Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, love, outside, sadness on October 31, 2020| 5 Comments »
Certain I can’t carry
another sadness,
I step outside
and let the shine
of the mid-morning sun
stroke my cheek
like a lover.
And the air has a strange
bright citrus tang,
and I inhale it
again and again.
Whatever it means
to be alive,
it has something
to do with this—
the scent of leaf
and soil and shadow.
The astonishing warmth
of a late October day.
The weight
of loving another,
that weight
without which
I would be nothing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged sky, spaciousness, worry on October 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
swallowing the sky tonight—
all those enormous worries in me
now like grains of sand
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amy Irvine, edge, friendship, knowledge, learning, walking on October 28, 2020| 1 Comment »
Just because I don’t see the edge
doesn’t mean the edge isn’t there.
Walking with Amy through the scrub oak woods,
I had no idea that just to my right
was a deep canyon. I could have walked on for miles
believing the world was flat
if she hadn’t suggested we walk off the trail
to see the gaping chasm.
It wasn’t that she was trying to teach me,
she was just doing what she does—
straying from the path to see what else is there.
Now I am looking everywhere for edges—
in every conversation, in every thought.
Now, I am looking at everyone as a teacher.
I have no idea what they see that I don’t.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lost, love, map, move, path on October 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
To move forward, move forward.
But first, get lost.
Really lost. If you have a map,
burn it. Not that there’s
anything wrong with a map.
But you must recalibrate
the one using it. Let her not know
where she is. And if she does know,
perhaps through rote,
perhaps through muscle memory,
then spin her around
with a blindfold on,
the way kids do when pinning
a paper tail on a donkey.
Spin her until she has no idea
which direction to walk with that tail.
Spin her until she falls.
And then let her do as St. Francis taught—
let step in whatever direction
her head is pointing.
Let her trust that any direction she steps
can be the right way forward,
every path can be a path toward love.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, letting go, love, museum, picasso on October 27, 2020| 2 Comments »
on seeing The Lovers by Pablo Picasso when I was sixteen
Perhaps because I was in love
I fell in love with The Lovers—
fell in love with the way
the man held the woman from behind.
Fell in love with his red,
with her yellow and green.
Fell in love with his gaze,
with the tilt of her head.
I knew what it was like
to be that woman.
Even now, looking
at the painting in pixels,
not in oil on linen,
I feel it—the harmony
of the blue sky behind them,
a sky somehow boundless
inside of them, too.
Thirty years later,
I’m still charged with that blue.
And whatever it is
that forces the woman
to look beyond the frame,
I remember that, too.
It’s as if she can’t quite see
what’s about to happen,
so with one hand,
she holds on to her lover.
With the other, she reaches,
or is she holding herself?
And here’s what I grasp
that she doesn’t yet know—
how hard it will be, how hard
it will be to let go.
The Lovers by Pablo Picasso
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, purity, snow, thirst, water on October 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Tonight my daughter
closes her fist
around the first snow
squeezes to make it
into a small cold ball
the shape of her hand,
and then offers it to me.
It tastes like sky,
like electric charge,
like winter, like childhood,
like curiosity.
And once again
I’m a girl who walks
to the neighbor’s yard
for a drink at the well—
I pump the heavy lever
and it draws clean, clear water
from the ground.
There’s a red metal ladle
hanging from a nail
on a nearby tree,
and the water tastes of moss
and rust and freedom.
There is a thirst
that’s been bequeathed us—
a thirst for what is
untreated and pure,
a thirst I somehow
manage to forget.
If it could speak,
the thirst might say,
Remember, remember,
remember.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple, autumn, hope, preservation on October 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
To buy three boxes of apples
is to believe the world
will go on long enough
that we should preserve
the goodness of autumn.
