Your body, of course
I love that, too, but
such sweetness comes
in rolling over to your side
of the bed and nesting there
while your warmth
still lingers—
I stretch a leg
into the Arctic regions
of the sheets where
your body hasn’t been
and recoil.
That’s nowhere
I want to go.
I curl myself
back into the space
where I know
you will return,
folding my body
like a letter
waiting for you
to open it.
Archive for September, 2014
When You Get Out of Bed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bed, love, poem, poetry on September 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
Five Changes in the Weather
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, poem, poetry on September 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
night before the frost—
every vase in the house
rich with garden flowers
*
morning thunder—
only the most stubborn dreamers
still beneath the sheets
*
the last barefoot day—
spending it as if it were not
the last barefoot day
*
I sure do sing
a lot for someone who says
she loves silence
*
a slight bitterness
in autumn’s greens—that
is what honey is for
Bouquet of Small Losses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, poem, poetry on September 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
My daughter plays with the crystal box
in the shape of a heart
that my grandmother gave
me many years ago.
And in one brief
homage to gravity, it
is broken. I would rather
hold my girl than the box,
and I do. Still, I can’t help
but look at the empty space on the shelf
where the heart once was
and feel a little pull.
I remember when I was a girl
who played with her mother’s
green crystal dish and dropped
it on the kitchen floor
where it shattered into a hundred
green bits. Oh, how my mother
cried. And I tried to make her
a replacement one with salt-dough
I dyed green. I could not understand
why, no matter how I shaped it,
I could not make the dough look clear,
could not fashion it into crystal
no matter how I kneaded or pinched.
Out the window, the sunflower
leaves are flagging. I’ve deadheaded
all the blooms. And there’s more
space between the limbs
of the cottonwood trees
than there was just yesterday.
More sky comes through
through the emptiness.
I let my eyes rest there.
Unapologetic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, love the world, open, poem, poetry, softness on September 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
Oh the water lilies. See how they seem
to open wider out of their own opening?
Let me unfold like that—without thinking,
without assuming I’m already open enough.
Do not let me close up, all stiff and stoic,
like a walnut that will not crack.
Don’t let me become the one who groans
when someone else starts to rhapsodize
about the fragrant wisteria in spring.
Why is being hardened a respectable, desirable thing?
Let me be soft. Let me always sigh as I bite
into ripe watermelon, juice spilling in runnels
of pink down my chin, down my neck.
Let someone else stand beside the waterfall
and explain how its negative ions work,
and let me be the one getting drenched
and falling in love with the sheen on the rocks.
Let me not leave my signature like the woodpecker,
but let me chant endlessly on summer nights
in the way that the whippoorwill does.
And why not? Why not praise the slender-bodied weasels
who turn white then honest brown?
Both colors are equally lovely. Why not enthuse
over the bulky walrus that has adapted to stay warm?
Oh let me be warm and give that warmth back to the world.
It’s so easy to turn cold, to poke fun, to accuse, to be cool.
Let me be a fool. Let my thoughts of how the world should be
jump away like a mob of wallabies. Let me not find pleasure
in making things small or putting others down
or rolling my eyes or criticizing. Let me be silly.
And gushing with praise for whatever
is the nearest thing I see—
a twig in the rain, a rock on the trail,
a red leaf that has already let go.
* a w-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie, http://www.alphabetmenagerie.com
For Reals
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged imaginary friend, imagination, love, poem, poetry, real on September 25, 2014| 2 Comments »
I want to be your imaginary friend,
and no one else will see me when
I come and kiss the back of your neck,
will not notice at all as I whisper
in your ear the things I’m about
to do with you. They might notice
you’re blushing, but they will not
see the way I am smiling at you
now from the doorway and curling
my fingers to say, This meeting is boring,
come play, darling, out in the field
where the autumn sun is warm
and low and the golden grasses
will hide us well so no other eyes
can find our shade. And I will insist
that I am real and ask you to touch
to be sure it is true. And I shall
wear only bliss and sunlight
and you shall wear only me,
and the afternoon will be infinite
as only imaginary things can be.
