venom from the boy—
reminding myself
that this, too, is the moon
Archive for March, 2019
One Bowing to Basho
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged basho, poem, poetry on March 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One Near Miss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, timing on March 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »
They Say It’s the Best Bloom in Ten Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bluebonnets, death, flower, friendship, life, love, poem, poetry, wildflowers on March 29, 2019| 6 Comments »
She wants to go see the bluebonnets, she says.
This is after she tells me they’ve said she has three months to live.
And I want to find her vast fields of bluebonnets,
acres and acres of white-tipped blue bloom.
And I want to send her more springs to see them in,
more days to live one day at a time. I want to remove
the pain in her belly, the pain that aggressively grows.
I want to make deals with the universe. Want to say no
to the way things are. I want to tell death to wait.
I want to tell life to find a way. I want to hug her
until she believes she’s beloved. I want to give her
the pen that will write every brave thing
that she’s been unable to say. There are days
when we feel how uncompromising it is, the truth.
How human we are. There are days when the bluebonnets
stretch as far as the eye can see. There are days
we know nothing is more important than going to see them,
a billion blue petals all nodding in the wind, teaching us to say yes.
One Staff
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, music, poem, poetry on March 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
all those beautiful notes—
letting them fall from the score
and not rushing
to arrange them again,
listening as new songs arise
A Little Secret
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, dinner, food, mac and cheese, poem, poetry, prayer on March 27, 2019| 5 Comments »
The white sauce whisked to smoothness
before the cheese is added,
and the elbow noodles boiled till they’re al dente,
the Pyrex buttered with long looping swirls of the fingers,
the cheddar spread evenly on top.
It is not easy for most people to see
devotion in the mac and cheese.
It doesn’t look like prayer.
But it’s there.
To the Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, self love on March 26, 2019| 6 Comments »
And so it is that Love
threw at my feet her glove,
a long white one, perhaps,
but nonetheless a glove.
I took it up because
I knew the rules, and Love
looked me right in the eyes
and speared me with her words:
“It’s easy to fall in love
with spring, but can you care
for everything—the dross,
the dreck, the scum, the muck,
the loss, the wreck, the grime,
the dust? And can you find them
in you, too? And can
you fall in love with you?
Absence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, bluebird, poem, poetry, returning on March 25, 2019| 2 Comments »
The bluebirds return.
It never occurs to me to chastise them for leaving.
It’s what they do.
All day, I think
of their shallow wing beats,
their slow flight,
their bright blue fluttering,
and how easily, how instantly yesly
my heart rises up to meet them.
Inquiry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, question on March 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
How has pride helped your family?
That is a question I’ve never asked.
Nor How do you treat yourself
when you think “I must give others choices?”
And suddenly it occurs to me
that I always ask the same questions.
How was your day? and Peanut butter
sandwich or bagel with cream cheese?
I have been thinking of new questions today.
What do you have to teach me?
Earth, what do you want? and
Where do I begin? But these are still
questions I can think of. I want to learn
new questions, questions I don’t yet know to ask.
Questions that scare me. Questions that make me
weep just hearing them. Questions
I know I will spend a lifetime
learning how to answer
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mud, poem, poetry, shine, spring on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I am reborn into the world of radiance—
crystalline icicles, glittering reaches of snow—
and whatever in me is old brown stick,
whatever in me is withered rose hip,
whatever is desiccated and dead takes notice
of the shine and says, Teach me that.
I am reborn into the world of drip
and melt and streets of mud,
and whatever part of me is muck-squeamish
and sludge resistant goes walking anyway
and wallows and squishes and slips and laughs.
In that slippery moment, the part of me
who has died becomes lotus.
And who is it in me that scoffs
and says Who are you to be lotus?
I show her diamonds in the field,
the big blue dome of sky, the vast
expanses of glistening mud,
and I ask her, Who are you not to be?
Emerging Form: Getting Started
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christie Aschwanden, creative process, Emerging Form, getting started, Judyth Hill, podcast on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
In our fourth episode of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, my co-host Christie Aschwanden and I explore Getting Started. Ever have a creative project you just couldn’t seem to begin? Ever been stared down by a blank page? In this 28-minute episode, we look at lots of tips for getting started, we discuss working through perfection anxiety, paralysis of analysis, the blank page blues and so much more. Then we interview amazing poet and writing coach Judyth Hill and ask her two burning questions about how to get started. Join us!
Also, check out our back episodes on emerging form, is talent necessary and existential despair.
