Posted in Uncategorized, tagged irony, longing, poem, poetry on June 30, 2014| 2 Comments »
missing
the feeling
of missing you
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dead end, poem, poetry on June 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
signs always warn you
about the dead end—funny how seldom
people read signs
*
a heroine addict,
still wishing
for a glass slipper
*
the end itself
was not dead,
only playing possum
*
hello
bright world
said the supernova
*
oh foolish woman
believing if she rewrites the sign
the road itself will change
*
an insurance policy
for enlightenment—
that’s one way to lose everything
*
scattered like jacks
all these happily ever afters
I thought I wanted
*
walking into the sunset
I forget
to stop walking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, freedom, paradox, poem, poetry on June 29, 2014| 1 Comment »
Before we can be what we are meant to be, we must accept what we are not.
–Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening , June 29
Bird in a cage
every day she drops the seeds
till beneath her
then all around her
a tangle of wild things.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, poem, poetry, uncertainty, unlearning, wildflower on June 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
I don’t know the name of the flower
about to bloom beside the trail,
but it has the leaves of a lily
and a single bud that hangs heavy
off a long bent stem.
Just as I don’t know the name
for the feeling I have when
I want you to act a certain way
and I have not yet realized
that my wanting is the problem.
Neither of these things matter—
the names, I mean. We like to think
that by naming a thing we know it.
But I have stopped believing that.
Whatever we can name, we start to overlook.
The heliotrope, for instance.
I greet it as we walk by, but I do not
stop to investigate its tiny white flowers,
nor do I rub its leaves between my fingers
to better understand their shape.
Imagine I did not know your name.
So every time we met I would
gather everything I could about you—
the scent of you, the shape of your hands,
the weather of your moods.
And imagine I forgot me, too,
and in discovering you, I’d see
myself anew. And I would be unfamiliar
with words such as happiness or forgiveness
or wound or wife.
Ah, to meet each other like that, the way we meet
this strange flower. More inquisitive than convinced.
More curious, less sure. Less like gods,
omniscient, commanding, more as if we are the ones
with so much opening left to do.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, presence on June 27, 2014| 1 Comment »
What a blessing
while driving, this
hard, hard rain—
I forget the bed
I woke in,
forget any point
on the map
that is not here.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, happiness, mother, poem, poetry on June 25, 2014| 3 Comments »
By early afternoon, I have become
my mother. Despite mounting evidence
that the world is falling apart, I find
reasons to be grateful. The light in the leaves,
for instance. And the scent of the mint
in the garden that I let grow rampant,
the way my mother did. It is not that
I do not want to become my mother.
No, she was happy to become her mother,
and I am happy to become mine. Not
that I have any choice. I nod too much
and stay up too late and wear clothes
out of style because they make me happy.
I am glad I finally stopped fighting it.
After all, the world is falling apart,
and it’s easier to meet this fact
with a smile that often finds my face and some
very comfortable, though ugly, shoes.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, connection, isolation, poem, poetry on June 24, 2014| 1 Comment »
in the tall grass, the way
a small purple ball might be lost.
It would take a long, long
time to be found,
maybe never.
But the Truth Is
We all long to be found.
Even when we shout
at the other person,
Go away! There
is an equally
powerful voice,
one that we squash,
and it says,
I need you. How
we hate for that
to be true. Easier
to believe that we
don’t need anyone.
Easier to say to oneself,
in a voice loud enough
to drown out any other voice,
I would like
to get lost in the tall,
tall grass, the way
a small purple ball
might be lost.
(with a nod to Art Goodtimes, who sent me a poem of his own with the title in the middle the other day … what a great new way to play with titles!)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, love, parenting, poem, poetry on June 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »
My daughter asks me to carry her.
She is almost six, and she can walk,
can walk and run and use the word
infinity in a sentence. Still this longing
to be carried. This longing to be lifted
and held and loved and moved through
the world all at once. I recognize her want.
