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Archive for November, 2011

Practicing Pigeon: Because What is Brittle Will Break

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

Start on all fours,
placing your hands
below your shoulders,
your knees

below your hips.
Bring your right knee
forward to touch
your right wrist.

Slowly inch your right shin
toward the midline of your body.
Now straighten your left leg
toward the back.

Keep your hips level,
and as they settle
press your fingertips firmly
into the floor.

Now walk your hands forward,
inhale deeply,
and exhale as you fold forward,
lowering your elbows to the floor.

The sensations that flood
your hips might feel great—
or slightly unnerving—
or a combination of the two.

Breathe. Observe
the reactions in your mind.
Let go of them
by relaxing your eyes.

Continue to breathe
into your hips.
Allow your belly to melt.
You’re peeling back layers of tension.

Feel your hips
and your mind soften
Allow waves
to wash over you. 



After the forward bend,
inhale back up.
Press down through your fingertips
and lift your hips.

Take five deep breaths.
Observe how you feel.
There’s no need to attach
any meaning to the sensations.

No need to worry or judge yourself.
Strong as these sensations are,
they’ll soon morph
into different feelings.

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Ouray Hot Spring Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

floating face up
in the black water
aswirl in the milky way—
with so small a breath
the body rises

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In the Coffee Shop

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

How separate we act,
all of us hunched at our own
little tables, rounded over

our thin paper cups,
mumbling into our phones,
or leaning into our laptop screens

or hidden behind the news
stretched out in black and white.
We frown when jostled,

we scowl when bumped,
we grimace at the din
of communion as our

selves steep into the blur—
do you want sugar with that—
it is bitter, the cup, and so

very much what we came here for.

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Tomorrow, Perhaps, My Certainty

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

Lose something every day. —Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”

Strangely, I did not misplace my keys
today, nor did I lose my wallet, though
I often do. But I did lose each passing
hour, a whole day sloped its raffish way
into the doors of now. And is it loss
when I recall the crooked aspen trunks,
how shyly they entwined beside the road?
And is it loss, the berry’s red still clinging
like my red, red thoughts? The darkling sky
is darkling as it will. But dear Ms. Bishop,
I can feel how I am losing who
I thought I was—the glistered dross of self.
I cannot lose it fast enough, but that’s
not how it works. Slow surrender, slow
the letting go. See, my name still sticks.
And I still think it’s me that’s walking up
the river road beside the leafless willows.
Too much left of me, so as you say
I’ll practice losing something every day.

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Hiding in this Cage

Posted in Uncategorized on November 5, 2011| 1 Comment »



Why just ask the donkey in me to speak to the donkey in you when I have so many other beautiful animals and brilliant colored birds inside all longing to say something exciting and wonderful to your heart? —Hafiz

Inside this cage,
a spider is making her way
up the ribs. She can walk out
between the gaps at any time.
She doesn’t think it’s a prison.
To her, this is simply
a place for weaving,
an architecture suited
for stringing silks,
a location she’s chosen
for spinning.

The woman who is the cage,
sometimes she feels the spider inside,
the small steps of the ticklesome legs,
the swirls of the intricate dance.
But most of the time,
it is easier, she finds,
to ignore what is happening inside.

Spinning and spinning, the spider
is weaving a web for the pleasure
of weaving. The web is more space
than substance. It is made not to catch
but to connect. The spider, she steps
through the bars and leaps
with her threads, making visible
the ties to everything else that is.

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And What is it that I Call Mine?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

Not today, I said,
no snacks in the car for kids
who don’t eat their breakfast,
but here, I said,
and extended my empty right hand
to the back seat, Here
are some pretend snacks.
On the radio, Cake
was singing a song
about wanting
to love someone madly
when my son shouted, Mine,
and my daughter burst, Mine,
and a strident battle ensued
and real tears began
to splash on invisible
snacks being snatched
and seized by four empty,
grasping, hands.

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Dear Rumi,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 4, 2011| 3 Comments »

Sometimes I think if the night
were clear enough and the wind
was still, I could see
through all these walls I’ve built
to protect myself—from what?—
and know how to bring them down.
And then I could be open. But tonight
the sky could not be more clear
and there’s no hint of wind
and I still feel in my heart
all the places still clenched and tight.
“Not open, dear, but opening,”
I imagine you might say, reminding me
that open is a verb, not some destination
where I might arrive—
some magical place with a beach and umbrella,
some anywhere I’ve dreamt up
that isn’t wherever I am.
I can laugh kindly at myself when I’m not crying,
or when I’m not trying too hard.
I try too hard. My friend Barbara wrote me
and told me so. My other friend,
Joan, advised me that I would be challenging
wherever I go. They both said it
with so much love that I let their words
wholly in.
The prediction tomorrow
is snow, Rumi, and I will perhaps
be so enthralled or busy with it
that I will be drawn utterly out of my thoughts
of open and opening and how.
But there I go again, planting myself
into the future as if it will be easier
to be present then than it is right now.
Right now, there’s a knocking
in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is.
A heater? The fridge?
And my own heart is knocking
against my chest like a neighbor
who is coming to borrow a cup of sugar
in the middle of the night.
I don’t know, Rumi, why I am writing to you,
except that it feels as if something
has started in my soul, something
I don’t understand. Something more
about forgetting than remembering.
And as you once said to your own teacher Shams,
“You make my raggedness silky.”
I turn to the yes I feel
when I read your words and know
that I know nothing. When I read you
it feels as if the angels that I don’t quite believe in
have come, is that them doing all that knocking?
and those walls I mentioned, well,
I can laugh at them, too, when the doors
I didn’t even know were there
begin by themselves to open.

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What Isn’t Mine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 2, 2011| 1 Comment »


a fifteen-minute sonnet on a title by Veronica Patterson

No not this day with all its sudden snow
and not the sunshine sliding through the white.
Not my children, though I call them mine
and feed them, drive them where they need to go.
My car? It’s in my husband’s name. My home?
The bank owns part of it. The words I write?
I steal from all my heroes. My delight?
I learned it from my mother. There is no
computer, cell phone, cookbook, shirt or cat
that I can point to and say I own that—
for anything I think is mine can steal
away like snow in sun or autumn leaves
in trees. The less I hold the more I feel
whatever owns the trees is living me.

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Rote Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

A is for absolutely
and B is just because
and C is what I forget to do
when I mindlessly follow
to get to the next darn thing.

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Tanka for the Stubborn

Posted in Uncategorized on November 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

When I know,
I am hard, an unmoving stone.
No matter.
The river of days
softens, erodes.

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