Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generosity, poem, poetry, sun on March 31, 2016| 2 Comments »
The sun and I made a promise—
to shine with no apology,
to bring warmth,
to give until we have nothing left to give.
In the night, the sun
entered my sleep
and tattooed my body
with golden words.
Now all my limbs
glitter with this vow—
there is so much beauty
for us to make.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry on March 30, 2016| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Elizabeth I, poem, poetry on March 29, 2016| 4 Comments »
I love the way you ruled. I love how you rode
into battle in your white velvet dress,
knowing exactly the effect it would have.
I love that you rode into battle. I love
that you wept while you spoke. I love
that you knew that in order to win, your troops
must feel part of a whole.
Elizabeth, you were the best Elizabeth
you knew how to be. That
is what I aspire to, also—though I have no
desire to rule a country. Nor a city.
Nor a business. Not even a man.
But I still have much to learn
about ruling this woman I am.
And I love how no one could anticipate you—
you who surprised every prince, every king.
Elizabeth, I have no horse to ride,
and I will never have a castle to rent,
but you teach me the weight of armor,
and when to take it off. You teach me when
to employ all my weapons
and when to let story reign.
And when to let others do the work.
And when to give my own blood.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Clue, mind, mystery, poem, poetry on March 28, 2016| 1 Comment »
It wasn’t that hard to figure out,
Mrs. White with the revolver in the conservatory.
It took less than half an hour—
the right questions asked, the right rolls
of the dice, the luck of being in the right
room at the right time.
Some mysteries persist—you know,
the ones that keep you awake. No cards
neatly dealt to the players. No brown paper envelope
containing the answers. No score sheet
with a finite grid of possibilities. I walk out
and look up at the stars. A voice from nowhere
says the words I do not really want to hear,
but it says them with such tenderness:
some mysteries are not meant to be solved.
I feel some part of me relax, though the mind, well,
it loves a good game. It reaches for a pencil, sharpens
the lead, creates a grid, looks for clues in every room.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, easter, poem, poetry on March 27, 2016| 1 Comment »
There were years
when the Easter Bunny
set out a wrench and a flashlight
beside the baskets—remember,
brother, the pleasure we took
in the hiding and finding
long after the years of believing
in magic were over?
Eggs we floated in plastic bags
in the backs of the toilet.
Eggs duct taped to the inside
of the chimney flue. Eggs
in the vents, inside the piano,
we delighted in what a bit of invention
could do. Tonight I walked out
of the house after dinner
to take the recycling up to the road,
and there, to the west, an outpouring
of light made me stop and stare
and inwardly, sweetly erode.
In a world so bent, I sometimes forget
that the magic is always
inside us. We have all the tools
that we need. All we need to do
is keep trying to find it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged easter lily, poem, poetry on March 26, 2016| 1 Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moonlight sonata, poem, poetry, restraint, slow, softness on March 25, 2016| 3 Comments »
It is slow and soft, the first movement—
the right hand sweeping in smooth triple meter,
the left hand singing against it.
Minor, the key, and mysterious
the melody, slow, it is slow and soft,
a walk through moonlight.
What is it that sometimes rises in us,
this urge toward crescendo, toward swell?
I feel it in my hands as they move
across the stoic keys, an urgency,
a reaching toward climax, a pressing
insistence, as if to sing louder is to sing
more true. But over and over again,
Beethoven reminds us, piano, piano,
his markings all through the music.
Oh beauty in restraint. It is soft,
the moonlight, a delicate fragrance,
it is heart opening, the tune,
it is growing in me, this lesson in just
how profoundly the quiet
can move us. And the hands,
as they learn to trust in softness,
how beautifully they bloom.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fool, love, poem, poetry, surrender on March 24, 2016| 2 Comments »
I must be a fool missing this life, if I don’t cast my mind in the fire of love.
—Rumi
the flames, they wink,
though there’s no need to seduce—
this body ablaze throws my mind in
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, parenting, poem, poetry on March 23, 2016| 9 Comments »
In the dark before we are fully awake
I hold my son on the couch.
He curls his long thin limbs
into my familiar lap, his body
startlingly warm and soft
and surprisingly light, though
he gives me all his weight.
No, I do not want to let go of this,
and I hold him here, though there
are lunches to make, hold him
though there is snow to shovel,
hold him though my arm falls asleep,
though the clock ticks toward school
and work and dawn. I am well aware
there are other things I long to hold,
impossible things, like his happiness,
his security, his certainty that he is beloved,
long even to hold onto my idea that I
am a good mother, that I will never
let him down. Though I know I do.
Oh love, is that you,
shaking my body?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, praise on March 22, 2016| 3 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ouzel, poem, poetry on March 21, 2016| 2 Comments »
Slipping off a rock
mid-river, the ouzel
dips into the current
and I can’t decide
if the immersion was
an accident
or intentional,
but aren’t so many
baptisms just
like that, where
we enter the water
unsure of whether
we meant to be there
or not, but wet
we are, and
before we know it
we’re flying away,
the same old wings
oddly new.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, spring on March 20, 2016| 1 Comment »
I don’t remember the name
of the small purple flowers
that rise through the golden dirt.
On this first day of spring
they play hide and I seek
and they slip me a glimpse
of what might come,
like a man who holds a woman’s
gaze for just a moment
(and another moment)
too long.
