Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being alive, food, pumpkin on November 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Praise the pumpkin
with its orange flesh—
how it softens
and sweetens as it cooks.
Praise the way it lends
its rich and earthy density
to pie and bread, curry and soup.
The body responds
with a something akin to joy—
tethered by humble pleasure
to exactly this moment,
as if a flavor could help us
know god—
as if a taste could help us
become who we are.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, friendship, grace, laughter, memory on November 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Though I sit alone
on my couch at home,
I’m somehow also sitting
with Rachel and Julie
and it’s summer and
we’re laughing, laughing
until we tumble
into each other’s laps,
laughing as we collapse
into a puppy pile of giggles,
laughing because it feels
so good to laugh—
even now I laugh aloud
with no memory of why
we were laughing then,
but many years later,
it’s still contagious.
Sometimes we tumble
so wholly into the grace
of a moment
that it opens in us forever,
continuously blooms
and spreads its perfume
like night-blooming jasmine,
christens everything
with its fragrance,
even this empty room,
even this tired woman
now so surprisingly awake.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged very silly on November 20, 2020| 3 Comments »
We become what we think about.
—Earl Nightingale
So let’s say I think of the Regent of Ridiculousness
who, both alluring and alliterative,
insists on eloping with elephants
and reading only far-fetched philosophers.
Such a Ridiculous Regent, perhaps does not exist,
except that I think about him, and so,
perhaps as Earl Nightingale suggest,
I become him, become an exuberant exhibitionist,
a giggling goof who spontaneously translates Transylvanian—
that’s Romanian. I’d write this all off as irrational,
except already I’m feeling rather regent-ish, certainly ridiculous,
and it’s only line twelve of the poem.
Imagine, dear reader, you, too,
are right now becoming ridiculous,
addicted to alliterative allusions. Sorry!
Tomorrow we might think more therious thoughts.
But for today, rollicking ridiculousness!
For today, suntem regenți ai ridicolului!
For today, may we be viscounts of vivacity,
prime ministers of playfulness, marquesses of mirth,
and duchesses of delight!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ferocity, praise, self awareness, wind on November 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Today when the wind
wrests branches from trees,
cartwheels the watering can
snatches my peace,
I search in me
for a way to praise it,
praise a force strong enough
to rip trees from the earth,
push a ship cross the sea,
and shred what I think I know.
There is in me
a vehement storm
that I have tamed
for fifty years.
Is it any wonder
the wind makes me nervous—
not that I don’t know
how to relate to it,
but oh, because
I do.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, childhood, library, reading on November 17, 2020| 6 Comments »
Off the hot street and down
the narrow stairwell,
I entered the smell of books—
a musty scent of paper and ink.
How I loved entering the stacks,
shelves taller than I was.
Loved running my hands
along hardcover spines
wondering at the worlds inside.
I was allowed twelve thin books,
that meant twelve chances
to travel to realms where monkeys
stole hats and the Whangdoodle snoozed.
Twelve chapters in which I
was no longer an awkward girl
but a baker in an old village
or a mouse in an attic befriending a girl
who was something like me,
or at least like the girl I wished I could be,
a girl who was brave, a girl
who couldn’t help but stumble
every single time
into happily ever after.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, cake, failure, impatience, patience, personal responsibility on November 16, 2020| 9 Comments »
I suspected I shouldn’t
open the oven door
ten minutes before
the timer went off.
Is it a sin if you don’t
know the rule?
The cake looked perfect,
when I checked,
but ten minutes later
the puff of white had fallen,
fallen like Lucifer,
fallen into a dense sponge
from which it would never
again rise. Oh angel food cake,
victim of my impatience,
we ate you anyway,
served you with strawberry fluff,
and you, like a true angel,
stayed sweet. It was no fault
of your own that you fell.
How often am I responsible
for the so called failures
of others? How often
do I, in my excitement,
cause more harm than good?
Praise the fallen angel food cake,
that still, though compact,
offered itself to the birthday.
Praise what is good
that insists on its own goodness,
despite adverse circumstance.
Let me remember
the graceful botch,
the redeemable flop,
the crumb yet moist, so tasty.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged consequences, daughter, mother on November 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
for my mother
Because you are the morning song,
I sing dawn into the sleepy room.
Because you are a prayer,
I have psalms for hands, vespers for feet,
and there is holiness in the spatula,
devotion in the chair,
faith in sirens, in old vases.
If there are cranberries in my thoughts,
it is because you are the sugar
that taught them not to be afraid
of their own sharpness.
And the white and red petunias
that flutter inside my hope
are there because you planted them
decades ago.
I didn’t know all these years
that I was being made—
but because you are the abacus
I am the calculus of possibility.
Because you are the basket
I’ve learned to weave.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, engine, kindness, power on November 13, 2020| 6 Comments »
Kindness went out and got itself
a new engine—a four-hundred horsepower
twin turbo 3.3 liter V-6 engine.
Something with real oomph.
Something that provides a bit of giddy-up
when the loving gets tough. Turns out
kindness likes horsepower.
A lot of horsepower. Plus it sprung
for direct fuel injection to maximize
its power output. Everyone thinks
kindness prefers things quiet and calm,
but kindness is ready for action—
ready to take on the world,
ready to travel every back road,
every highway, every main street
and get this ever-loving show on the road.
There’s a whole lot of loving to do.
Posted in Uncategorized on November 13, 2020| 2 Comments »
for Jude
From this high rooftop
reciting poems
into the night—
waiting to hear
the poem of you
on your rooftop
calling back.