before the rose
has even bloomed, already
lamenting its loss
Archive for April, 2013
haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, human nature, loss, poem on April 30, 2013| 2 Comments »
Perhaps Easier to Say When It’s Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, darkness, light, poem, poetry, story on April 29, 2013| 1 Comment »
When it’s dark,
we tell ourselves
any story we can
about the return
of the light. Say
there’s a mother
grieving her daughter
who’s lost
to an underground king.
Say there’s a sister
who hides in a cave
fearing her brother
the god of storms.
Say that through lures
or begging, the girls
are returned, they
bring light
in their wake.
Use history. Say
the light’s always
come back before.
Use science. Say
it has something
to do with the tilt
and the turn and the rate.
Get fierce. Say you’ve seen
enough of hate.
Get desperate. Say
it takes only a crack.
Start chanting. Start
dancing. Bake cakes
filled with cream.
Give your blood. Give
money. Give any offering.
Or taste the darkness.
Begin to know it as itself,
not as the lack of light.
Let it touch you everywhere.
Let it touch your everywhere else.
Feel how infinite it is.
Say nothing. Get quieter.
Be very curious.
What If Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, fear, haiku, love, poem, poetry on April 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
standing on the stoop
of your heart, too scared
to ring the bell
Chasing Lizards with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged catching, letting go, owning, parenting, poem, poetry on April 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
C’mon mom, he says,
let’s find another,
and for an hour
we scour the slot canyon walls
for another lizard to chase.
I point out two here
on the blonde rock.
One here on the red shelf.
I can’t help but hope
they escape.
I don’t have to hope
too hard.
The boy is clumsy
with his two legs,
his lack of tail.
The lizards evolved
in this vertical world.
They scale the walls or find
the smallest cracks
where even tiny fingers
cannot reach.
How many things
have I chased
for the pleasure
of chasing? Some strange
joy in the unattaining of things.
And how many things
have I caught
and reveled in the catching
and soonly forgot.
Finn wedges himself
in the chimney of rock
and reaches for the tail
that slips beyond his hands.
The sky, has it ever been
this blue? I let it catch me
here between the mormon tea
and the warm, red sand.
To the Person Who Stole the Paper Wasp Nest from my Dashboard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, mothering, paper wasp, poem, poetry, theft on April 26, 2013| 1 Comment »
It wasn’t mine, either.
My son found it this winter
on the orchard floor.
The orchard wasn’t ours anymore.
But when we left from visiting the new owners,
we put the thin celled scrap
on the dash of my car
and left it there.
The wasps, it wasn’t really theirs, either.
They gathered the fibers
from dead wood and plant stems
and mixed it with their saliva.
And I suppose we could say
that the plants and trees
had taken from the soil,
the sun, the rain.
My teacher says
everything you love
can and will be taken from you.
For a long time, that felt
like a curse until
it began to feel like freedom—
not the losses themselves,
but the acceptance of loss.
It’s not that I loved
the brown paper wasp nest,
though it did remind me
of that day when we walked
on the rails and no trains came
and my son sang for an hour
at the top of his lungs.
Add this to the list
of the things that cannot be owned.
The song. The memory.
The boy. The land.
A sense of security.
The open, empty combs.
Empty Handed Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, tanka on April 25, 2013| 2 Comments »
soft and wrinkled
creases ripped, markings faded
though I know it by heart
I unfold it again
this memory of you
Adho Mukha Vrksasana
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, hand stand, poem, poetry, surrender, underside, yoga on April 25, 2013| 3 Comments »
She says, The first place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your hands. Are they cupped?
Press all four corners
flat into the earth. Feel how the ground
pushes energy back up through your arms.
She says, The next place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your elbows. If they bend,
you depend on your muscles
instead of letting your skeleton
support you.
*
I think about the undersides of things.
How if you lift a rock,
there’s another, dark world
writhing and wriggling
and so full of life.
*
She says, The next place
you notice your lack of commitment
is in your back, how it bends
like a banana, gets soft like a noodle.
She says, It is easy as standing.
She says, Any fear is a trick of the mind.
*
Not once
have I found a scorpion
under a stone.
Every time I lift one
I worry.
*
She says, Three inches from the wall,
plant your fingertips. At the edge of the wall,
fix your gaze. First bring the feet
just beneath the navel.
Then raise one foot.
Then two.
*
If a woman
stays too long
in one place,
what begins
to grow?
*
She says, The head
is beneath the heart.
She says, It’s another way
to see.
She says, You must overcome
your fear of falling.
She says, Try.
*
Upside down, and
my fear falls out
of my pockets. And something else,
falls out, too, I can’t yet say
what it is,
but the tears afterward,
they were not grief
nor loss, they tasted
more like
rain that falls
on ground
that has just been cleared.
In it Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cruelty, humanity, kindness, poem, poetry on April 23, 2013| 3 Comments »
Will you go with me,
circle no or yes.
That was all the note said,
signed Louie.
It passed hand to hand
beneath the tables
in the back of sixth-grade English.
I circled yes, sent it back,
and waited for Louie
after class by the door.
Perhaps a sign
of true love.
Three days later the Gooch
told me it was a joke.
Everyone knows, she said.
I called him that night
at his home. Is it true?
I asked him. He mumbled
something about how it had
all started that way, but
that he thought I was nice
and maybe we should
go together. He still
ignored me, like he always
did. Did not choose me
in gym to be on his side.
Did not sit at my table
at lunch. Did not chase me
at recess. Did not call.
Did not send any more notes
on wide-rule paper.
I don’t remember now
if I cried. But I wonder
tonight what kind of man
he became, and if he
perhaps came to have
a daughter who was,
like me, the third most
unpopular girl in the class.
And just what would he
say to the neighbor boy who would
treat his girl like that?
And who have I hurt?
Who sits in the kitchen
late at night and then,
for no reason, recalls the time
that I made them feel small.
I am sorry, whoever you are.
Forgive me. I am learning
this art of humanity
hour by hour by hour.
Coming to Terms with the End of Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, mother, parenting, poetry, Rosemerry Trommer, The Less I Hold on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Coming to Terms with the End of Things
This beautiful blog on Women’s Spirituality published one of my poems today … it’s fun to go through all the poems on this site, food for the soul!
We Make It So Hard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, wu wei on April 21, 2013| 3 Comments »
Oh Silly Fools
trying to unlock
the door of love
using a wrench
and a heave
and a grunt
when all we need
to do
is knock