Perhaps it is practical
to cook the fruit,
to store it in jars,
but I prefer to think of it
as hope filling the house
with its sweet red perfume,
hope filling the shelves
with the memory
of sunshine, of bloom.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, death, encouragement, jack pera, running on October 23, 2020| 8 Comments »
When I think of encouragement,
I think of Jack Pera,
who stood every year
at the top of Imogene Pass—
in snow, in sun, in sleet, in fog.
On race day, a thousand plus runners
would reach the top,
weary, having climbed
over five thousand feet in ten miles,
and Jack, he would hold out his hand
and pull each of us up the last foot,
launching us toward the long downhill finish.
I remember how surprised I was
the first time, and grateful,
grateful to feel him reaching for me,
grateful to feel his powerful grip
yanking me up through the scree.
“Good job,” he’d say to each one of us,
cheering us though we were sweaty
and drooling and panting and spent.
After that first race, I knew to look for him
as I climbed the last pitch,
trying to make out his form
at the top of the ridge.
And there was. Every time.
“Good job,” he’d say
as he made that last steep step
feel like flight.
There are people who do this,
who hold out their hand,
year after year,
to help those who need it.
There are people who carry us
when we most need it,
if only for a moment.
When I heard today Jack had died,
I couldn’t help but imagine
an angel waiting there above him
as he took his last breath,
an angel with a firm grip and a big smile
holding out a hand, pulling him through that last effort,
telling him, “Good Job, Jack. Good job.”
And may he have felt in that moment
the blessing of that encouragement,
totally ready to be launched into whatever came next.
Good job, Jack Pera. Good job.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mary oliver, poetry discussion, shyft on October 23, 2020| 2 Comments »
What will you do with your one wild and precious life? For five decades, Mary Oliver wrote poetry that invited us to live more wholly, more attentively, more wildly in the world. In this five-week discussion class, we’ll discuss poems from her new selected poems, Devotions, which Oliver herself curated and arranged. We’ll do as she invites us: to pause with her and see and feel the world, to fall in love with life and to explore more deeply what it means to be human. As we read her poems, we’ll try to following her instructions: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Hardcover books provided by SHYFT at Mile High. Hosted by SHYFT at Mile High. $140. Scholarships available.
Choose either Mondays (beginning Nov. 9)
or
Wednesdays (beginning Nov. 11).
This event is hosted by SHYFT at Mile High, whose mission is to provide all people, regardless of ability to pay, with classes and programs proven to reduce stress, heal trauma, and create connection.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged games, indecision, mud, present, struggle on October 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cough drop, medicine, ode on October 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Too sharp to be candy,
and yet you manage
to trick the tongue
into willingness.
Other’s may have
better medicine,
may get to the heart
of what’s wrong.
But you, you bring ease,
you relieve.
Your whole purpose:
To soothe until
healing can happen.
To insert a little sweetness
into misery.
To relax what wants to erupt.
To make the moment bearable.
To keep peace.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awake, night, sleep on October 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Check the time. Reach for scraps of the dream you just woke from.
Close your eyes again. Remind yourself of studies that say
you’re still getting rest even if you feel awake. Curse the studies.
Curse the awakeness. Notice how cursing wakes you even more.
Toss. Count breaths of the person sleeping next to you.
Tell yourself not to be resentful of them, though you are.
Touch your hand to the sleep heavy weight of their leg. Breathe.
Try not to remember something terrible you did long ago.
Perseverate on the details. Wish you could apologize,
though you’ve long since forgotten the names.
Determine that starting tomorrow morning you will be a better person
in a belated attempt to atone for past mistakes.
Tell yourself not to look at the clock again. Look at the clock again.
Calculate to the minute how long you’ve been awake. Worry
about tomorrow. Worry about your kids. Worry about the country.
Worry that you worry too much. Refuse to look at the clock.
There is a lake in the night, dark and deep. Feel yourself held by it,
as if you are floating. As if the night buoys you, cradles you like a mother.
Miss your mother. Take a few strokes in the night lake. Notice
how quiet it is. Feel yourself slip beneath its surface.
