After dragging
those heavy things
on its back
for miles and miles
across the desert
at last the bird
looks up and says
something’s not
quite right about this
pilgrimage.
Archive for October, 2012
Step One
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, poem, poetry, waking up, wings on October 31, 2012| 2 Comments »
I Know It Ain’t Easy, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fussy, love, poem, poetry, unloveable on October 29, 2012| 7 Comments »
Fussy
bleary,
wiped out,
wary,
mussed,
tired,
rankled,
taut,
I am
riled up
and lost,
and now
at my zenith
of unloveableness,
now is when,
though I could
not possibly
ask you
to show it,
now’s when
I need you
to love
me
the most.
Can’t Understand It But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, opposites, paradox, poem, poetry, unity on October 28, 2012| 2 Comments »
God turns you from one feeling to another
and teaches by means of opposites,
so that you will have two wings to fly,
not one.
–Rumi
I am stone and I am river.
I am here and I am gone.
I am the apple and the hunger.
I am lost and I am found.
I am harlot and the pure one.
I am chosen. I’m tossed out.
I am mystery and revelation.
I am certainty and doubt.
I’m the one you love,
you hate me, too,
I am leaf and the space
where the leaf once was.
I am thief and I restore things.
I am the anchor and the wave.
And I am the song, the song
that stays in your mind
long after you’ve told it to leave.
And I am the silence, the silence
you welcome and the silence you fill
with anything, anything
just to keep the silence away.
I am not myself.
I am more you than I am me.
And we, we are flying,
we are flying, love,
we are the sky, we are the wings.
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, aging, mothering, parenting, poem, poetry, self love, softness on October 27, 2012| 5 Comments »
Bless the softness of the body,
and bless how I have struggled so long
against being soft. I have tried to be hard,
to be firm, to be fit, to be thin, I have tried
to disappear. And after the hiking, the climbing,
the swimming, the crunching, the pushing
the lifting, the drive, comes
softness. Comes breathing,
the whole soft body breathing,
belly and chest and cheek and neck,
in and out, so softly, pure gift, with
no effort of my own. Comes softness.
My daughter this morning curls her small weight
into me and I try to make myself softer,
softer than that, soft enough
to embrace the growing miracle.
I have tried to be something other
than soft, and now, by grace, I am learning to soften,
to appreciate softening, oh beautiful
softness, oh softness I’ve hated,
I am learning to bless what is soft.
What We Do When We Can Do Nothing Else
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, hardship, love, poem, poetry, sadness, support, trouble on October 26, 2012| 2 Comments »
What We Do When We Can Do Nothing Else
When trouble comes
with its long gray dress
and its hungry eyes
and its basket of woe,
when trouble comes
with its insomnia
and note past due
that you know you can never pay,
when trouble comes
with its refusal to let you
be bailed out this time
no matter how crisp
the hundreds are,
I do not want to be
the one who lies to you
and says it will all be okay.
I don’t want to play
the teacher and talk
about how the world
erodes us until we shine.
I want to be the one
who holds your hand,
though, even if it is
from many hundreds
of miles away, and
even if you do not hear me
say it, I will be thinking,
miracles happen,
and you are one.
I will write you a poem
made of doors, all
of them open,
even the one
that trouble walks in,
even the one
that trouble walks out.
Taking a Sip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry, self, slow motion, thinking on October 25, 2012| 4 Comments »
I wrap my hand
around the glass.
I am two again,
walking in Seattle
with my mother.
Do I really remember
walking up and down
all those stairs, or is it
just the aphoto
and her retelling of it
that I remember?
Why do I think of it now?
I raise the glass.
from the table.
Outside, the trees
are nearly bare.
Autumn is visiting.
I wonder why
the leaves on the tips
are last to go.
Or do they do that only here?
It rises a little more.
Why do we
speak to each other
like this,
in voices I don’t recognize.
Who is she, this woman,
lifting the glass?
The water
meets her lips
just as I think
how thirsty
I am.
Wild Rose Goes to a Meeting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, poem, poetry on October 24, 2012| 7 Comments »
Wild Rose is not in any hurry.
She looks up at the speeding clouds
and builds castles in the sky.
There is a meeting in five minutes.
Wild Rose doesn’t own a watch.
She builds another castle with her eyes.
She is cross town from the meeting room.
She could make it on time if she tries.
So Wild Rose walks slow. Then slower.
She pauses to wave as cars drive by.
There’s a millipede on the sidewalk.
She adores long insects with many legs.
She sits right down beside it
and watches as it slowly, slowly
makes it to the sidewalk’s edge.
Wild Rose smells apple crisp
baking in somebody’s kitchen.
She feasts for two minutes on the cinnamon scent.
She takes fifteen steps before
she hears from a window
her favorite song by her favorite band.
Wild Rose stops and sways her hips.
The tune bursts like fireworks in her head.
She tells the passers by to shush
so she can better hear the end.
She listens to the next song, too.
and asks a stranger to dance.
Wild Rose remembers her meeting.
She thinks, I should waste time more often.
Three Continuations
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking open, haiku, loss, poem, poetry, prayer, release on October 23, 2012| 4 Comments »
losing all my leaves
I did not yet know I would
lose my roots too
*
chipped, this cup,
the wine in it
tastes no worse
*
chanting to the sky
long after the prayer ends
these hands still raised
Letter to Valerie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, friendship, loss, poem, poetry, Valerie Haugen on October 22, 2012| 2 Comments »
Dear Valerie,
Even the late flowers have gone to seed.
Asters, rabbit brush, cattails—all
have gone to creamy froth.
Even the grasses have lost their seeds.
Slender. Barren. Stark.
It is the season of loss.
But there is so much more to speak of. Honey,
for instance. Oh thank you for your poem this morning.
All day the honey shared between poets has been at the tip
of my memory. It’s so fine to have something sweet
to return to. So often it’s bitterness that sticks.
Today, I gave a book to a girl. A book about princesses.
On page two, a dragon came to the princess’s kingdom
and blew flames strong enough to burn down
her castle, her clothes, her gardens, her trees. The girl
I gave it to was so distressed, she dropped the book in the doorway,
ran to her room, hid beneath her pillow, and for ten minutes
into her mattress screamed, No, No, No, No, No.
It did not matter to her that by page 16, the princess
had outsmarted the dragon. She could not move
past the initial loss. I felt terrible for giving her the story,
of course, and sat with her while she sobbed.
How many dragons have we known, Valerie?
How many kingdoms have we watched burn down?
How many pages have we left unturned, too afraid
to see what comes next?
I do not know your dragons, but I feel them in your poems,
feel between your lines the fire of their ferocious, merciless breath.
It is odd how little we know each other, and how intimate
still we are. Both of us ravaged, we come together
dressed in nothing but paper bags.
The grasses, the ones that have dropped their seeds,
they are so beautiful. If we lived closer, I would pick them for you.
Though spare, though dry, they are the color of honey.
And the cattails, I would give you them, too.
When the sun is low, it shines through their tops
until they are wholly illumined. Like candles, only entirely aflame.
What if we are like the cattails, Valerie, and the sun
is the dragon’s fire. And the more we fall apart,
the more beautiful we are.
There are so many mountains between us,
but it is not so far as I think.
See how your seeds, they’ve planted themselves
in my garden. I will nurture them until
the dragon comes again.
Yours,
Rosemerry