Take off your hat. Take off
your smile. Take off anything
you put on to impress me.
Bring me your eyes. Bring me
your Sunday morning. Bring me your
open hands. Let us sit. It does
not matter much if we speak
or do not speak. What is there,
really, that must be said?
Outside the snow is melting.
We both know it will come again.
Outside whatever birds are still here
are not moving from tree to tree.
There is nothing moving, it seems,
but we both know that the world
is made of change. Give me
your weight. Give me your
light. Give me your fear
and your grays and your yes.
And here, here is my sunrise.
Here is my spiral. Here is my apple
tree, my brittle bones, my
deepest well, my empty glass.
Archive for November, 2014
Yes, I Think I am Ready for That
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, poem, poetry, relationship on November 30, 2014| 4 Comments »
Two Invitations and a Surrender Inspired by Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, Rumi, spirituality on November 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
too much furniture
in here for dancing said God
handing me the match
*
my shine could get more
bang for the buck said the sun if
you’d act more moon-ish
*
a ship you have made
of my soul with you the mast,
the current, the sail
(from Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, XVIII)
Black Friday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black friday, darkness, poem, poetry, reality on November 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
Oh America, get out of the mall.
Get out of the box stores, the boutiques
and fast food drive thrus. I don’t know
where else you might go … a forest,
perhaps, or over to your friend’s kitchen
where there is a cup of tea and an empty chair
near the window where, if you look
out into the snow-filled yard you might just see
how lovely that light is as it escapes
one more time, one more time.
For an Hour, at Least, on Thanksgiving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, love, poem, poetry, singing, thanksgiving on November 28, 2014| 1 Comment »
I hear America singing, varied carols I hear.
–Walt Whitman
After the mashed potatoes were passed
and after the wine was sipped from the glass
and after the children had left their plates
and before we were ready for pie and cake
we sat around the table and sang
Hotel California, Scarborough Fair,
Morning Has Broken, Walk the Line,
Blister in the Sun, Wild Mountain Thyme
Moon River and My Romance,
Blood on the Saddle, If I Were a Rich Man,
and the words we didn’t know we hummed
or we la-dee-dahed until we found
a phrase to lead us in again.
It’s so like music, gratitude,
the way it draws us closer in
and makes the world feel intimate,
as if anything could happen,
even peace, even love.
Finding Gratitude in the City
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, love, poem, poetry on November 27, 2014| 3 Comments »
square of blue sky
I write your name on it then
fold it into a crane—
in the pocket above my heart
it flutters
This is What Fear is like
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, poem, poetry on November 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
long after it’s gone
you still feel the place
where, for three seconds
it landed on your arm
that blue butterfly
He Wants to See My Photo ID
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, poem, poetry, self on November 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I do not tell him that the woman
in the photo, who looks just like me,
only 12 years younger, does not exist.
She is smiling in the way that only
a woman who has not yet had children
can smile. She knows nothing yet
of how desperate she will become,
how she will lie, how she’ll tell the truth,
how she’ll lose her sense of worth and
replace it with, well, it’s impossible to say.
So instead, when he says, “Is this you,”
I say, “Yes, travelling to Chicago today.”
Which Brings Me Back to Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, love, poem, poetry on November 24, 2014| 1 Comment »
I didn’t mean to exit, actually,
but I couldn’t see the highway lines
beneath the snow, and by the time
I realized my error, I was already
partway down the exit ramp.
I have spent so many years
as the driver in this seat, thinking
I know just where I am going.
It is not hard to see that I
have also been the snow,
obscuring my own path,
though as we all know
there are infinite ways to get
to where we’re going.
Whatever that means.
And today, I see I am also
the exit ramp with its promise
of having arrived somewhere, and here
in fact, I am, though it is not where
I thought I would be, as it seldom is.
My Six-Year-Old Daughter and I Play a Game
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mercy, parenting, poem, poetry on November 22, 2014| 1 Comment »
Mama, she says, tickle me mercifully.
We both know that this means that when she says stop,
I stop. We begin. I plunder her sides, her ribs,
the tender spot above the knee—she writhes and giggles—
her feet, her belly, beneath her chin, oh such sweet
and terrible vulnerability. Stop! She shouts, and I stop.
But my pointer finger and thumb still bend at the knuckle tips,
ready to start up the game again.
It takes only seconds before she’s caught her breath,
and it’s squirm and wriggle, wriggle, twist,
I pause, I tickle her armpits, she thrashes
and struggles and giggles and squeals and says, Stop!
