Posted in Uncategorized, tagged common woman, dandelion, peony, poem, poetry on November 11, 2017| Leave a Comment »
That peony, full bloom
and all honey perfume,
by the time she walks
in the front door again
she’ll have remembered
how to be dandelion,
her feet taprooted
to the kitchen floor,
her face common gold,
her hands soft rubbery green.
This soil only grows
what it knows to grow.
At night she dreams in pink.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children, circle time, learning, lie, poem, poetry on November 9, 2017| 3 Comments »
The teacher is singing, her voice
a bluegreen moss that softens the room.
I don’t know why I make a fist,
but I let my left hand land
on the back of the boy beside me.
It makes a sweet thump, as if
he is hollow inside. And I like it,
the sound of that thump.
And I do it again. And I do it
again, my fist a warm stamp
on his silence. The teacher
is singing, her voice a leaf
that whirls through the room,
and I hit him again, not
to hurt him, but because
the thump sounds so good.
The teacher stops singing.
She looks at me and the boy
and asks us what is happening.
He is hitting me, I say,
and the boy does not say no.
She sends him to the corner
to sit alone. This is when I learn
to lie. Beside me, the space
on the rug is silent as wool.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ohm, poem, poetry, song, tree on November 9, 2017| 4 Comments »
but I forgot the words
I said, and the tree said
sing without them
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, inspiration, poem, poetry on November 7, 2017| 2 Comments »
And then one day, everywhere you look,
a door, waiting for you to open it.
In the apple tree. In the parking lot.
in a blade of grass. In each stone.
Not that it appeared because you are here.
More that it always existed and now
you can see it. In the asphalt drive.
In the dotted line. In the telephone ring.
In the scent of lemon. And every door
a world you might choose to enter.
Kiss on the neck. Cloudy sky.
Magpie wing. News headline.
You can’t possibly enter them all.
Button hole. Rising bread.
Sometimes you can go back
and the door will still open. Sometimes,
even on the most familiar path,
you can never go back again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, poem, poetry on November 6, 2017| 2 Comments »
open window—
in tiptoes the moon
to kiss me goodnight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged applesauce, love, poem, poetry, preserve on November 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Wash,
quarter,
core,
slice,
heat,
wait,
puree,
fill,
boil,
wait,
shelve.
And so
the blush
of Fuji
is preserved
in jars.
So few
sweetnesses
we can save.
All those
blushes.
Some
we can.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, getting lost, poem, poetry, reading on November 5, 2017| 2 Comments »
all day turning the pages
of someone else’s life—
putting a bookmark in my own
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cello, death, music, poem, poetry on November 3, 2017| 4 Comments »
with thanks to Kyra
Minor and slow,
the Russian death song
on the cello
fills the room
with loss and beauty,
the two rubbing
together like notes
side by side on the scale
played at the same time.
I lay on the floor
beneath the great instrument
and feel the waves of it
as if they originate inside me—
play it again, I beg
the cellist, and then,
when it’s done, I beg her
again, play it again,
And she does. And she does,
the warm notes filling
any chill they find.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, moon, poem, poetry on November 2, 2017| 8 Comments »
for Babette
Out the window, a moonless dark.
Sometimes inside, it is moonless, too.
Then we come to realize
how we rely on things
outside of ourselves to see.
This morning, sitting in the dark
with my eyes closed, I wondered
about the turning year,
and two words came to me.
More love. More love.
Curious now I did not think to ask how.
The words seemed both mantra and map,
both question and answer,
all-encompassing as the dark.
Do you remember that day
we tore out of our clothes
and slipped into the frigid lake
in northern Wisconsin?
How we laughed as we swam
deeper and deeper in.
How dark the water,
how it dripped light from our arms
as we raised them to pull
through the surface.
I am again swimming in the dark.
Sometimes I feel the cold
is too much for me.
It helps now to remember
that it’s possible to find laughter
in cold waters. More love. More love.
Just yesterday, I was thinking
of the way Jesus turned water to wine.
It is no use to ask how.
The invitation is to accept the miracle,
praise the change and drink.
Perhaps in these moonless times,
this is when we learn to make light
out of dark, the way two stones
make a spark. Now, perhaps,
is not the time to ask who we are,
but what we can do.
Now is the time for miracles.
More love. More love.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged caregiving, nest, poem, poetry on November 1, 2017| 1 Comment »
how fragile you are—
I make my body
into a nest