When I was a girl, I remember how,
after we’d gone to a party and arrived
home after dark, I would pretend
to be asleep in the back seat of the rusting
yellow car. I’d will my limbs to dangle
and make my eyes stay shut—all
to secure the two minutes it took for my father
to pick my body up and transport me
from the Chevy to my thin twin bed.
Oh, the strength of my father’s arms.
How to this night I remember them,
the warmth of his torso, and how solid
it felt, his love. And so when my daughter
asks me to carry her, I do not say no.
Because I still can carry her. And because
as old as I am, I still wish sometimes that
someone would lift me from wherever
I am and hold me, hold me as they carry
me through the cold and into a warm,
familiar place where I still believe
everything will be alright.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, poem, poetry, sweetness on June 22, 2014| 5 Comments »
Sometimes for no reason
a sweetness comes. A pink scent,
perhaps, just beyond a fence,
or the particular way that a friend
says your name. It never lasts,
and it usually passes too quickly to name,
but for that moment the body opens
to meet whatever the sweetness is—
the way the low light moves across
the field or the fragrance of rain—
and though nothing changes,
the world is a much different place.
Imagine we could constellate our lives
on these points of sweetness—
such a different kind of mapping
that would be—a life not told
in highs and lows but in the subtler
tones—the times we turned our heads
or breathed in more fully, or closed
our eyes so we might better notice
a taste. The times our hearts skip
a beat, like tiny silent thank you notes.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, midsummer, mountains, poem, poetry on June 21, 2014| 1 Comment »
Just because it’s the longest day of the year
doesn’t mean that the bean sprouts in the garden
won’t freeze tonight. Again. As they did last night.
And two nights before that. So I water them.
I water them real good, for I am still shocked
and delighted that the process of freezing creates
a degree of heat. Every time I consider that fact,
it stuns me. It’s like a joke that makes me laugh
no matter how many times I have heard it.
And though it’s all rather predictable amongst the rows,
what comes up when and what the frost will kill,
it is always new. I never stop marveling at the pure
determination of those tiny leaves as they thrust
through the hard dirt crust. And marvel again at their
vulnerability on nights like tonight when the wind
gets lost some other where and the stars shine clear
in the cold night air and the frost doesn’t care
if I’ve planted the beans again. And again. The earth
spins on its invisible spit and summer goes on
as it always does, different than it’s ever been.
Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2014| 1 Comment »
It was the kind of thing you might step on.
By accident, of course. No bigger than your hand,
and hiding in the willows amongst the river rocks:
A flat plover nest with four speckled eggs.
Oh the mounting relief to have stopped the foot
before it was too late. There are times we wish
we could reverse the clock in the wake of our clumsiness.
But there is no need to go into that. Today, the gift
of four small eggs that still might become four small birds.
You could hold them in your hand, cup them like
the treasure they are. But reverence sometimes
prefers a distance. The mother runs to the river’s edge
where she pretends she is not watching you walk
slowly and empty-handed back the way you came.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, poem, poetry, prayer on June 19, 2014| 1 Comment »
Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.
—Rabindranath Tagore
If I pray, which I seldom do,
but if I do, let me not pray
to be sheltered from dangers,
nor let me pray to be fearless
when facing them. Fear is part
of this human bouquet, as fragrant
a bloom as gratitude.
And it seldom seems to work,
anyway, this premeditation of prayer.
Prayers seem to rise on their own,
like smoke from a volcano no longer latent or
like steam from a cup of mango Ceylon.
But if I might suggest to myself a prayer,
let it be this, though I do not know
who I say it to: Thy will be done.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accountability, blame, poem, poetry, shovel on June 18, 2014| 3 Comments »
Sitting in this well
I dug myself,
I have enough time
to notice how
I managed to put
the shovel
in your hand
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, healing, heart, love, poem, poetry, sun on June 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
Almost every heart
we know
is wounded—
all the more reason
to learn the language the sun speaks
when it touches the meadow in spring,
and then speak
like that
to each other.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calypso, Calypso bulbosa, Fairy Slipper, grace, Odysseus, poem, poetry on June 16, 2014| 2 Comments »
photo taken by Karen James
Calypso bulbosa
A tiny orchid lifts its small cup
to the world. It is only by luck
that we find it, absorbed as we are
in talk of anger and shame, rushing
along the path like sycophants of time.