I think of times I have wanted to shout, Stop! for myself,
for others, for strangers, for friends, when the world goes too far
and the pain is too great. And the stones are thrown and the bodies
are burned and the borders are crossed and the cries
are unheard and where, where is the mercy?
Tickle me more, she says, when my fingers are quiet too long.
And I tickle her, tickle her mercilessly until she is done
with the game. And then it is over, except it is not,
as those of us know who have lived beyond
the times when we’ve said stop, and the world’s gone on.
Remembering to Look Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, stars on November 22, 2014| 4 Comments »
Night unbuttons its coat
and all those stars fall out—
I feel no need
to name them
nor order them
nor to measure their distance,
to calculate their age.
I still cannot find
the lines that others use
to link one to another,
but sometimes I sense
the invisible ladders
that link the stars
to you, to me.
Happily Ever After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, self worth, vision, wholeness on November 21, 2014| 4 Comments »
Your eyes. I used to believe they created me.
One look from you, and I became chalice,
lotus, lioness, crane. Woman. Without your gaze,
I was unformed clay. Your absence, my absence.
It was like some strange twist on what Ptolemy said—
he believed that rays emanate from the eyes,
rays that traverse the air and find the object, allowing
it to be seen. If a woman dances alone in a room,
and you do not see her, is she really dancing?
Does she exist at all?
But Ptolemy was wrong, love, and so was I.
And this is not really the story of photoreceptors
and environmental stimuli. It’s the story
of how we long to be seen—it begins with such
innocence, a longing to please. It’s the story
of how eventually a woman might find herself
dancing for the leaping, whirling pleasure of dancing.
Two for the Road
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, travel on November 20, 2014| 1 Comment »
driving through the stoplight—
too dark to notice if your eyes are green
*
after all that bad news
I teach the radio a love song
Two More Haikulings Inspired by Rumi
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged equality, poem, poetry, soul on November 19, 2014| 1 Comment »
vase of dried flowers—
why keep sniffing that dust?
all around us, souls in bloom
*
in the mirror
of the divine, every face
the same face
(Divan xiii)
Though I Have Never Seen The Pieta in Person, It Touches Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Michelangelo, mothering, ownership, Pieta, poem, poetry on November 18, 2014| 3 Comments »
It is not so much the look on Mary’s face,
as if she is yet untouched by the tragedy.
It is not so much the diagonal drape
of the dead Christ’s arm, nor the empty folds
of the virgin’s dress. It’s the name that catches me,
Michelangelo Buonarroti, chiseled in the sash
that runs between Mary’s breasts, as if to say,
“This is my work, and it is good.”
Oh Mary, holding your son, dead,
what do you know about wanting to own something
that cannot be owned? Just this morning
my own six-year-old girl curled into my lap
and reached up with her right hand to clasp
my shirt in her fist. You never ever go, she said,
sprawling across me, loaning me all of her weight.
I love to find my signature in this girl—
the greenish gray color of her eyes,
the way she loves to read. The color of her skin,
her silly side. Mary, how did you do it, say goodbye?
I run my hands over the startling muscles of her legs,
trace the shape of her jaw, the length of her neck.
Oh the body, how it loves to touch, oh the soul, how
it blossoms by letting go. And the ego, oh how it wants
to say, this is mine, this is mine,
though the mind knows the way that all things go—
even the glass surrounding the Carrara marble,
even the marble, the cathedral, the square.
Even the girl, who leaps up to chase the cat.
Even her mother retelling the story of longing
and love and fear. Even the story itself.
Five Glimpses of the Possible: Haikulings inspired by Rumi’s Divan-e Shams-e Tabriz
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, Rumi, spirituality on November 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
robbing ninety banks
I’d still come up short to buy
this pearl love gives me
(Divan, x)
*
on this ladder each
rung its own destination—
it’s time, love, to climb
(Divan, xii)
*
rather to wear
this scratchy wool slip of love
than all the silks of pride
(Divan, xiii)
*
is that True Love
you’re sipping? quick, bartender,
make mine a triple
(Divan, xiii)
*
I put all I love
in a canoe, love sank it—
now everything is possible
(Divan, xiii)
Most of the Time I Forget, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fishing, poem, poetry on November 15, 2014| 4 Comments »
and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “To a Young Child: Spring and Fall”
I don’t remember if the lake outside the window
was open or frozen, but I remember the way my mother
guided my bangs away from my eyes as she said,
“Your grandpa Chuck has died.” I had already learned,
perhaps even from him, to gut and skin bluegills and bass.
