reading again
that yellowing letter
you never sent me
Archive for November, 2012
Dear Rosemerry Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, letter, memory, nostalgia, poem, poetry, time on November 29, 2012| 7 Comments »
Wild Rose Reads Tricycle Magazine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged buddhism, patience, persona, poem, poetry, sarcasm, suffering on November 29, 2012| 4 Comments »
We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop.
—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Be Grateful to Everyone”
See how lucky you are
that I’ve brought you
these baskets of woe.
It is your blessing
that I am stubborn,
that I cannot fix
my own car, that
I would rather write poems
than sweep or dust.
That habit I have
of interrupting you,
that is your benefit.
My aversion to bathing,
your good fortune.
How else would you grow
if I did not break your heart?
But it is not to annoy you
that I am myself. Nor is it
malicious that I am always
the last person to leave
a party. That I stay up
too late. That I lied.
It’s just that you’re lucky,
such fortune, such luck,
all these baskets of woe
I serve you every day.
Somewhere in Cygnus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, solar system, sun, unity, unknowing on November 27, 2012| 3 Comments »
Just before sleep,
my son says he heard
about a solar system
with three suns.
I try to imagine
the gravity of it,
wonder how
it might change
our ideas of god
not to mention love
if we, too, looked up
and saw all that light.
check it out here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050715222557.htm
The Morning After My Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, grace, gratitude, life, living, parenting, poem, poetry on November 27, 2012| 8 Comments »
The day after I die,
I wake up a little late.
The sun is already
thick in the air—see it
glitter, all that dust I didn’t dust
before I died. I do not
dust it this day, either.
Nor do I worry
that I have not dusted.
I notice I have hands.
They are heavy
on my belly, my chest.
I rise. There is no
special exuberance
in the rising, though
it is a miracle. All day
I marvel. It is very quiet,
this grace. I saw myself
leaving these rooms,
this place. Yet death
came and went and
there is breakfast
to make and a job
to do and a hum
to be hummed by and later
this night when
my daughter comes
to me in her silky
pink Dora pajamas and
lifts up her arms,
she says into my neck,
I wish that my room
was farther away
because I like it when
you carry me and I
can pretend I
am asleep in your arms.
She pretends she is
asleep all the short way
to her bed, but when
I lay her there, she begins
to laugh and kick. Is this
what I have been doing
all my life, pretending
I am asleep? I lay with her
a long time, held by
invisible forces I could
perhaps explain but
do not understand.
All day, no one noticed
I had died. It’s not
that I was trying to hide
it. It must have been
all that life still falling
out of my pockets,
not that I was saving
it on purpose, just
that it was there
for the living.
Doce Pequeños de Nicaragua
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, Nicaragua, poem, poetry, travel, unknowing on November 25, 2012| 4 Comments »
One day, el escorpion.
Another day, la tarantula.
I learn quickly
to watch
where I step.
*
Settling into
this routine: just another
perfect sunset.
*
Red and voluptuous
this flower
in the wetlands.
We ask the guide
its name.
Labia de puta,
he says,
then translates
with his blush.
*
The bird
I cannot see
gives me its song.
I give it
my silence.
*
That white-faced monkey,
that cucaracha, that sparrow, that stone—
always meeting myself.
*
Never again to return
to the waterfall
cold rush of clear
I die a small death.
The trail away from
is worn the same
as the trail toward.
Not emptiness but
spaciousness grows
around the loss.
They are the same,
only not the same.
In the growing space,
a parade of ants
marches past, the cut leaves
on their backs
still bright green.
*
The waves roll my body
into the sand and
away again.
Above me,
the vultures slow
their circling,
their heads
so pink against the blue.
They know
the time will come
soon enough.
*
a leaf falls—
all the arguments
I never had
*
Oh child of Colorado
crying for the mountains,
do you not feel
how the dark sand
makes space for
your every step?
*
Mama, she says,
it hurts when I touch here.
There is a bruise
on her leg
where she ran into her bed.
I consider telling her
the obvious—
Then don’t touch it, darling.
With my heart,
I touch those old thoughts.
I tell her, I know, querida,
just what you mean.
*
in the estuary
the only alligator
the one in my mind
*
I want ask him
what is it like
to live in one place
all your life.
What is it like
to know one
kind of food,
to hear one kind
of music
to make one kind of life.
I want to know
how to say
pleasure in his language,
and is it a word
he often would use.
He tells me
about what we see
out the window.
Trigo. Sorghum.
Platanos. Melon.