But grace has a way of finding us
when we need it the most, inviting us
to linger, to stop, to sip beauty, to marvel.
Light sifts through the forest canopy
like a golden shuttle on a miraculous loom
in which we are two threads in the one
great cloth. It seems likely we will leave
this enchanted hour, but for now
this bright cup, this radiant pause,
this intoxication that makes us forget
there is any other world but this.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, garden, poem, poetry on June 15, 2014| 3 Comments »
This is how the night finds its way
in through the open window: without
asking. It has already been to Finland,
Georgia, Ohio. And the cold front, it is moving
across the land in the same unapologetic way,
only in the opposite direction. There
is shrivel in their meeting, like a woman who
is too tired to stand ever again.
Out in the garden, the basil,
the marigolds, the cosmos,
the beans, they do not put up
a fight. They just let the night and the cold
do what night and cold do midsummer.
Their leaves droop and darken,
limp flags of surrender.
This is what the end looks like
sometimes. No blush, no gasp,
no inheritance. No trumpets,
no angel band. And no one declaring
victory. Just a quiet, sad plot that only
hours ago was blurting life, so lush,
so full of tomorrow’s seeds. Who are we
to shake our fists. It’s not personal.
And though we may be tempted to run
the other direction, if we could find it,
we know we are somewhere in a line
marked Next. No. Better to stay right here
and tend what still grows, the parsley,
the peas, the tiniest bits of pale green kale
still pushing their way through the cold ground.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fine print, humanness, poem, poetry on June 14, 2014| 1 Comment »
No, it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair and most promises are broken. Everyone and everything that you love can and will eventually be taken from you. You are ultimately alone. Just because you do everything right does not mean that anything good will come of it. Right is more malleable than you think. Good is subjective. There are mind blowing miracles, and they are happening right now all around and inside of you. Peace happens within the greatest upheaval. It’s an inside job. Results may vary. If it could happen any other way, it would. No refunds. No guarantees. Expiration date subject to change. Must be present to win.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bridge, language, love, poem, poetry on June 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
I whisper them in your ear before we sleep.
I say them because what I am trying to say
is that if you were on one side of the river and I
were on the other side, then I, although I
am an engineering dunce, would find a way
to build a bridge to you. And if the bridge fell apart,
then although I am a klutz, I would walk far upstream
and try to swim across the current, no matter how cold,
how murky. And if the water were too swift and it carried
me past you, well then, I would climb out and dry off
and recover and try again. And if by chance we found
ourselves on the same side of the river and it
was both marvelous and terribly hard, and
if I sometimes found myself wanting to build
a bridge to cross and get away, or found myself
wanting to just jump into the waves, well,
I wouldn’t. I would stay. But that is a whole lot to say
and not so easy to take in, so instead, for the sake
of simplicity and going to sleep, I just kiss you on the head
and whisper those three words.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, truth on June 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
I’ve erased
every word
I’ve written
for an hour,
not one of them
as true as
this splinter
in my finger,
this naked moon,
this voice in my head
that says,
“Turn it inside out
and tell me
if the opposite
of everything
you’ve said
isn’t also
true.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged map, poem, poetry, presence, surrender on June 11, 2014| 1 Comment »
There it is again, the desire
to be somewhere but here,
the hope to find the self in a different room
with a different face and a different
spine, a different once upon. But we
are always ourselves. And it’s never
gotten us there before, this brittle map
to Elsewhere with its thousands of folds,
its distorted compass rose.
Nope. It’s never taken us even an inch
away from wherever we are. Always here.
Though we squint, or heck, even change
the narrator to second person, no matter:
the room you are in is the room you are in,
and it is still your face you see in the mirror
whether you want to recognize it or not.