flowers gone
the hummingbird tries to find
nectar in my scarf
*
wounds in unkissable
places—still these eager
lips
Archive for September, 2012
Two Searchings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, poem, poetry on September 20, 2012| 2 Comments »
Oh World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of self, poem, poetry, self, silence, unknowing, unraveling, words on September 19, 2012| 6 Comments »
Oh world, I love you,
you with your roots
that thrust up through pavement,
you with your mudflows
and rockfalls and storms.
See how daily you feed
and destroy me. How
gorgeous your fruits,
how merciless your gravity.
I love you, world, how
you make me and fuel me
and undo me again and again. Always
another death to die
and always a new bloom.
Never the same, always
the same. World, it feels
too proud to say I am you,
you with your splendor,
you with your grace.
I am dust and ashes.
You move me, adventure me.
World, thy will be done.
My problems are not problems.
My laws all are nonsense.
My rules, my dreams are cages.
Sometimes I forget to let you
raze me. I try to wrestle
the club from your hands.
And when the destruction
is done, I try to rebuild the walls,
not seeing you were offering me
infinity. Sometimes you first bring me milk,
then tear me down tenderly,
your hands the hands of a lover
undressing me slowly, but not
stopping with the scarf, the skirt—
taking also every idea I have,
every certainty, every word,
everything I would say is mine.
World I am rambling through
the silence you hold for me.
I am like a woman dying of thirst
who splashes the water with eager hands
instead of cupping it, raising it to her parched lips.
Oh world, I am losing my mind
and laughing about it. All language
is dust, and look, you blow it away.
Still I am talking to you, crazy,
I love you, I love you. Come wind,
catch these words, rend them
from the one who thinks
she is speaking. Let them fall
all around her like leaves.
Crawdadding with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged crawdad, letting go, love, nature, pain, parenting, poem, poetry on September 18, 2012| 3 Comments »
All objects in existence are wildly in love.
—Meister Eckhart
Always, they claw at the world.
They can’t help it. They were given
two pincers and hard, hard shells.
They ripen into harder shells,
their clasp become more powerful.
They hurt more the larger they are.
This does not look to me like love.
I think of Eckhart’s saying as I stand beside the pond.
But my boy, he holds them in his open palm,
lets them pinch his thumb, his eyes
widen in pain, and he gently extracts them,
throws them back. And does it again.
This, now this looks like love, I think,
watching the water for the skitter,
the settling, the mirror of the pond as it stills.
A Little Air Poetry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged air poetry, chairlift, cursing, f word, found poem, kissing, parenting on September 18, 2012| 2 Comments »
check out this website devoted to found poems … today they published a poem of mine overheard on the chairlift last year …
Long Time Coming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, autumn, change, evolution, fall, poem, poetry, stillness on September 17, 2012| 5 Comments »
Just this morning
the leaves were green
in this stand of aspen
that now flash gold—
it happens that fast,
though of course
there is nothing
quick about it.
It took a whole season
to grow the leaf
and nurture it into
brilliance. And
it took decades
to grow the tree that grew
the leaf. And what
of evolution? Oh patience.
Perhaps this is why
on the woman who’s finally learning
how to sit still beside the leaves
there’s a bit of salt water
sliding down her skin.
The Fall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, love, poem, poetry on September 16, 2012| 2 Comments »
All your wounds, I want
to kiss them, all the places
chafed, strafed, shattered,
clawed at or raw. Anywhere
you’ve bled, I will mingle my blood
with yours. Wherever you are sore,
let me knead you. Wherever you ache,
I offer balm. Let me cradle you,
hold you, hum to you, know you.
I cannot heal you, can’t whole you,
can’t help. But I can love you
in your brokenness. Now is the time
for love. No one can love without
breaking, dear. Come. The flowers
are fading. We’re all we have.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, uniqueness, unity on September 15, 2012| 1 Comment »
you and I
in a field of white daisies
not one of them alike
but you and I
are
Spiraling Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hand, love, poem, poetry, tanka on September 14, 2012| 2 Comments »
here, darling, here
is my so open hand, waiting
for you to write
a thousand secrets, your tears,
your scent, your hum the ink
Trying to Make Myself Relax
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, letting go, not trying, poem, poetry, surrender, trying on September 13, 2012| 2 Comments »
It’s like trying
to fall asleep.
Nothing to be done
except lay there
and let sleep
come do the work.
But who wants
to hear that?
We want to know
what to do.
One tiny pill.
Ten easy steps.
Three simple tips.
But nothing to do?
Immediately
the mind says,
okay, I will
not try even harder.
This is when,
I would guess,
the soul is laughing
its best belly laugh, watching
the mind grasping
at how not to grasp.
But there is grace.
And there is exhaustion.
Both work in our favor.
Sometimes it happens,
I wear myself out,
and too tired to pull out
any more tricks,
I notice that I
have forgotten
to remember to
struggle, and how
easy it is then
to see god in everything,
even the anger,
even the clench,
forgetting even
to despise frustration,
forgetting even
not to try.
Release
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, flow, letting go, poem, river, surrender on September 12, 2012| 3 Comments »
Something softens when we enter the flow.
—Joi Sharp
Not that I didn’t try to find the shore.
I scraped at the stones, grasping as I passed,
clawing until my fingers bled. Not that I didn’t try
to stall in the eddy where I spiraled down,
down. I tried. I tried. What if, instead, I had
fallen in love with the angry swirl, fallen in
love with the waves’ white froth, fallen in love
with the chill, the roil. It did not last, the chaos. It delivered
me to the warm quiet water that also did not last.
At one point, though, it happened, through no effort
of my own, the small unvoice in me began to whisper,
world I love you, world I love you, world I love
you I said to the rocks, to the shore, to the heron
standing in the center of the stream as I passed.