Posted in Uncategorized, tagged armageddon, death, gratitude, life, poem, poetry on June 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I decided to take
the invitation seriously.
Nothing changed.
I made breakfast.
Went to work.
Walked.
Made a date
to speak with a friend.
Swore at the magpie
that dive bombed
my head. Ate popcorn
for lunch.
Made plans
for four months from now.
Took vitamins.
Drank green tea.
Watered the seeds
planted yesterday.
Talked to the seeds,
encouraged them to grow.
Read a book, stopped
at the penultimate chapter.
Some things are better
left unfinished.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alton Mill Arts Center, andrea bird, jill davey, poetry class, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on June 11, 2018| 4 Comments »
Come join me in a glorious gallery and art studio near Toronto, Canada, as we explore presence through poetry, meditation and interaction with art. July 28 & 29. Visit The Art of Showing Up for more information.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emily dickinson, literature, magic, mother, poem, poetry, reading on June 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, gold, poem, poetry, real, spirituality on June 9, 2018| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generosity, poem, poetry, universe on June 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, order, poem, poetry on June 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged games, monopoly, poem, poetry on June 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, Lord of the Flies, mother, poem, poetry, school shootings, son on June 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »
when I was young and read Lord of the Flies,
and when I read the part where Piggy dies,
I screamed out loud, You got it wrong. No!
As if Golding could hear me through the spine.
Perhaps because I also was a geek.
Perhaps because I didn’t want to know
how cruel the world can be. How kids like me
could choose, in fearful times, to kill our friends.
My son detests the book, but not because
the boys are cruel, because it moves too slow.
I try to reconcile his callousness, his good
and tender heart. He’s grown up in an age
where killing is a part of weekly life.
How strange for me to grieve the loss of grief.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, love, mother, poem, poetry, step mother on June 4, 2018| 2 Comments »
for Shawnee
This time the goodbye is in the kitchen,
me running off to the next thing,
you at the counter with morning tea
before you drive away.
I give you a hug from behind
and a kiss on your cheek and thank you
for coming to visit.
I want to tell you I love you,
but the words have never
tumbled out easily, not because
they aren’t true, but because
I don’t want to frighten you.
Strange to feel I must hold you at a distance
in order to keep you close,
like a mother bird
who monitors her nestling
from a neighboring tree.
I never was one of the mothers
who worry about fatal things:
car crashes, avalanche, infectious disease.
I worry more about the most
terrible thing that could happen,
that you could be alive and not know how
much I love you, fiercely, unfoldingly,
worry my longing
to keep you at ease could
make you feel pushed away.
Driving from the house,
it is not the sun in my eyes
that makes them leak,
it’s this knowing that I
have made for you a nest
in my heart where I hold you,
but perhaps what you needed all these years
was for me to hold your real hand,
to wrap my real arms around
where your wings would be.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anna akhmatova, indecent proposal, personal poem, poem, poetry on June 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »
based on The Guest, by Anna Akhmatova
I felt the way he looked at me across the room.
Hungry. A bear in spring. Glass of red wine
in his paws. His gaze hooked into me
as I parted the currents of the crowd.
I found a window, stood in its chill,
felt his heat arrive behind me. Scent
of tundra. Sweet grass. I did not turn
to him to speak. What do you want,
I said. To meet you in hell, he said,
his voice layered in honey and shade.
I met his eyes in the window, saw him
on his hind legs, rippled, as though through a lake.
You mean to have us both destroyed,
I said. Watched through our reflections
the falling snow. Tell me, he said,
how men kiss you. Tell me how you kiss.
My lips wanted to show him, Like this,
but my mouth formed in a silent O,
round as a wedding ring. In the mirror
of the night, I watched his eyes linger there.
And the gold on my finger slipped off
as my hands transformed to fins. I knew
some part of me would die. I knew
I would choose to swim.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, poem, poetry, prose poem, scatology on June 3, 2018| 2 Comments »
I wanted the artwork hung on the wall, a slip of paper with bright splattered paint. I had no tape, no tack, no nail. But strange, in the corner I noticed a small brown mound of shit. And strange I could not smell it. I did not know how it had come to be there. Did not know how long it had been on the floor. And for reasons I can only explain as urgent, I considered its sticky properties. The possibility clicked in before the revulsion. By then it was too late. I took my naked hand and smeared a brown arc on the wall, then pressed into it the art. It held. It occurred to me to be embarrassed. It occurred to me it was gross. Unhealthy. Unnormal. I was repulsed. And slightly proud in making due when resources are few. There was some pleasure in the way I shocked myself. Not with what I did, but with how I dare now to tell the truth.
**Dear friends, this is, of course, from a dream.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, fence, meadowlark, poem, poetry on June 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, family, grief, loss, poem, poetry, sister on June 1, 2018| 3 Comments »
There was a time when I’d pull his hair out
if he sat too close to me on the couch.
Now, I curl into his right side,
lean my head on his shoulder,
feel the trembling of his chest
as he weeps. How good it feels
to be close to him as we grieve.
How familiar, the shape of his head,
the heft of his hand as he reaches for mine.
How deeply right, this leaning
into sorrow together.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eros, kissing, poem, poetry on June 1, 2018| 2 Comments »
but I would rather write poems about kissing,
beside the wild roses, for instance,
with nothing between us
but perfume and shadow.
Or kissing riverside
with waves frolicking into
our sighs. Or kissing anywhere,
really, a parking lot, a stairwell,
the front step, in a plane.
See how this urge turns
everything into a love poem,
even this, which began
as a poem about loss,
has found gardens inside it
with long rows just perfect
for kissing, slow kisses
both bruising and sweet.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lost, path, poem, poetry on June 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Just because we can’t imagine
what it will look like, this path,
doesn’t mean it won’t appear.
Just today, I took a detour
off the interstate when a rolled semi
closed down all the lanes.
The GPS suggested
a back road, which turned
into dirt road, which turned
into dozens of switchbacks,
one hairpin turn after another
rising up and away from the route
I had planned. The GPS died.
No one else going the same way,
which always makes a mind wonder.
Just because we have little idea
where we are doesn’t mean
we are lost. And being lost
doesn’t mean we aren’t right where we
are meant to be, off on our own,
more alert than before
amongst the ten thousand
shades of evergreen.
Eventually, the detour proved true,
and I was back on pavement,
then back on the interstate.
the taste of dust on my lips.