While driving west
through the dark
toward home, she looks
out the window and says,
Hey, Mom, a wishing star,
and I fight the urge
to correct her and say,
It’s a planet. Instead,
I tell her, Tonight
there are unlimited
wishes. She is silent
for a long, long time,
and at last she says,
There, now that’s a good one.
Meantime, I find myself wishing
for the days when Vivian
took great delight in whispering
to me her wishes.
Archive for October, 2013
What Vivian Didn’t Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poem, poetry, star, surrender, wish on October 31, 2013| 1 Comment »
Four Warmings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poetry, short poems, snow on October 31, 2013| 1 Comment »
for no reason
for every reason
falling deeper in love
*
a whole day of snow
a whole day for our tongues
to get lucky
*
feeling blue skied
though the weatherman says
big, big storm
*
this list of shoulds
these lips
which would you rather kiss
Who’s There
Posted in Uncategorized on October 29, 2013| 2 Comments »
The knock of fall is not so exuberant
as the rousing knock of spring.
More hollow, more halo, more vacant, less
green. Barren and sterile and stark
and gray, it has taken many years
to even hear the knocking, knocking
on doors I never even knew were here.
And here they are, doors to rooms inside
full of nothing and vaster nothing.
Layers of nothing and veils of nothing
and there are no words that will do for nothing.
And still I try. Why? A man I know tells me
he no longer writes. No need to, he says.
Nothing to say. And part of me
envies him the quiet. And part of me
thrills in just hearing the knock,
delights in knocking back.
Rumi in Ridgway Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Rumi, video poem on October 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
What if, while wandering the park feeling sorry for yourself, you met a Sufi mystic on the merry go round? A video poem.
Rumi at the Ridgway Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, letting go, poem, poetry, Rumi on October 27, 2013| 4 Comments »
with a quote from “On Letting Go,” by Rumi, Ghazal (Ode) 323
Translation by Nader Khalili
They’re all brown now,
the leaves that last week
rained soft gold. Brown.
No, there is nothing soft
about the way they crunch
and crackle underneath my feet
as I weave inconsistent paths
around the park.
I find me wishing impossible things,
a longing for the way things were,
such soft gold leaves, the warmth, the light,
and feel some queer delight in wanting
the impossible. “Fall in love with the agony
of love,” says Rumi. “Not the ecstasy.”
He is circling on the merry go round,
his head flung back to the sky.
“Really,” I say.
“Yeah, really,” he says.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I knew that’s what you’d say.”
Shit. I think to myself. He smiles.
The sky turns darker gray.
“But,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Rumi. “I knew you’d say that, too.”
Inside me, I notice something brown.
Something crackling toward dust.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he says.
And we say nothing for a long, long time.
The naked trees show no impatience.
The leaves show no remorse.
He offers me an empty swing.
I take it. I know this isn’t really flying.
But for a moment, I feel perhaps
what the leaves feel, the small thrill of falling,
the rush of what comes next as part of me
lets go, even as my hands grip
tighter on the chains.
Very, Very Quietly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, blessing, bliss, poem, poetry, sky on October 26, 2013| 3 Comments »
I did not choose
awe today, but the big
pink sky chose me
and steeped me
in fantastic joy—
a drenching of miracle,
an overdose of amazement,
a wild indulgence of bliss—
oh such pink! layers
of rose and deeper rose,
and I did not earn it,
did not first prove my worthiness,
did not beg nor kneel nor fast
nor renounce my name
nor pull the strings
of the lyre nor sing,
all I had to do
was step outside
out of my own way
and open my eyes
and let myself
be gifted.
Letter to F. C.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged building, change, poem, poetry, rabbit brush on October 25, 2013| 8 Comments »
I had not known
to call the rabbit brush
chamisa. I wonder now how
this might have changed things,
knowing how the right name
can sometimes soften a woman.
It would be harder to say the word as a curse,
chamisa, chamisa. Today it is easy to enjoy
the way it hums in the center,
then slips off the lips at the end.
And could the tall, fragrant brush have
slipped like those syllables through my
weeding hands? All those years of ripping it up.
I laugh about it now, how I thought I needed an enemy.
And why? Some sense of hierarchy?
Some sense of control?
You are right to notice how I have built
a new kind of shrine, how sadness has
done what sadness does, made me
more open to praising how many shades of gray
are at play in a single moment. It is easier to see them
when I am not so distracted by gold and by blue.
But I have no need to weed out the sadness
as I surely tried to years ago. Perhaps
because I gave it a softer name. Surrender.
Surrender. It rolls around in the back of the mouth
before I swallow the sound. It is beautiful growing
out there in the field where before I only
could tolerate bright mounds of happinesses.
I smile that you say I am still building. I like to say
that I am unbuilding whatever it is I think I know.
But that, of course, is just a new way of knowing,
a new way of building. I had to sleep with the words before I knew
how true they were. Fortress or cathedral, you say.
I say, sometimes I hang up a welcome sign
and then, quickly, quietly, close the iron gate.
I would like to build a church to brokenness,
though perhaps brokenness is just another word
for whole. They are equally lovely to say,
one cracking open in the center,
one chiming with ohm.
Already I have said too much. What I wanted to say
was thank you. For showing me what I could not see.
For the call to listen to my heart. And for this line,
the dignity of consequences. I am learning
to feel the blessings, which is, perhaps,
just a beautiful word for “what is.”
Blessings. Blessings. Among many, you
are one of the easiest to see.
On the Day I Tripped on the Curb and Threw the Latte into My Hair
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, poem, poetry on October 24, 2013| 1 Comment »
Anything else
I can help you find
says the man
in the pharmacy.
Well,
I say,
I could use
some grace.
Any for sale?
He looks
at me
with uncertainty.
No, he says
at last.
Rats,
I say,
browsing
the band aids,
the rows
of antibiotic
creams.
I don’t
even bother
to ask
about
dignity.
While Not Sleeping
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, poem, poetry, space on October 23, 2013| 4 Comments »
All night the river
touched my body,
not with its long dark
tongues of chill but with
its thousand thousand
thousand audible waves
all lapping without stopping
rearranging me. Perhaps it
is always this way. Perhaps
we are always being
changed, only we are too busy
to notice it. In the morning mirror
I looked the same, but I knew
different. Perhaps you
have felt it, too, this
absence moving through,
the space it leaves
in its wake.