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Archive for June, 2015

Even After 20-some Years

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 20, 2015| 3 Comments »

regardless where I stand

I never see all of you—

oh, unruly blossoms

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Concourse B

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 20, 2015| 1 Comment »

She walks so easily down the concourse,

the young woman in the short dress and sandals,

her purse slung across her slender shoulder.

She’s not encumbered by much that I can see—

no children pulling on her shirt, no carry on

rolling behind her, no backpack or heavy purse.

I can’t help but notice how light she might feel,

what with her skiff of a sundress. I can almost smell

the freedom like a perfume she doesn’t know

she is wearing. I was like her, once, at least that

is what I would like to think, though I know better

than to project this way. It is easy to imagine

that she is free in ways I once was, though

never knew. Who can say what invisible chains

weight us down. Looking back, I notice

how little I noticed then. On a whim,

I decide to pretend I am older now looking back

at myself. Oh look, look at her, how light she is.

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It Would Be Easier to Sit and Watch the River All Day,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 17, 2015| 1 Comment »

but when we are done walking

may we continue to walk, though

our legs become sand, though there

are dunes in our breath. The voice

of water becomes clearer then,

rises out of the world as if it were

always there, we just couldn’t hear it

over our own exclamations and fervent

whisperings. And the thirst that lasted

our whole lives, how soon it is satisfied.

What to do then but to keep on walking,

not out of thirst, but because this

is what we have come here to do.

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Perhaps Happiness is This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 16, 2015| 1 Comment »

this nectarine not dripping
with golden juice, not sparkling with tang
but sweet enough

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Lap Lane

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2015| 1 Comment »

After the long limping spring

comes this clear June day

with its sun and its blue and

its outdoor pool. I slip into cool water

and instantly the gimpy foot turns to fin

and my legs move like nimble legs again.

The pool bottom sparkles and glitters

with noon beaming down in white

fractalled light, and I’m lissome

and lithe and slick and alive

with the pure sparkling yes of it,

drawing warm air into my chest

in huge lungfulls. For a moment,

I do not think in terms of damaged

or whole, I do not think of

this morning’s brokenness,

I do not think at all—

I am kick and stroke and pull

and sun-spangled shine, wild

in love with the dazzle,

the buoyant world that rises

in us, sometimes when

we least believe it can.

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Two Nearlys

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 14, 2015| 1 Comment »

Two Nearlys

these empty hands—

there was a time

they grasped for emptiness

*

just before the words

there’s the chance to say nothing—

trees don’t have this problem

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How It Is

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2015| 2 Comments »

The swallow bends its flight on an invisible hinge,

skims the air above the garden, lands between

the row of kale and row of carrots and pecks

at the straw before flying away with one

golden piece dangling from her beak.

She carries it to a place between the house

and gutter where I had never noticed before a gap.

How does she know how to see such things—

to fly past a wall or a roof or a cliff and know there,

there is the place where I should build a nest.

And how does she know what materials to choose,

this straw, this grass, this bit of what looks like nothing

to me? In my own house, I sometimes try

to build a house—scraps of softnesses

and thoughtfulnesses, snatches of sweetness.

I weave them into a nest that no one else can see.

It’s only recently I’ve noticed it myself, this blind drive

toward making a home out of oddments and fragments

and notions. It’s only recently I’ve noticed this, too,

how everything I build, I pull apart.

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Two Chances to Laugh at Myself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 12, 2015| 1 Comment »

that loud crow—
trying to quiet the part of me
that wants it to be quiet

*

last night’s rain—
how soon I forget how it feels
to be wet

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Happening on the Kolb Studio While Walking the South Rim

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2015| 3 Comments »

Wearing their life vests made of cork
the Kolb brothers rowed their canvas boat
down the Colorado River.
I watched them on scratchy black and white film.
It was different then—no dams,
no crowds—only no different.
Humpback chub and pinyon jay,
mule deer and cliff rose,
ponderosa pine, white roar
of the rapids and two billion years
of geologic record.
Revelation must be passed through
with the whole body,
though the brothers were not looking
for revelation. They were looking for,
well, only they can say, and they are gone.
I did not intend to travel to their home
at the edge of the cliff,
but when I found their legend,
I felt an uplift, a collision, a drifting apart.
Is that, too, what revelation is? I swallowed
their story as if it might carve me,
undermine any harder layers
so they might collapse,
might erode me into whatever
is essential, a woman who longs
to launch herself into the flow,
no matter how flimsy
her protection, no matter
how loud, how unruly it is.

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Nine from the Grand Canyon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 10, 2015| 3 Comments »

driving west
past the petrified forest
thoughts speed north

*

scent of cliff rose
here in the desert
my prickles soften

*

Kaibab Trail switchbacks
with each step the minute hands
fall off the clock

*

this enormous life
somehow I make it fit
into a chair

*

patch of blue
a tease before the hardest rains—
hope makes a crummy raincoat

*

an ant never
walks backward—
learning to love like that

*

what river even now
erodes all these grand layers—
woman standing beside the canyon

*

night of rain
morning of more rain
even my dreams get wet

*

journey of 800 miles
just one more stitch
in eternity

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