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Archive for December, 2016

Nearly New Year’s

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 31, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

 

drinking champagne instead of afternoon tea—even the shadows get tipsy

 

 

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Just a few days before the new year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

the seed company sends their catalog

with 162 full-color pages of vegetables ready

 

to harvest. From snap peas and bush beans

to shallots and quinoa, plus every shape

 

and curl of leafy green—red ursa, red ruffled,

red Russian, Bolshoi. This is the same night

 

my son asks me as he falls asleep to explain

the difference between science and religion.

 

One, I say, is based on fact. The other,

I say, is based on faith. Though tonight,

 

as the temperature falls below ten,

and I regard the carrots, dark orange

 

and almost glowing off of page 29,

I begin to wonder how different

 

the two really are. I notice how the promise

of a slow-bolting, scab resistant

 

varietal sounds like a psalm I love—

the Lord, it says, will keep you from all harm—

 

and I look at the Royal Chatenays

and the Yaya Nantes and say out loud

 

to the dark kitchen windows and

to the cold winter air, I believe, I believe.

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Before the First Step

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 29, 2016| 3 Comments »

 

And again we draw the starting line

and dig for the courage to toe it.

This, too, is a beginning.

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One Quiet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

the great sheet of silence

in December’s empty meadow—

I fold and crease it

into a white paper crane—

all evening it flutters beneath my thoughts

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In the Letter My Friend Says

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2016| 4 Comments »

 

 

her daughter has a tumor behind her knee.

Already it’s grown into the bone.

 

Very aggressive, the doctor says,

and though he names the diagnosis,

 

he tells my friend not to Google it.

Sometimes what we know

 

creates more footholds for fear. There’ll be surgery,

the doctor says, and chemo.

 

I want to give her a brush tonight, nothing special,

one she could pull through her own long hair

 

and then through her daughter’s dark curls, as well.

How commonplace to brush and comb,

 

to unsnarl the tangles and make one’s hair

smooth again. I want to give her the terrible gift

 

of the habitual life—the tedious days in which we

brush and wash and dress and sleep and work

 

and laugh and shit and yell and fuss and forget

how fragile we are, forget how temporary

 

these bodies can be, forget how bloody lucky

we are every minute to be alive.

 

 

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Oh Night Divine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »

In the crèche arranged on the piano each Christmas,

the clay face of the virgin mother is eternally beaming

at the miracle child in his swaddling clothes,

 

and the miracle child is sleeping, always peacefully sleeping,

no matter how loudly my son pretends he’s a race car, no matter

how many people are laughing in the kitchen.

 

And Joseph, he is looking out across the piano

as if staring through the stable, staring through centuries,

perhaps, as if he can already see the tables upended

 

in the temple, can already smell the sweetness

of shared loaves and the pungency of fish, can hear

Mary weeping, or is it me he hears, playing piano

 

and singing about the hopes and fears of all the years,

then pausing to ask my children not to argue, please,

and to use their kindest voices with each other—and they

 

continue to bicker. Meanwhile the shepherd and his sheep

gaze up at the crack in the wall in awe, as if there were stars there,

stars brightly shining, and yonder, breaking, a new and glorious morn.

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When My Daughter Asks How Reindeer Fly

Posted in Uncategorized on December 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »

unclear how bees transform pollen into honey, drizzling it into the tea anyway

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A Star, A Star Shining in the Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on December 24, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

Just because they were watching their sheep

doesn’t mean they weren’t also watching

 

for a miracle. Even the most practical acts

leave room for wonder. And while the ewes and lambs

 

bleated to each other through the darkness—

their way of checking that all is well—

 

perhaps some part of the shepherds

was also calling out to some great unknown,

 

hoping to hear a call back, some message

that they, too, were not alone. Or perhaps

 

they would have rather ignored the bright star,

too tired for miracles, wishing

 

that for once the sheep would be quiet,

wishing that darn star would just quit

 

its beaming, stirring everything up,

changing the familiar night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In the Cold

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

not past the tip of the nose

—Joi Sharp

 

 

foraging for love, while inside the branches bow with dark, sweet berries

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Chance Meeting?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2016| 1 Comment »

Every one of us, a sliver of divinity–I suppose that belief is part of what drives this poem published today in Telluride Inside and Out … a poem I wrote last year about a chance encounter around Christmastime.

Merry Christmas, friends … you can read the poem here.

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