What Else Did You Expect?
Posted in Uncategorized on September 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »
a woman sitting
beside the pink snapdragons
transformed by sunlight
into a woman sitting
beside the pink snapdragons
On a Day When I Ache for the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, nest, poem, poetry on September 24, 2014| 2 Comments »
inspired by The Nest by Teddy Macker
Teach me, world, to weave
a nest with whatever scraps I find—
sticks, dry grass, old thread,
twine, barbed wire, plastic bags,
the sad headlines of war. Teach
me to make a haven out of mud
and shit and thistle down, a cozy
space, just room enough, no more.
And then, though I’ll grow comfortable,
teach me to fly away from whatever
comfort I’ve made—not because
I think I’m going somewhere better,
but because there is a rising
in the blood that says go. Teach
me to take nothing but my song
and the silence inside each note.
While Putting Up Jars of Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, love, poem, poetry, red peppers, sisterhood, unity on September 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »
They are so red, the peppers,
it is impossible not to admire them
before I put them on the grate
to char their skins and sweeten their flesh.
I think of all the other hands that touched
these fruits, and I thank them: whoever planted
the seed and watered the plant, whoever
weeded and hoed and broke the green stem.
I think of all the other women around the world
speaking languages I will never know who,
in these weeks of autumn, are also standing
beside a fire, turning the peppers to roast them evenly,
all of us breathing the same smoky scent.
All of us rolling up our sleeves as we prepare
to pull off the blackened skin. All of us relieved
when the seeds fall out easily. All morning the house
smells of sunshine and basil, red peppers and gratitude.
I think of all of us doing the work to feed the people
we love, our knives keeping time against wooden boards,
our hands sticky and red with devotion.
I Cut My Own Wound, Pour In My Own Salt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comparison, envy, happiness, jealousy, poem, poetry on September 21, 2014| 2 Comments »
I like to torture myself with thoughts
of how perfect her world is every day,
how much easier, more beautiful, more
pleasuresome than mine. Surely
the eagles in her sky make wider arcs
on their statelier, darker brown wings.
Her Easter lilies must fill her rooms
with sweeter more honest white perfume.
Her elderberries must have more bioflavinoids.
More antioxidants, too.
The earthworms in her garden are probably fatter.
The leaves on her elm trees are greener for sure.
I will not mention her grass.
If she rode an elephant, it would have jewels
dripping down its majestic, wrinkled head.
If she had an ermine, its fur would be whiter
than any snow found in my yard.
If I am the stroppy, shaggy emu, then she
is the egret with filamentous plumes, all milky
and showy, that cascade down her slender back.
If I am an eel, she’s an angelfish. If I’m cracked
and scrambled, she’s an ornate Easter egg.
Not that I want to be an Easter egg. Nor an egret.
Nor angelfish. It’s just that I want to be happy,
as happy as I tell myself she is.
*an E-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
Digging Potatoes with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, poem, poetry, potatoes, trust on September 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
We wait until the plants are dead.
That’s the time to harvest. First,
we pull away the straw. The dirt
below is damp and rich. We rake
with our fingers lightly then,
so as not to scrape the skin of
potatoes near the top. And oh,
that first glimpse of gold, how
we laugh and remind ourselves,
Go slow. After all, we’ve been
waiting all summer. But sometimes,
in the company of delight,
it’s hard to wait a second longer.
I want to say something to my son
about trust, about the way
that marvelous things sometimes
need the dark in order to grow. But
it is the quiet, now, that I love.
The silence of four hands moving
the dirt. Finn pulls another potato
from the earth, holds it up for me to see.
We shake our heads in what, awe?
Dumb wonder at our luck? And plunge
our hands deeper, deeper into the darkness.