I’d strung worms like pink garland on empty hooks,
but I’d not yet considered the death of men.
I sensed something sharp rising in my throat then,
what?—something that scraped its length.
Water dammed at the bottoms of my eyes. “Mommy,” I said,
“I think I’m going to cry.” I remember being surprised.
“Oh my darling,” she said, “That’s right. That’s okay.”
I did not know then how many more tears would find me,
how familiar the tug at my throat would become. With each death
of a loved one, sometimes even with strangers, I feel it,
the barb of the hook as it sets, the sharp ache, the yank
as strong hands begin to reel in the invisible line
pulling me toward the horizon.
It Was Years Before I Told Anyone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, fear, nightmare, poem, poetry on November 15, 2014| 1 Comment »
I hear the horses, are there dozens? hundreds?
They are galloping toward my room.
I do not know how it is that they are in my home,
but if the riders find me, they will take me. Or kill me.
I know this.
I am alone. The top bunk of the bed where I am hiding
rattles from the pounding of their hooves.
Play dead, I think, though it is not so much a thought
as reflex. I slow the red race of my breath until it is brown
and dry, until my chest is still as stump,
until I’m a lump instead of a girl.
When the men on the horses arrive, I do not move.
I do not wince nor cry out when one pokes at my sheets
with something blunt and cold.
That’s the deadest girl I ever saw, he says.
I hear the feet of horses as they stomp and rake at the ground,
hear them strain and clench and rear. Then
a whinny, then a whirl, I can feel their breath,
and the horses ride off again.
Is this when I learn that the way to save myself
is to fully shut down? In the years to come,
I will find new ways to play dead. One is to starve.
One is to hide. One is to look so green and thriving
on the outside that no one could ever guess how brittle I am.
But those tactics are for later. For now, the girl in the bed
that is me and not me marvels that she is still alive.
It is a long time before she moves.
Morning Poem at the Poetry Retreat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged irony, knowledge, open mind, poem, poetry on November 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
Everything I’ve learned is in the way.
Where’s the worth in knowing iambic pentameter, the value
in differential equations, the treasure in identifying
the insertion point of the hamstring or pira formis or gastrock.
Look what it’s done for me, this memorizing Burns
and Blake and Hopkins and cummings. Look how far I’ve come
with my knowledge of the subjunctive and understanding where
to put the comma in an appositive phrase.
There is a kettle of vultures on the empty branches
of the trees I cannot name. In their open wings,
I see a dark V. I try to not see it, but ever since someone
mentioned the V, now it is all I can see.
Please, don’t tell me anything. Once
I could look at a bird and see
how it moved, how it sat, I could hear
how it said nothing at all.
Wild Rose Makes Her Plane
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airplane travel, alter ego, poem, poetry on November 12, 2014| 3 Comments »
What do you mean I am one minute late,
she says to the man in the suit behind the desk.
The plane is here. I am here. Here is my bag.
Put it on the plane.
The man behind the desk explains
that this would be impossible.
He does not look her in the eye.
Wild Rose smiles. Everything is possible,
she says.
She jumps across the baggage scale
and pushes the man out of the way.
Ma’am, he says, I will get the police.
Wild Rose says, That’s okay.
She finds her name and gives herself
a first-class upgrade, prints out her tickets,
leaves her luggage for lost and walks
toward her gate. The man in the suit
stands there, phone still in hand.
He looks like a lost little boy. Take me with you,
he says to the space where she was.
She yells back, You’re one minute too late.
Abecedarian
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abecedarian, alphabet, poem, poetry on November 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Well, I am trying to come up with an abecedarian poem (a poem that uses each letter of the alphabet as a starting letter once and only once, usually in alphabetical order, for instance: Always Bring Cookies, Darling … etc.
Anyway, this little word collection that I spent HOURS on today (so many versions you really would not believe it) is perhaps going in the front of the alphabet book. To see the tree people illustrations that go with all the crazy alphabet poems I have been writing the last few months, visit http://alphabetmenagerie.com
Journey into dream forests—varied geographies.
Here X marks no spot worthier than Z.
Each letter contains postures and rumors of you.
Bring kinship. Questions. Uncertainty.