drinking champagne instead of afternoon tea—even the shadows get tipsy
Archive for December, 2016
Nearly New Year’s
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged champagne, monostitch, new years, poem, poetry on December 31, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Just a few days before the new year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginning, faith, new year, poem, poetry, seeds, winter 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.
Before the First Step
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginnings, poem, poetry 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.
One Quiet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, silence 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
In the Letter My Friend Says
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, ordinary life, parenting, poem, poetry 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.
Oh Night Divine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, creche, family, parenting, poem, poetry 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.
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
A Star, A Star Shining in the Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem 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.
In the Cold
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inside job, love, poem, poetry 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
Chance Meeting?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, poem, poetry, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, stranger 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.
On the Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, light, poem, poetry, solstice, world on December 22, 2016| 2 Comments »
On this gray, near-drizzling day
I write again this love letter
for the earth, which is, I suppose,
what all poems are, though they
disguise themselves as poems about
children or wine or baseball or snow.
On this longest night, it’s so clear—
the truest reason to write at all is to fall
more deeply in love with the world,
with its trees and its drizzle
and its stubborn shine and its
relentless hunger and its corners
that will never ever ever see the growing light.
Fall in love with the octopus that can detach
an arm on purpose and then grow it back again.
Fall in love with the elusive lynx
and the crooked forest and the frazzle ice
tinkling in the San Miguel River.
Fall in love even with this profoundly flawed
species that, despite all its faults,
is still capable of falling more deeply,
more wildly in love.
One Brilliance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adjust, poem, poetry, winter on December 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »
frost in the dried weeds—
sometimes it takes the cold
for things to find their shine
In the Silence, I Think
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged monostitch, poem, poetry on December 20, 2016| 3 Comments »
May my lips be the libretto you write and rewrite, the last place you sign your name
Listening to Spiegel im Spiegel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, seduction, Spiegel im Spiegel, violin on December 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »
One Last Thing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, light, peace, poem, poetry on December 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Let us lace our words with light—
the fragrant light we carry in our flesh.
Even the darkest words can be said
with light, can be spoken with a seam
of radiance, spoken as if the whole world
depends on us finding that inner shine
and sharing it.
As Winter Remembers Itself
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, winter on December 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Despite the wind with its whipping twists
and the sting of the fierce face slaps of snow,
the day invites us to enter, to go lightly
into its rumpled hills—though the path
is erased by drifts, though we fall and struggle
to stand again. Sometimes the call
to fall in love with the day is easier to hear
when it’s hardest to imagine how.
Bitter gusts and swirling gusts
and gusts that steal our words.
Trying to fall in love never works.
It is more a matter of getting out
of our own way—not trying to orchestrate
the storm, just finding a way to play in it.
Heavy snow. Dim snow. The sky rushes
to fill in the tracks where we’ve been.
There are no tracks for where we are going.
There is this call to fall deeper in.
Sometimes When I Don’t Understand How Things Will Change I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, light, poem, poetry on December 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »
first there was darkness
and from that ink
was written all the light
that ever was,
all the light that ever will be,
please, write again soon
Almost Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged let the cat out of the bag, poem, poetry, secret on December 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »
In the bag, the claws
of the cat are growing,
and so is its hunger—
it remembers the rake of grass
on its belly when it crouches,
the thrill in letting the mouse
almost escape.
Blessing the Weatherman’s Mistake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, monostitch, poem, poetry, weather on December 12, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Why I Attend Choir Concerts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attitude, choir, connection, depression, poem, poetry, singing on December 11, 2016| 1 Comment »
Walking on the muddy path, I try
to convince myself it would be easy
to be happy. I’m not hurt, my family is well,
and the sun is almost out. I tell myself,
look, look how the ice from last night’s storm
clings to the tips of the branches
and, as it melts, see how the whole world
seems to gather in a drop. But there is a snarl
deep within that is snagged in the thorns,
trapped in the ice, intent on locking itself
out of heaven. It scowls at the wind,
at the sound of the traffic, it grimaces
at the story of itself and retells the same
sad story. It is hours later I notice
how easy it is to fall in love with the world—
how it takes no effort, no convincing at all
to weep at the beauty of hundreds of people
singing together, oh the deep melting,
how the whole world gathers in a drop.