Oh, the sweet tease of spring,
the keen inexplicable yes
of it, ahh, how sweetly
(how sharply)
it torments me,
though there
is no uncertainty
it will follow through
with its promises,
mmm hmmm,
eventually.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, connection, poem, poetry, scarecrow on March 19, 2016| 6 Comments »
I, too, wish to confer with the flowers.
I, too, wish to consult with the rain,
but I have spent so many years
learning that I’ve lost the ability
to speak and listen in these natural tongues.
Today I sat beside an old spruce tree
for an hour and never understood
what it had to tell me. I tried.
Perhaps that is the problem, the trying.
I don’t know how to do it any other way.
Oh Scarecrow, I know too much.
Me and all my certainties. I’ve made walls
out of what I took as wisdom, and now
I cannot see around them. I made
stories out of facts and histories, and now
I cannot hear the spruce. I can barely
hear my own wild heart as it shouts
in some strange language I have
filed away or perhaps I never knew?
Oh this brain, how it costumes
everything else into terms of risks,
probabilities and rules.
How I long to listen clearly
to the flowers, to the rain,
to my heart, to the spruce.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged appreciation, beauty, poem, poetry on March 18, 2016| 3 Comments »
One dandelion
in full gold beside the road—
of course we know
there will be millions more,
but oh, to celebrate one—
to offer it all our attention—
the closer we look
the more obvious
its radiance.
There are,
in each of us,
millions of such
small magnificences
just waiting to be seen.
Now, more than ever,
a longing in me
to notice.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, what does life want?, wind, yes on March 17, 2016| 3 Comments »
Could be you feel
like a tiny bird
flapping hard, hard
as you can
into the wind.
Though there
is no sign that says
Dead End,
you are not going
anywhere and can’t
imagine you ever will.
Could be
all that fluttering
exhausts you
until
you stop all that trying
and turn away
from whatever it is
you think
you are flying toward.
And then
perhaps
you understand—
not with your head,
with your whole being—
that wherever the wind
is going to go
it will go. Could be
you find yourself
saying yes to the wind,
the same wind,
you know this, that fills
your lungs.
Could be that it
is so beautiful,
this new kind of flying,
that you forget
to be frightened
that you do not know
what will happen next.
Could be you’ve never
been quite so aware
how infinite
the sky.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry on March 16, 2016| 1 Comment »
slow dancing with the sun—
humming when I forget the right words
always I forget the right words
*
trying every key
only to find this garden gate
opening from the inside
*
the questions
unanswerable—
asking anyway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fragility, poem, poetry, second chance, writing on March 15, 2016| 2 Comments »
calligraphy in the sand—
every time the wind blows
the chance to write more beautifully
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brucie Holler, poetry retreat, poetry workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Wilkinson Public Library, women on March 15, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Hi Poetry Friends,
What might happen to your creative life if you treated yourself to an inspirational, intimate and well, fun four days?
I will be co-leading a painting and poetry retreat, Going Out, Going In, in Telluride with the fabulous artist Brucie Holler, and if you register before March 31, you can get a 15% discount … I am putting a link here for more information and to register. Going Out Going In Retreat
*
Also just for women is a 4-hour session of Lost in Motherland: Writing to Discover Who We Are(n’t) on March 23 at Wilkinson Public Library, and it is FREE!
This will be a new version of this popular workshop, always based on the same theme: Motherhood changes things. Amidst the blessings and the challenges, we transform. As one mother put it, “With my first child, I lost my interests. With my second child, I lost my identity.” How do we lean into motherhood’s paradoxical blend of miracle and loss? Writing can help. As James Pennebroke writes in Opening Up, writing “clears the mind” and helps us “understand and reorient our complicated lives” and “helps keep our psychological compass oriented.” What happens when we ask, “Who am I?” As Ramana Maharshi says, “The purpose of that question is not to find an answer but to dissolve the questioner.” What’s that supposed to mean? Come play. For more information, contact Paula Ciberay at 970-728-4519
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, poem, poetry, remedy on March 15, 2016| 1 Comment »
Start with a lime, a lemon, a blood orange,
she says, then slice the flesh into a cup.
Smash it. Add whiskey. A shot. Or two.
Top it off with hot water. Add honey.
I do everything she says. I sip it
from my favorite cup, the one
with no handle. The persistent cough
does not stop, but with every sip
I hear her laughter, I think of how her eyes
flash when she’s feeling mischievous.
The red drink flares in my throat.
It tastes like friendship, like love.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dust, Keats, negative capability, poem, poetry on March 13, 2016| 5 Comments »
Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
—John Keats, letter to George and Thomas Keats on December 21, 1817
For an hour we gathered rocks
and laid them in patterns in the sand
and named our collection
“The Museum of Beautiful and Useless Rocks.”
What did we know of the rocks?
Only the pleasure of choosing them,
of finding just the right rhythm
of reds and blues and grays –
we chose them by shape, by
the way they fell apart, by how smooth
or lumpy they were, we chose them
for no reason at all except that
there was joy in the finding
and joy in the rearranging of the bank.
There was no real end to the task,
it was only that the wind turned chill,
so we left the collection unfinished,
as beauty always is, and returned
to the house for lunch—none of us
feeling the hand that had chosen us,
that hand even then rearranging
us into new stanzas of shifting dust.