and if I dare dream
let it include the facts—
the bite, the open hand
Archive for May, 2021
One Feeding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliche, dream, reality on May 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Trying to Get It Right
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged step, tightrope, uncertainty on May 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »
after Knowing Now You’ll Never Be a Clown by Jack Ridl
I’ll never be a tight rope walker
balancing above the canyon—
no net beneath me, just angry rapids,
no strap tethering me to the tight rope
to catch me should I fall.
But could I be a tightrope walker,
I would know the art of one step at a time,
would know how to tune out everything
except the step that comes next.
Or is it that I would know
how to tune in to everything
so I might better meet the next step?
If I were a tightrope walker,
I would trust myself
know every muscle intimately,
would have faith in my reflexes,
faith in how I respond to wind,
to challenge, to fear.
Instead of all this wondering
about what should come next.
Instead of all this worry about
how to take a step.
Acceleration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hope, icarus on May 29, 2021| 4 Comments »
Sometimes when I fall long enough,
I stop hoping I will stop falling.
In those moments, when I no longer
wish for the wings of an answer,
or for the solid ground of resolution,
such beautiful surrender
in the dropping through space,
in submitting to the weight
of what it takes to hold a soul.
I wonder if Icarus felt it, too. Perhaps,
if only for a moment, he knew
the rush of air, the thrill of not trying
to inhibit the tumble, the gift of knowing
self as free fall, the skill of giving in,
every prayer coming out as sound of wind.
First Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood memory, kissing, love, remembering on May 28, 2021| 5 Comments »
Tonight, it comes back, how we’d go for walks
in the tall dry grass behind the old school.
In my memory, the field goes on and on and
it never rains and we have no idea how young
we are. Sun-drunk and heat-starved, twin ripples
of wind. Broken grass in our hair and howl
in our skin. And we believed in forever then—
perhaps we touched it those summer days,
a strand of forever, forgotten for decades,
lost amongst other eternal strands—but oh,
those hands, those parted lips, that tall, trembling grass.
Renaming the Chapter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus on May 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Rename it Year-the-Redwing-Blackbirds-Came-to-the-Yard.
Is it true they were never here before?
Or was I not here enough to hear them?
Rename it How-to-Read-Eyes-101. Or
Intro-to-Zoom. Or Age-of-the-Unmoving-Odometer.
Is that any better than COVID-19, which grates
like the righteous shouts of politicians?
Or coronavirus, which sounds like
a chorus of ventilators?
Call it Killer-of-the-Wise-Generation.
Or Bringer-of-Empty-Schoolyards.
Period-When-I-Lean-into-Uncertainty.
Time-I-Know-How-Human-We-Are.
Silver-Lining-for-Introverts.
Yet-Another-Chapter-of-Inequity.
Call it Life-Taker. World-Changer.
Pandemic. Prayer-breeder.
Loss-Bringer. Choice-Maker.
Teacher.
Again. Again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, death, frost, garden, spring on May 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
Almost every spring, I forget them,
the six packs of cosmos starts on the porch.
All it takes is one cold night,
an innocence of frost.
By dawn, the buds slightly droop.
By noon, the leaves hang darkened and limp.
By the next day, they’re black.
And dead.
It’s a familiar story. How one night
changes everything. How one day
I’m blooming, thriving, alive,
the next all I’d grown is gone.
I used to believe all was lost.
I used to throw the whole plant away.
But I learned what is dead serves as a blanket
to protect whatever still lives.
Wait, and in days, a tiny green filigree
emerges from the base.
In a month or two, it’s a bask of blooms,
no trace of how bleak it was.
Such tender study, the cosmos.
Blame is no part of their process.
They let what’s been lost be of service.
They know they are here to grow.
One Forgiveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, stone, transformation on May 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
how quickly
this basket of stones
becomes
a basket
of feathers
Note to My Future Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged future, patience, self talk, story on May 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Please don’t tell me what will happen.
I’ve peeked before at the end of a book
and know how one detail learned too soon
can ruin the entire story.
Not that I wish to be patient.
Of course, I want to know what’s coming,
but this story only works in present tense.
Even when it makes me weep,
even when I’d rather put this story down,
even when I’d like to rewrite the last scene,
please, don’t give me even a little hint.
I am not sure I believe in happy endings,
but I believe in turning the page,
in holding the weight of the book in my hands,
and racing through the text,
my eyes eager to discover what comes next.
Featured on Breakfast Poetry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged interview, language, podcast on May 22, 2021| 2 Comments »
I LOVED this conversation with Anne Marie Vivienne on her podcast Breakfast Poetry, in which we talk about several of my favorite poems (St. Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell and In the Belly of the Whale by Dan Albergotti) and narrating our own lives, meeting what life brings to our door, and finding joy in the devotion of language. It’s available for your listening here:
Lesson from the Coyote Willows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged showing up, willows on May 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Only when it rains do coyote willows
turn their brightest red, as they do
today in the drizzle and gray, and oh,
how I fall in love with them now,
these slender stems that know
how to regenerate from brokenness,
bringing their brilliant vermillion
to the dim of the day.
Let us live this way. When it is dark,
let us find what is brightest in us
and share it with the soggy world,
a thicket of grace in the midst of gloom,
not fancy, but rampant and so deeply willing
to share radiance, to dazzle, to blaze.