these darkest days
teach me
the light of you
Archive for December, 2020
One Devotion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, friendship, light, solstice on December 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Concurrent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, nature, praise, snow, wound on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On a morning
when the snow
falls and drapes
everything in shine,
it is not that I don’t
feel the wounds—
raw and throbbing—
it’s just that it’s
so beautiful,
this tender world,
that I want
to praise it
forever.
One Cultivating Compassion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, renaming, shame on December 11, 2020| 1 Comment »
Bald Eagle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bald eagle, long relationship, love on December 10, 2020| 3 Comments »
In less than ten seconds
I fell in love with the eagle
before it rounded the corner
and disappeared.
Sometimes,
it’s easier to love
that which moves quickly
through our lives.
Harder to love
what stays long enough
to disappoint, to hurt, to betray—
harder to feel disenchanted
and love anyway.
I’ve seen an eagle
carry prey that weighs
more than it does.
Makes me want to believe
I, too, can carry more—
like a love bigger than I am.
Like forgiveness beyond
what my thoughts can think.
Like willingness to keep loving
long after I’d rather rest my wings.
A Little Pep Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endings, heart, letting go, transformation on December 9, 2020| 2 Comments »
The swirling ash
doesn’t try
to be become
log again.
The flying leaves
don’t attempt
to return
to the tree.
The girl
can’t untwist
her genome
back into
separate strands.
The flour
in the bread
can’t return
to the sack,
can’t undo
the kneading
of hands.
In all things
lives a memory
of letting go
and the chance
to transform
into what
it can’t know.
What do you say
to that, heart?
Good self,
what do you say
to that?
When the Interviewer Asked Me What I Most Wish for the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, light, wish on December 8, 2020| 2 Comments »
“We have a lot of things we are in the midst of. What do you think this moment is inviting us to understand? Where would you like to be in spring? Where would you like to see us as a world be?”
—Kara Johnstad, Voice Rising Host, Om Times Radio
For a sliver
of a moment
I cradled
the whole world
in my thoughts—
every president,
peasant, seamstress,
beggar, businessman,
acrobat, child—
every one of us
a vessel
and I knew
in that instant
the power
of a wish—
as if hope
has a foothold
in reality,
as if a slim glimmer
is inevitable
foreshadowing
of unstoppable radiance.
With quiet clarity
I knew exactly
what I wish
for each of us—
I told her, too—
but I will refrain
from telling you.
Instead, I’ll hand you
the question
so you, too,
might make a wish,
so that you, too,
might glimmer,
might beacon.
Interview on Om Times Radio
Posted in Uncategorized on December 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »
It was so fun conversing with Kara Johnstad on Om Times Radio in her wonderful show Voice Rising. She asked such insightful questions about how poetry might help us meet the world (and ourselves), and I loved the wide-angled lens she uses. We read poems from my latest book, Hush, and talked about daily life/poetry life, yesness, generosity, the gift of constraint, the dance of silence and voice, and the impossibility of writing a poem about ticks.
Here’s the first poem I shared:
Urgency
Again the urge
to bring gauze
to the broken world—
and medicine
and a plaster cast.
Again the urge
to fix things,
to heal them,
to make them right.
Again the chance
to do the work,
which is to look in,
to touch the pain
but not become it,
to see the world
exactly as it is
and still write it
a love letter,
to meet what is cracked
with clarity,
to mirror and grow
whatever beauty
we find.
Spell for Ending Well
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ending, silence, spell on December 7, 2020| 5 Comments »
Who’s ever heard
of a silent spell?
Isn’t it supposed to rhyme?
Shouldn’t it contain
the eye of something,
the tail of something else,
some leaves, some poison,
a cauldron, a fire,
and a whole lot of stirring?
But this spell can’t be manufactured.
All it wants is your attention.
All it wants is for you to feel
how it feels to end.
It wants you to lean
into loss and let it do
its slow work on you.
It doesn’t offer a magic word—
no word is magic enough
to do what must be done.
Which is to trust
the vanishing nature of things.
