Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, garden, poem, poetry on June 30, 2019| 1 Comment »
And after the hail and
the midsummer frost,
the garden remembers
how to summer, how to green,
how to leaf and root and bloom,
and everything is so alive,
even this gardener who somehow
does not hear the clock inside
of everything, no, all she hears
is the roar of the river, the
bright chorus of insects,
the seemingly infinite beat
of her own goldening heart.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, dogs, father, love, parenting, poem, poetry on June 30, 2019| 8 Comments »
I should have raised dogs.
That’s what my father always said
when I did something stupid.
Like when my friend and I were twelve
and we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark
with two seventeen-year old boys.
And there was dad, waiting
outside the theater looking like
exactly what he was—a rabid dad
hellbent on scaring the shit out of any boy
who might have unvirtuous thoughts
about his girl. He never said
what kind of dogs—poodles or labs
or mutts. I can just see him
walking the corridor of his kennel,
all the dogs barking. But dogs weren’t
his calling—the crates, the training,
special diets, vets. No,
he was the master of loving me
through my crazy mistakes
and my hormonal angst and my sudden refusal
to eat meat. I still smile thinking of
the way he would sit on the couch
and hold his arm open for me
to come sit beside him then snuggle.
The way he bought me a book
to decode my dreams. The way he took me
to piano lessons every Saturday
morning, then took me out for brunch
so we could talk. The way he still listens
when I’ve done something stupid
and then tells me he loves me.
Never once, despite all his lamentations,
did I think he would exchange me
for a chihuahua or beagle. No, there
was something almost sweet in his wish,
a hint of surrender in it, the sound
of his heart opening just a little bit wider
to let in the world, unleashed as it is.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hug, poem, poetry, time on June 29, 2019| 2 Comments »
It’s the time it takes
to sing up to “k.”
It’s two full cycles
of breath. It’s less time
than a red light, and nine
more seconds than it takes
for a cheetah to go from
zero to sixty.
It’s one fifth of a minute waltz.
It’s $4,629 more dollars
for Bill Gates.
And, my friend tells me,
it’s how long it takes
for a hug to stimulate
the vagus nerve and trigger
oxytocin, helping the heart
to slow down and the cortisol
levels to drop. All day,
I practice long embraces—
and while we hug
the earth rotates at least 5,520 meters
and the universe expands
over 816 kilometers.
All day, I notice
how darn good it feels.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erosion, loss of separate self, poem, poetry, sand, transformation on June 27, 2019| 2 Comments »
And again the world tumbles me
and again I emerge smoother, softer,
less sharp, less whole. Someday I will be
less solid, less myself, more a part of everything,
more a grain of sand that knows itself as one of many, easily
moved by the current, until finally, I
am less sand, more sea.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, goat heads, poem, poetry, Rachel Kellum, weeds on June 26, 2019| 2 Comments »
Rachel and I walk the dirt track
around and around—there are
goat heads in bloom, and she pauses
to notice how beautiful the small purple
flowers are before they become vicious
and sharp-toothed, hostile and harsh.
How much aggression begins as beauty?
I have no love for the goat heads, but
now, seeing them sprawling and soft,
I can’t help but bow to the paradox
that exists in everything, even these woman
who walk circles in the middle of the desert
just for the joy of walking together. Something
in them has grown hardened and sharp.
They speak of it and weep and laugh. Something
in them softens into tiny lavender blooms.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comma, meditation, mindfulness, poem, poetry, punctuation, relaxation on June 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »
All afternoon, each time
I think I should hurry,
I pull out a comma,
such humble punctuation,
and invite it into the moment—
and the comma does
what it always does, which
is to invite a pause, a small pause,
of course, but a pause long enough
to breathe, to notice what else
is happening, a slight
suggestion that right here
is a perfect place to rest,
yes, how funny I never noticed
before that the comma itself
looks as if it’s bowing, nodding
its small dark head to what is,
encouraging us to find
a brief silence and then,
thus refreshed, to go on.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, poem, poetry, practice, shadow on June 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, parenthesis, path, poem, poetry, punctuation on June 25, 2019| 4 Comments »
She wanders the parenthetical garden,
each curved stem an invitation to step
away from the trail (remember how the Stoic
said to dwell on the beauty of life, to run
with the stars), and soon she is what some
call lost (Any fool can know, said Einstein,
the point is to understand), and there,
lost in the sound of the bird she doesn’t hear
(Heard melodies are sweet, said Keats,
but those unheard are sweeter), she sits
on the swing of her thoughts (what is it
she is so afraid of) (seek those, said Rumi,
who fan your flame)(how comfortable
can she become with her errors)(false start)
and notices how it is the knots that hold up
the swing (what story is she ignoring?).
This garden, my god, it is beautiful.