September Harvest
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, rose hips, sweetness, wanting what is on September 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
they taste better,
the rosehips, after the frost,
softer and sweeter—
even so, it’s hard
to want the frost
And Then You Ask the Next Question
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inquiry, poem, poetry, question, universe on September 18, 2014| 4 Comments »
Sometimes, if you ask
the right question,
and there are infinite
right questions to ask,
then the world cracks,
not in a way that makes
it more broken, but
cracks in a way
that makes it more whole,
as if you’ve been living
in a glass tank without
knowing the glass
were there. But oh!
after the shattering,
when someone asks you,
“Does the universe
act on us or do we act on
the universe,” you feel
in your breath and your
pulse that you and the universe
are the very same thing,
you feel it with absolute
certainty even as your
mind races
to find the place
where the glass
used to be.
Nothing to Get Tense About
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eternity, love, poem, poetry, tense, time on September 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I imagine the surgeon’s knife
removes the part of my brain
that discriminates present
from past and what will be.
I wake up to everything.
The apple is all at once
sapling and blossom and
sweet red weight and bruise
and white flesh and stump of tree.
The forest is all at once
ash and shade and spruce
and aspen, chopped and
old growth and song-rung
and hushed. And you and I
are innocent, red handed,
coming and lost, all alone
and interlocked, weeping
and giddy, walled in and
bare, really no different
from now, my dear.
Love Bent the Bars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cage, freedom, hiding, poem, poetry on September 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
hiding in this cage
felt so safe until
I began to notice
what else
was hiding in this cage
Six Pondlings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canoe, letting go, poem, poetry on September 14, 2014| 2 Comments »
why wear a red dress
when you can wear
a red canoe?
*
trying to memorize
these waves and the way they rise—
already distracted by those waves
*
casting for fish
I hook my own loneliness—
it steals the bait, swims away
*
I tell myself
I would have jumped in
if the boat hadn’t tipped first
*
I could swim better
if I let go
of this paddle
*
just when you think
you’ll never forget, all that you
can remember later
is that there was something
very special not to forget
But Sometimes I Forget
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, hope, light, poem, poetry on September 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Is it truly dark, or is this darkness
like what we call night—
nothing more than our backs
turned to the sun.
It is not the light that has changed.
It’s a matter of where we stand.
Though I know this, the night
appears no less dark.
Sometimes, when I
lose hope for the world,
I ask myself if I have lost hope in you,
if I have lost hope in me.
Always the answer
is the same.
By now you would think
I would never forget
that the sun is only one
of many, many lights.
After Reading the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, news, poem, poetry on September 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
All day the dull gray weight
of hatred sits on me like
a heavyweight wrestler
and refuses to move.
The referee does not exist.
I lose the will to struggle.
Meanwhile, I watch myself
lie there beneath him, as if
watching myself in a movie,
and I walk away from the whole
sad scene, my heart
responding to some invitation
I wish would come …
to find love in me for everyone
I meet, even for that wrestler,
even for that woman lost
beneath his weight.
Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new, poem, poetry on September 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »
forever
taking my first
step
Pulling Carrots
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being right, carrot, garden, poem, poetry on September 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
From the top I
can’t tell if the
carrot below
will be straight
or spiraled, stubby
or long, but I like
to guess, and I’m
usually wrong.
And I do not
mind it at all
being wrong,
in fact I love
the surprise.
I tell myself,
wouldn’t it
be something
if I could be
so wrong
with you.
Though Sometimes It’s Hard to Want to Believe It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, gratitude, miracle, poem, poetry on September 9, 2014| 2 Comments »
In the same breath that I curse the world
I praise it. It is impossible not to see
what a mess we’ve made, and yet … how
relentlessly beautiful the rabbit brush
blooms in the ditch, all yellow and vigorous,
growing out of the busted up asphalt
and Marlboro boxes and twisted beer cans.
It’s no miracle, you might say. It’s just a weed.
But I know a miracle when I see one.
It looks a lot like whatever is happening
outside the window right now.