I nod and smile,
understanding
so little of what he says.
I want to ask
if the women
here are happy,
if people listen,
if he wonders
about who he is.
Instead, I say,
Que bonita,
esta isla donde vive.
Taking a Technology Break
Posted in Uncategorized on November 14, 2012| 1 Comment »
Hi friends of A Hundred Falling Veils …
I will be taking a technology break and will not post for a couple weeks. Back on Monday, November 26.
many blessings to you and thanks for your joining in the poetry conversation,
Rosemerry
Where the Light Comes In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, allowing, loss, love, poem, poetry on November 14, 2012| 3 Comments »
Perhaps we could have
seen it coming. That’s
what everyone likes
to say after the world
changes. But there
are things we cannot see,
losses we cannot foretell.
And the world is always
changing, My friend Barry
writes, it is easy to be
an addict of losses,
defining ourselves
by what isn’t there.
And then we tell
the endless versions
of what if and if only and
hush. That’s enough.
Nothing lasts. Not
the glittering rime
on the willows. Not
the lovers lips, not the crystal
dish. Even the longing
we knew would last
shifts. How we love
to visit the ruins. Here,
come walk with me the paths
of this still breaking heart.
Owl, Coyote, Roadkill Snake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, poem, poetry, self, silence, story, unity, who am I on November 13, 2012| 3 Comments »
I used to think
we were
our stories.
Now, I believe
in something
more spare,
stripped of
plot
and title
and character.
Still something
in you touches
something
in me. It’s more
in the silence,
though,
more in the way
the light
makes a nest
of your hand.
Dear Julie,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged epistle, friendship, hearlng, Julie Cummings, love, memory, poem, poetry on November 12, 2012| 3 Comments »
All day the snow has been melting.
This morning, my son said, “It’s like
a big battle between two forces,
the cold and the warm. Which one
do you think will win, Mom?”
You and I both know no one wins.
I’ve been thinking so much
about your ear—the unexpected
rupturing. This is when it is hard
to be so far away. I would like
to be near you to say soothing things
in your other ear. Not promises, of course.
But poems.
The other day I was driving home
through the eastern part of the state.
There is nearly nothing there but road
for miles and miles and miles. Nothing,
and a wire fence to hold back
all that nothing. It was a wonderful
place to think of nothing, but
my mind kept returning instead
to the day when we walked
along the Platte and said
hello to everyone we passed.
So few of them said
hello back.
Why do we remember
what we do? How could we
have known that day would be the one
that would become a jewel in our minds.
Why that day ,wading at the confluence
and posing like statues against a wall,
when there have been so many
other days brilliant days together?
Today, it was brilliant, surely,
but I’d be surprised if I remembered it
years from now. Luster in the trees
and the scent of pumpkin pie in the air.
I swear all of main street smelled of spice.
What I would like to remember, though,
is that this is the day that your hearing
began to come back, only that’s not
what you said in your message.
Remember how we laughed
when the people we greeted
pretended that they could not hear us?
But I hear you, Julie, I hear you
most days, even from far away.
It’s not a phrase or word that I hear,
just the ring of your being. Rilke says that what
batters you becomes your strength.
I might whisper that line in your one
good ear. Or I might just whisper
your name the way the sun says
“World, I am here to warm you,”
the way the cold says, “Snow,
I am here to keep you whole.”
Yours,
Walking on the Platte with Rachel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camel spider, fear, loneliness, love, poem, poetry, Rachel Kellum on November 11, 2012| 3 Comments »
This is what loneliness is like.
You spotted it on the side of the path,
scuttling under November’s dead grass.
What is that? you said.
It was small. Primitive.
Scorpion-like. A gray abdomen
and albino head, and ten segmented
albino legs, or were there really ten?
It moved so fast we could not count.
What is that? I said, in agreement
with you, knowing I could not identify
the thing. And why is it chasing me?
I said, half laughing, half terrified.
It can be so small, the things that scare us.
How I edged away to avoid the unknown.
How we laughed as I nearly sprinted away from the thing.
It kept running after me until at last it stopped,
reared up on its back legs and opened
its four tiny ruby tipped pincers.
How we gasped in, what, disgust?
Amazement? Fear laced with pleasure
in the newness of the thing?
The whole rest of our walk, it still followed
me in my mind. I thought of you
there in a town that is eating you alive.
I thought of love and how after forty years
we still don’t know what it means.
I thought of our shadows, how they
layered on top of each other against the walk
when we sat in the weak sun beside the dead roses.