She was going somewhere, wasn’t she?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged displacement, ego, poem, poetry, whale on June 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, greek gods, hunger, poem, poetry, sacrifice on June 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Of course it was awful, what he did, chopping
up his son to serve him in a stew to the gods,
confused somehow about sacrifice.
After that, the gods never let Tantalus be nourished again.
He was forever made to stand in a pool of water
beneath a fruit tree, its branches low hanging.
And whenever her reached to eat the fruit, sweet and ripe,
the branches would rise. And whenever he tried to drink,
the clear water would recede.
There are many kinds of prisons. Some
have iron bars, cement walls. Some deprive
you of your senses. But the gods knew some look like paradise.
Haven’t we all been confused before?
Haven’t we all made misguided sacrifice?
I’m not trying to defend Tantalus. I’m just saying
we all understand hunger. And no matter how many times
the branch is taken away, it is survival to want the fruit,
to reach, to reach again.
to see the image, click here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camping, poem, poetry on June 21, 2019| 5 Comments »
(somehow leaving out the trip to Urgent Care, the lost bicycle wheel, the dead car battery, the mangled sun shade, the flood … )
turned into an orange kite
the tent tangles in pinyon—
hello Motel 6
*
riding the single track
so easy to be nothing but
riding the single track
*
letting the crickets
choose a key, harmonizing
a lullaby to myself
*
that squawking bird
with its one note song—
still, it sings, it sings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bedtime, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, time on June 16, 2019| 2 Comments »
Stepping into my children’s room
it is nine years ago and I almost trip over
the rocking chair that isn’t there,
can almost smell the calendula cream
I used for their bottoms, hear
the drone of the humidifier.
How different those quiet nights,
the amber glow of the night light,
the way their new bodies curled
so easily into the curve of my arm.
Not that I want to go back to those nights,
but how sweet they are now, how long
they were then. I want to tell that younger
version of myself that there will come
a day when she will wish she could
sit in the quiet and hold her children
through the night. But she wouldn’t believe me.
Too tired for belief. She just keeps
humming that lullaby, rocking back
and forth, her eyes closed as if to dream.
Dear friends, I’ll be camping the next few days, so no poems posted for a while … a bouquet when I return. xo
r
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accomplishments, poem, poetry, weeds on June 15, 2019| 5 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, language, love, poem, poetry on June 15, 2019| 5 Comments »
And when my dad said,
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he exclaimed,
“Christ on a bike,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he said,
“Turn off the TV,”
he meant, “Turn off the TV.”
And when he said,
“No,” I knew
he meant, “I love you.”
It was, in fact, easy
to translate, though sometimes
I didn’t like the native tongue.
But I felt that love in every word,
the love beyond syntax
love beyond lexicon,
love big enough to hold
us both for a lifetime
and then be passed on.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, living, poem, poetry on June 14, 2019| 1 Comment »
And if it gets colder and colder,
then I want to go out the way
the bean sprouts do—with their leaves,
though darkened, still in the shape of a heart.
And if it gets hotter and hotter,
then I want to go out like the ripples
that waver above the pavement
softening the edges of whatever can be seen.
And if Thanos really did snap his fingers
and half of all living creatures turned to dust,
I want to go like the Cheshire Cat,
my smile the last part of me to exist.
And if it’s a fast death, then
let me come back as a sparrow
so I can visit those I love
and sit on their porches and sing.
And if it’s a slow death, and I suppose
that’s what life is, may I talk too much about love.
May I go out saying thank you a thousand times
a day, astonished and gasping with praise.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged miracle, poem, poetry on June 13, 2019| 1 Comment »
How often do I miss miracles dressed in ordinary clothes? That’s the theme of this sonnet published today in Gratefulness.org. Check it out and share it!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cottonwood, ideas, poem, poetry, tree on June 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »
It’s easier, perhaps, to understand the acorn.
A shell. A cap. Something tender inside
with the potential to grow a great oak.
But cotton? Harder to understand the tiny seeds
wrapped in white gossamer strands—
tiny parachutes that slip through hands.
So few survive, but those that do
live a hundred years and grow faster
than any other American tree.
They’re like ideas—weightless. Able
to travel long distances. Mostly disposable,
but then once in a while,
one of the 25 million seeds
released by a tree will take root.
I’ve felt it happen inside me—
how it starts so small. How quickly
it grows, changes the landscape. How soon
you can’t imagine the world any other way.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choice, poem, poetry, ready on June 12, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, connection, flowers, poem, poetry, wild iris on June 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
beside the floodplain
acre after acre of pale blue
thousands of wild iris—
just thinking of sharing them
they become (is it possible?)
yes, more beautiful
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, road trip, singing on June 10, 2019| 3 Comments »