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Archive for August, 2018

 

after The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens

 

 

 

The field was high and the sun was low

and the woman became the light; and the evening

 

slowed its pace perhaps to let the light remain.

The field was high and the sun was low.

 

She moved as though there were no night

worth fearing, as if the field could hold it all.

 

She leaned into the goldening, the way

the light itself leans softly on the world.

 

The night, a gentle friend, meandered quietly

across the land. There were no words

 

that could be said. The field was high

and the sun was lower. Slowly, hushed,

 

the wind a sigh, the field surrendered

all its lines. The darkness gathered

 

everything, the field, the woman, even

light, and made itself an offering.

 

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Meditation

 

 

 

 

And when sorrow arrives for tea

and stains the table cloth

with its great mass of gray,

and when sorrow arrives

and drives everyone else away,

do not leave, alarmed though you are

by its slumping weight.

Offer your attentiveness.

See how it almost radiates?

There are myths in which monsters

transform into princes.

It always takes courage. And kisses.

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Just One More Page

 

 

 

so eager to turn

the pages in my novel, I neglect

the pages of my life

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We are perhaps like neurons

that never touch—

but that doesn’t stop

the chemical buzz,

the lightning charge,

the electric thrill

that leaps the gap—

and in that span

all meaning is made,

long red ropes of memory

twisting and knotting,

braiding, unbraiding,

and nothing

is ever the same.

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we sit in a circle

a hammock of song appears—

it cradles us all night

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Losing It

 

 

It was a tiny percentage, I knew, but still

there was some French royalty somewhere

in my blood. I would spend hours imagining

myself in my proper place: in a long pink dress

 

and thin gold crown in a castle on a green hillside,

doing needlepoint, no doubt, and nibbling bon bons,

and so when I again asked my mother to tell me about

that part of our heritage, she told me,

 

It’s so little blood, and you’ve had so many

skinned knees, I’m pretty sure you’ve

bled it all out by now. And I was instantly

less grandiose. That was, perhaps, the first identity

 

that I was aware of losing. But soon after that,

I was no longer blonde. And soon after that,

I no longer lived in Wisconsin. And soon after that,

I was no longer a Scout. Everything I thought

 

I knew about myself didn’t last. Ah,

the litany of losses. Those notions of who we are,

how they shed, they spill, they slip off.

As they’re lost, we usually rush to replace them.

 

I became worker. Lover. Parent. Friend.

We wear them so close, these identities ,

that we no longer see them as separate. We think

they’re who we are. But what if we skinned

 

not just our knees, but our thoughts,

and let those roles escape? Who would

be left to walk through the field this evening

to see the double rainbow stretched across the east?

 

 

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wrestled by the moon

until daybreak, until losing my name,

I, too, am shining

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After the Drought

 

 

even my worry

decides to kick off its shoes

and play in the rain—

forgetting for a moment

its soggy gray socks

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Up the Hill

 

 

You walk fast,

she said, and

I said, I was walking

fast to keep up

with you, and

she said, I was

walking fast to

keep up with you

and we laughed

at ourselves as

our feet found

a new rhythm,

our hearts, too.

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Misty

 

 

And sometimes when I move

at the edge of a greatness—

a lake or a sea or a mountainside—

my insignificance thrills me

and the largest of my sadnesses

dwindles smaller than the space

between grains of sand

and in that moment,

knowing my place,

comes a love so enormous

I can love anyone, anyone,

even myself.

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