I thought of how it lunged for my shadow,
that thing. How ugly it was. How I longed
to name it. Later, you called to tell me
it was a camel spider, not a spider
at all but a solpugid. Isn’t is strange
how we misname the things that frighten us
the most? You said that the small creatures
favor the dark, and they’re known for following
people to hide in their shadow. It was not
chasing me, but wanted reprieve from the light.
This is what loneliness is like. The camel spiders
seldom bite humans, you read, and if they do, they have
no venom. But still people are afraid.
Sometimes we surrender our loneliness
too quickly. I don’t know what I am saying.
I’m saying that they can be difficult, these days.
check out this crazy critter here: http://www.badspiderbites.com/camel-spider/
Not in the Looking But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being vs. doing, god, housework, poem, poetry on November 11, 2012| 6 Comments »
A woman spends her life looking for God.
Well, actually, she doesn’t. She spends
her life doing dishes. Sweeping floors.
Folding laundry. Sometimes she wonders
if there is a god and if it is possible there
is not. And then she wonders if there
is enough peanut butter to make
the children’s lunch. Sometimes
when she is quiet there is something
she cannot express. It is something like
blackness. It is something like nothing.
It is something that she can lean into
until she remembers the bread needs
to come out of the oven. Why does she feel
it, this tug toward that nothing? And
why does she vacuum on top of it?
There are bills to be paid. Errands
to run. Bottoms to wipe. She makes a
whole to do list of excuses not to find
out what is there. Sometimes she feels
something. A certain uncertain, what?
And then it slips between the books
on the shelf that she has forgotten
again to dust.
Brush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eternity, mortality, poem, poetry, self, soul, unity on November 10, 2012| 2 Comments »
The rose petals are gone.
No way to know now
what color they were.
The only perfume here
the scent of November.
The rose hips are dried,
splayed into brown stars.
I once thought that I
could bloom forever.
In our hands the leaves
crinkle and crush.
This is what we were born
for. To grow. To fall.
To know ourselves as dust.
How I Came to Be More Open to You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, grace, love, mother, poem, poetry, wall on November 9, 2012| 2 Comments »
for my mom
It was not
that I had a magic key.
No wrecking ball.
No crow bar.
No axe.
I suppose
it’s not even
that the walls
between us
were torn down.
It’s just that
one day
I forgot
to build them.
Higher Math
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, unity on November 7, 2012| 2 Comments »
Two flames
become one
fire, two drops
become one water,
two breaths become
one air, two stones
become one sand,
two grains bake
one bread, two
lovers make
one life
but there
are so many more
than two
and now
we get
to learn
what else
a flame, a drop,
a breath, a grain,
a love can do.
What We Call Waiting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, election, peace, poem, poetry, uncertainty, unknowing, waiting on November 6, 2012| 2 Comments »
And then there is
that moment after
the thrust and jostle
and sprint, after the longing
and righteousness, after the fever,
the furor, the fire, the conviction, when,
burnt out by our own
red ferocity, we see
there is nothing, nothing
to be done. There is
no defeat in this,
only release,
Then only
uncertainty is sound
enough to hold us up.
Then unknowingness is the only
place we can truly rest.
drought
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged drought, poem, poetry, rain, responsibility, self realization on November 5, 2012| 2 Comments »
not for days
not for weeks
not for years
has rained
oh the dust
the dust
on everything
that leaf
that stone
this heart
what just one rain
would do,
I think
knowing
even as
I shake
my hands
at the sky
that I
am
the rain
Cutting Through the Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, crow, god, poem, poetry, silence on November 4, 2012| 7 Comments »
No words so perfect
as the crow.
Although I try.
to verbalize
the changing color
of its eyes,
the widening circles
of its calls,
the syllables
deny me. Only
crows can fly
on wings so black
they’re light. And words,
well I adore
those, too, the wrestling
with, the humbling
by, but moreso
I do love
(oh hush)
the crow.
song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alleluia, poem, poetry, praise on November 2, 2012| 3 Comments »
it may
be bent
and cracked
this alleluia
but I
am not
done
yet
with
praise
Driving Late Night with Vivian Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of self, love, parenting, play, poem, self, teaching, unlearning on November 1, 2012| 4 Comments »
Mommy, she says,
I can see right through myself.
What do you see,
I ask.
I see the night,
she says.
Are there stars,
I ask.
She pauses long.
Yes.
And then a few moments later
she says, Mom, I’ve disappeared.
How do they do it,
these young ones,
teach us to be
so wholly here.