Which is to let the body
grasp and grasp and grasp
until at last it is ready
to release. Any spell
for ending well
knows its own uselessness.
It knows the importance
of silence. It knows
that anyone who would look up
a spell for ending well
already has exactly what they need.
Endings for Beginners
Posted in Uncategorized on December 6, 2020| 4 Comments »
With a punch line, of course.
Or an invitation.
With a twist. Or a kiss.
Or an unanswerable question.
By circling back to the beginning.
Or with a bang. Or a whimper.
With a call to action.
With a five-course dinner.
With a clincher,
or a cliffhanger,
but not with a preposition.
Endings feel best
when of your own volition.
End with a flourish,
or a touch of cream.
On a high note. With a strong quote.
By making a scene.
End with a period.
Or end with a handshake.
End with an exclamation point.
Or end with heartbreak.
It’s okay to tie,
or to end in a draw,
but don’t end with ellipses
that just make things go on …
and on …
and on.
End in a fiasco.
Or end with a song.
End with a reversal.
End with a bell.
End with a cry
that all is well.
End with purpose
or allegory.
Every bit of our lives
is made of stories,
stories that end
so new stories begin,
so end well, end well.
Then start again.
Getting Messy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, embodiment, face, verbs on December 5, 2020| 2 Comments »
I like when
your eyes haze
with mystery
so I know myself
more sculpturally
and remember
how to brow,
how to jowl,
how to cheek.
I like when
we lip,
more smear
less line,
when we belief
less tidy,
more smudge
more shine.
I love when we
smile through
shadowy mess—
when we face
less certain,
more suggest.
Could I Say It and Really Mean It?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, thoughts on December 4, 2020| 4 Comments »
A pomegranate, tennis racket,
wide open lily—basically anything
can act as a Trojan horse to get
those old ideas close to me,
and dang, I’m confronted again
with all the ways I’ve let down
the world and all the ways
I could have, I should have
done better. How many times
have I tried to escape these thoughts?
I’ve run mountain races and
written thousands of pages
and wept a spring flood and
confessed and bled and still
they find a way back to me.
Sometimes they come knives drawn,
but more often they come
wearing fluffy robes and slippers,
making themselves at home.
I cornered one today, looked it
right in the eye. What? I said.
What do I have to do?
It shook its head and said,
All I ever wanted
was for you to say thank you.
End Well
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endings, rabbit brush on December 3, 2020| 7 Comments »
End well, says my friend,
and I think of Beethoven,
how his final symphony
was a triumphant masterpiece,
a unifying ode to joy.
And I think of the time
we ran the Grand Canyon
for weeks and on the last night
we tied the boats together
and floated all night and laughed
and laughed and laughed.
There’s the Rilke poem
about a marble torso
in which he closes with
You must change your life.
And espresso at the end
of a meal, how the dark bitter cup
leaves the mouth
in an warm O of ecstasy.
But it isn’t always easy to end—
saying goodbye to a faraway friend.
Ending a kiss. Leaving the beach.
Turning the last pages of a book.
So I think of the rabbitbrush
that fill the field—how long
they hold their gold. Until
it’s cold and they fade
and it seems like the end—
but then, if I should shovel
across them, or walk through them
in the early snow, oh the perfume
they release then—evergreeen
and earthy, herbaceous and cool.
Sometimes to end well
is to offer more
when it all seems done.
Sometimes to end well
Is to surprise everyone
with one more gift.
As You Have Done for Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, heart, treasure, value on December 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
There is treasure in you.
—Joi Sharp
If you were here
I would put my hand
on your heart
and hold it there
until our breaths
became a single tide,
hold it there until
I could feel the moment
when you remember
your infinite value.
It’s so easy to forget
we are treasure.
So easy to lose track
of our own immeasurable worth.
The chest rusts shut.
We think we are empty.
Amazing how easily
we are fooled into believing
we’re paupers.
Sometimes it takes another
to remind us
we have always been
not only the treasure
but also the key.
Though the hinges
are a metaphor,
the treasure is not.
We were made to open,
to share our priceless gift,
to press our hands
to each other’s hearts
and hold them there
until we all remember.