When the light comes, swim toward the light.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fibonacci sequence, fingerprint, spiral on October 19, 2020| 4 Comments »
And if they tried
to match the whirl
of my fingerprint,
they’d learn my true
identity is galaxy,
close cousin to the fern,
and sister to the nautilus.
They’d learn I’m most definitely
guilty of Fibonacci.
I leave evidence
everywhere—tiny
invisible swirls,
reminders that I,
too, am hurricane,
eddy, whirlpool,
and sunflower head.
I have been marked
like the pinecone,
spiraling out from the center,
and there’s nothing
I won’t touch.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, gerard manley hopkins, leaves, poetry on October 19, 2020| 1 Comment »
… by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie, and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall, To a Young Child”
The whole time I ran the lawnmower
through brown cottonwood leaves,
I recited Gerard Manley Hopkins
and waded in intricate cross tied rhymes
that defied the straight green paths
I was making. I hope Gerard doesn’t think it rude
I call him by his first name when I talk to him,
as I often do when walking alone.
He never speaks back, but I’d like to think
I’m better at listening for him.
As today when I repeated again his words
about worlds of wanwood leafmeal,
I swear he rose up
in the dry-honey scent of leaf dust
as if to say, this, this, this.
And while I pushed the red Toro
across the leaf-spangled lawn,
I thrilled to know the world as poem,
to know the ambush of tears as tiny wet poems
to know myself as a tired and ecstatic poem
while all around me the leaves continued to fall.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cartoon, friendship, words on October 18, 2020| 5 Comments »
Sometimes when walking
or driving or sitting in a chair,
I thrill to see some words of yours
float through the air—as if
a cartoon thought bubble
cut loose from your thoughts
filled with calibri sweetnesses
and times-new-roman puns—
and I pluck the words
from the sky and wrap them
around my wrist. They bob
above me like a helium balloon—
sometimes I almost believe
could carry me away.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, love, sky, tea on October 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, communication, river, speaking, student on October 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The river in autumn
is clear enough
to see the trout
who swim
in the deeper pools.
There are many ways
to speak.
This is one.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
After the anger dries up
and falls away like an old dried husk,
it might be you feel
like laughing—
at yourself it turns out—
and all that is now possible
whispers to you
like wind in the meadow,
and where before you saw
a single path
you now see thousands,
and you wonder
how you never noticed it before
the way every step
receives you.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The Renegade Page: Finding the Poetry for the Moment
Tuesdays, 2-4 p.m. Mountain Time, October 20-Nov. 17
Need a pick me up? An infusion of beauty? A reminder of what’s going right? A chance to write about what is most challenging? Every moment—even mid-pandemic and mid-election season—contains an invitation to lean into the world as it is. Join poet and performer Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a playful, provocative exploration of how to find poetry in everything—from spatulas to depression, from cleaning the kitchen to catalog shopping. This isn’t your textbook poetry—it’s the poetry of your life. Every class we’ll read, write and share poems. $85
Hosted by Weehawken Arts. To register, visit https://weehawkenarts.org/class/the-renegade-page-finding-the-poetry-for-the-moment/2020-10-20/
*
As If Life Depends on It: A Poetry Playshop on Birth and Death
November 1, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. mountain time
When the veil is most thin, come read & write poems about birth & death & how these two miracles charge all the life in between
Now in the season when the veil between the worlds is most thin, come read and write poems about birth and death and how these two miracles charge all the life in between. We’ll consider the Stoic mandate—memento mori—remember your death, and how, paradoxically, it is an invitation to live, humbly and ecstatically. We’ll dance in the playgrounds of metaphor and explore what it is to be alive. What wild or timid ideas are waiting for you to write them? What mysteries are hiding in your heart? Bring your curiosity and your wonder, your fear and your awe. Come surprise yourself. $60
Hosted by SHYFT at Mile High. To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/as-if-life-depends-on-it-a-poetry-playshop-on-birth-and-death-tickets-122320831901?aff=erelpanelorg