The Berry Bush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, berries, healing, poem, poetry, poison on March 22, 2019| 2 Comments »
I knew that they were poisonous, the berries.
Still, I used them to make soup. They were
the most beautiful shades of yellow, green
and orange, and they popped when you squeezed them
and spilled their sticky juice, their tiny seeds.
I’d stir them into puddle water with handfuls
of ripped green grass, small stones, broken sticks.
Then I’d stir. Stir and chant into the old silver pot,
chant words I imagined had been sung long before.
It was a soup, I knew, that could heal.
A magical soup that could nourish the world
just in the making of it.
Years later I consider what I knew then—
how belief is the most important ingredient.
How all healing begins with a bit of poison.
The Blizzard Reminds Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, parenting, poem, snow, spruce, tree on March 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The way the spruce tree
holds the wet snow—how
in a blizzard its branches
will bend and bend
and bend until they release—
that is the way I want to love you,
want to trust that I can hold
the weight of you as you fall,
as you continue to fall,
hold you until it seems I will break
and then, just when I’m sure
I can’t take any more,
release you back into yourself—
not in anger, not in fear,
not with guilt—release you
with green resilience
so that come the next storm
I am prepared
to catch you again, again,
and let you go.
One Sisyphean
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged glass half empty, poem, poetry, suffering on March 20, 2019| 3 Comments »
the glass half empty
she keeps filling it
never noticing
in the bottom
all the tiny holes
Job Description
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged opening, poem, poetry on March 19, 2019| 8 Comments »
My work is to be the student of the buds
that have been on the birch all winter—
tight and red, they know when to clench,
when to wait, when to swell,
when to burst, when to green.
My work is to open like the scent of juniper
when stroked by afternoon sun,
like the gong when rapidly rapped
into a shining explosion of resonance.
And when I am wall, my work
is to add hinges and become door.
And when I am lock, my work
is to find the lost key.
My work is to be baby bird,
to open my beak and take in
whatever the world has to feed me
and then
learn to fly.
One Reality Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged independence, love, mud, poem, poetry, spring on March 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
cleaning off my shoes
before walking through the mud,
and Love says to me,
what? do you think
I am going to carry you?
Like an Icicle, A Thought
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged icicle, poem, poetry, thinking, thoughts, winter on March 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »
It is the child of cold and warmth.
It is right it should show up
both cloudy and clear,
this union of opposites,
shaped like a spear, piercing
the silence with dripping, dripping.
It forms itself
the same way it disappears.
Conversation at the Silent Retreat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, distraction, poem, poetry, silence, sound on March 17, 2019| 5 Comments »
Apparently no one told the tickle in my throat
that this was a silent retreat.
All it wanted to do was explore the sound
of throat clearing, the sound of cough.
All around me the sound of nothing
but breathing and sitting, but in me,
this tickle saying Notice me, Notice me.
Here I am and what will you do about it?
I told the tickle, If I were freeclimbing,
I would ignore you. My life would depend on it.
The tickle said, but you’re here,
here in a quiet room, and your life is at stake
in a much different way. What are you willing
to notice? What do you wish away?
Isn’t this just one more way you tell yourself
life would be better if it were different?
Primary Relationship
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, poem, poetry, silence on March 17, 2019| 2 Comments »
Consider the generosity of silence,
how it holds the space between icicle drips,
how it meets squawk and howl
and laugh and sob with the same acceptance,
the same respect. How it asks nothing of the world
and yet is always there waiting
beneath the passing car, the passing thought.
I don’t want to live my life without knowing you,
silence, you the great loom on which all life is woven,
you the wisdom with nothing to say.
I want to invite you into all the rooms of my heart,
want to know the ways you permeate me,
how you inform every cell.
I want to find you inside every word, to know
in all my speech the silence that supports it.
I want to know you, silence, you who was here
before the big bang and you who continue to grow.
You who touch the seas and the barren rock,
the snow covered mountain, the meadow of mud,
who touched the first leaf and met the first cry,
who will touch the last leaf, who will meet
the last song. And go on.
And Just Like That
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, poem, poetry, source on March 15, 2019| 2 Comments »
the deep field of snow
with its crystals and diamonds
turns to mud
and the stem of purple orchids
drops its blooms
until it is only stem
and we, too, rearrange
and become not beauty
but its source
Review for “Naked for Tea”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Book Review, Naked for Tea, poetry on March 14, 2019| 8 Comments »
Though it came out last year, this book review in Colorado Central Magazine just became available on-line.
To see more about the book, or to order, visit wordwoman.com