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Archive for July, 2018

 

 

 

As I hull them

I think of the summer day

when Jen and I

rode our bikes

over Wisconsin hills

to the berry farm

and picked so many berries

we had to drive back later

with a car—

how hard it is

to be moderate

when met with abundance.

I froze the strawberries then

as I do now,

small red sweetnesses

for winter when

I will find it hard

to remember

just how generous

the sun.

Oh if that girl of twenty two

could see me now,

standing in the kitchen,

what would I tell her?

Nothing. Not a thing.

She has so much

to learn about trying

to save what she loves.

Better to just let her

see me as I am now—

red juice on my fingers,

red juice on my chin,

a pucker on my lips.

 

 

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And as the demon prison is opened,

it’s already half past ten, and my daughter

and I have already read an hour past her bedtime,

but the demon prison is open, and so

I promise just ten more minutes, but then,

at ten forty, our hero is clashing swords

with the demon who betrayed him

and so we read on to the demon’s demise.

 

Just yesterday I spoke with a friend

who told me she thought about killing herself.

We sat in the garden surrounded by cosmos

and overly abundant chard.

Life is not like the book where we know

there will be a happy ending,

which makes it harder

to want to turn the page.

 

Tonight, when we put down the book,

just as the next demon taunts

our hero, we turn off the lights

and feel the giddiness of the battle

pulsing through our bodies.

We giggle too loud and shudder

beyond our control. It is difficult

to find enough peace in ourselves

to welcome sleep.

How we long to turn just one more page,

just one more page.

 

May we always find reasons

to go on, believing that

something good is about to happen.

I may not believe in happy endings,

but I do believe in happiness,

the way it finds us when we least

expect it. Like the zinnia in my garden

that for months has looked shriveled and dead

since a spring frost, and just today,

after the big rains,

formed four green leaves.

 

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In the red mud, in the muck,

in the day’s surplus of luck,

the sudden rains make flood of wish

and fill the road with detritus

and we are stranded where we are

the roads all closed, and still, I hear

inside, some voice, insistent,

chanting More, more.

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One Sincerity

 

 

 

just outside my window

larkspur erupts

into generous blue—

in me blossoms

an old prayer

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it was never meant to last,

this life, though we tell ourselves

we’re different, though we tell

ourselves we matter. But the planet

is patient. And the sky is older than that.

The bones in the exhibit hall are proof.

 

Still, as I drive the seven hours to home,

I am careful to stay in my lane,

careful to miss the dead lump of what once

was a bird, to use my turn signal,

to wave thanks at the truck driver

who let me into the flow.

 

It may not go on forever, but

for now there is this chance

to learn about communion.

There is this chance

to see just how generous

we can be with these drying bones.

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via Naked for Tea, Poems by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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And again I recall how small we are,

how ninety nine percent of all species

that have ever lived are extinct,

how thin our stripe in geologic time,

how remarkable that we are here at all.

And suddenly all that matters

is that I love you—and what are the odds?

How many billion years in the making,

this rush of gratitude, this burgeoning

joy, this thrill in the sheer Cenozoic luck

to feel the concurrent burning and quenching,

the simultaneous bite and salve, the Quaternary

gift of thriving and failing at the same time?

If it feels as if it’s taken forever to get to this place,

lover, it has. Think trilobite. T-rex. Cave bear.

Wooly mammoth. Think how little time

has passed, and how lucky, how lucky we are.

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She tried to fly

by catching moths

and tying their wings

to herself.

 

He tried to fly

by studying flight

as if reading

were enough.

 

But in their drive

to fly they both

lost sight of what

they had—

 

two legs that leap

and run and walk,

and kick and climb

and dance.

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Sitting on the couch

watching a Disney musical

and singing along

with my daughter,

we cackle like the evil queen

and purr with the catty girls,

practicing in cruel registers

we seldom use,

and I think how it is

we are drawn to imitate

that which repulses us,

how strange the words taste

in my mouth, like candy

from a foreign land,

and how our eyes flicker

with playful light

as we scowl and curse

and deride. And my daughter

snuggles in closer to me,

and I kiss her head,

and we watch till the end,

though we’ve seen it

at least five times before

and know exactly what will happen.

There is comfort, perhaps,

in reminding ourselves

how the good prevails.

We are like children who have been

lost in a dark wood while playing games,

then see a wall of sunlight

in the distance

and make a run for it.

 

 

 

 

 

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Reconciliation

 

 

We are all walking each other home.

—Ram Dass

 

 

There was that moment before

I read the letter, when you

were still invincible, that moment

when just seeing your name

made me think of sitting at your table

drinking wine, eating fresh tomato soup,

and my heart rose up like a good little dog

and begged me to read the news.

And then there was the moment

when I read the news. And read it again.

And let my eyes unfocus on the words

as I felt their terrible weight

settle in my chest, on my cheeks.

How soon the mind leans toward the worst.

It is hard to reconcile the two moments

together, side by side as they were,

the one so exuberant, the other

so grim. I try to imagine them

holding hands as if to steady the other.

As if they need somehow to be close,

fear and hope. If you feel a hand

slip into yours and no one is there,

perhaps it is mine, reaching

toward you through a letter

I will always be writing, the letter

of how beautiful it is to be alive

in this world so we can

shoulder together what frightens us most.

How beautiful it is to be alive

so that even in our most lumbered days

we might meet each other, hands open,

and steady the other, walking home.

 

 

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