisslfully pass
this way. But it doesn’t.

After an hour, I tell
her it’s time to go,
some hole I’ve dug

for myself, this filling
in slots of time with
things to do. But

the sand follows
us home and empties
onto the closet floor,

streaming from
the small pink hourglass
of her shoe.

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After Forty One Years

Posted in Uncategorized on August 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

All night, all day, angels watching over me my lord.
—Traditional lullaby

If they were there today
at the waterfall, the angels
perhaps thought to themselves,
Ah, we can rest. Look. She’s
finally learning to sit.
They maybe were hiding
in the clear, frigid fringe,
or in the heart-shaped cress
that clung to the cliff. I did not
see them. I never do. Nor
did I hear them, but if they
were there I imagine
that while I sat
and obeyed the stillness
that was opening in me,
the angels were cheering
and patting each other
on their winged backs before
finding a nice mossy ledge
to take a long awaited nap.

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Of Yard Work and Heart Work Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized on August 23, 2011| 1 Comment »

Farewell to simply
flirting with the pond—
Kersplash!

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Encouragement for More Shedding Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized on August 23, 2011| 1 Comment »

Naked
in the midnight kitchen
the peach
before it’s minced for jam
begins to glisten

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