It goes so fast, they say,
and clearly they don’t mean
today, which moves at the speed
of tectonic plates, not today
when holding a child
means not holding
that child because
they refuse to be held.
Sometimes, being a mother
is to move at the rate
of fear, the rate
of betrayal, the rate
of loss. Today,
to be a mother
is be ancient
oceanic crust that creeps
at ten centimeters a year.
Someday, perhaps tomorrow,
love will again be meteor,
but today it’s intense heat
at the core. It’s the slow scrape
of two great plates,
something cool
waiting to be warmed.
Archive for May, 2021
Global Slowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged geology, love, mothering, parrenting, time on May 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Returning Again to That Evening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bodies, coronavirus, friendship on May 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
In the picture, we are laughing,
snuggled onto a bench in a bar,
falling all over each other, a heap of joy.
Julie is as always the most solid of us—
a mischievous, wicked and grinning foundation
for whatever we pile on.
Rachel leans on Julie, her head flung back,
her dark curls ribboning down her shoulders,
eyes closed, her smile dreamy and fixed in an eternal
air of happiness. And I have nearly
collapsed on her chest, my face contorted
in laughter that is forever about to burst.
We are like puppies, squirmy and vulnerable,
our bodies unguarded and innocent,
cuddling and twisting and vining
around each other, knowing ourselves
as skin and warmth and tumble of love.
We knew nothing then of how our own bodies
would become weapons, how bursts of breath
charged with laughter would be perilous,
how dangerous our bodies would become.
Staring at the photo, I ache
for the sweet wine of connection,
the benediction of touch, the wild joy
of curling into each other, animals that we are,
staying safe by keeping each other close.
May 19, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, daily life, daughter, mother, quiet on May 19, 2021| 6 Comments »
Will I remember this day with its greening of grass,
its blooming of apple blossom, its stilling of pond?
Will I remember the sweetness of my daughter
not leaving the house for school on a Wednesday
because her classes are all online? Will I remember
how she comes to snuggle on the couch during lunch
and pinches my cheeks and teases me about my ugly feet?
Will I remember the terrible yellow sticky casings
of the cottonwood seeds, how they glue to the hood
of my car that rarely moves from the drive? Or
the lavender in the garden that always looks
grey and dead before it erupts into fragrant life?
Perhaps there is some wave of presence
that will carry such stillness forward, a current
of quiet, a tide of tenderness that will insist
on itself for years to come. How forgettable
it all is—and how cherished—this swooping of swallows,
this opening of iris. How necessary, this holding
my daughter while the dark pool of night curls around us,
this cradling each other as we say nothing at all.
Another Reason to Be Kinder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, news, tenderness, war on May 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
Somewhere I’ve never been
reaches across the ocean
and wrenches my thoughts.
I don’t try to push it away.
I let the ache in,
let sorrow do its terrible
work. It slices in
deeper than I want it to,
but I do not resist.
All day I think of the small child
being pulled from the rubble.
All day I think of the many hands
reaching for the small frightened body.
All day, I am softened by
grief, ravaged into tenderness.
Amnesia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, morning, waking up on May 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »
So lucky sometimes,
like today, to wake
and say to the world
I love you.
On these mornings,
almost impossible
to remember it is ever
any other way—
impossible to believe
I could wake and say
anything besides
thank you, I am grateful,
good morning blue sky,
good morning old limbs.
Wild Iris
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, flowers, friendship, pond, wild iris on May 15, 2021| 2 Comments »
From a handful of wild iris
planted years ago,
dozens of slender spears
and stems now rise beside the pond—
their pale purple flags
wave in allegiance to spring
and each other.
They know how to grow
not just up but to the side,
how to send out lateral roots
that will someday be new blooms.
Old friends are like rhizomes—
connected by invisible roots,
resilient, perceiving the light as good,
but knowing, too, how essential
to grow through the dark.
Walking up the Fall Creek Road, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, meeting the self, walking on May 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I see my old self walking down.
She doesn’t have a mask in her pocket.
She doesn’t move to walk six feet away.
She leans in to hug me, as if it were the most natural,
ordinary thing to do. She looks offended
when I offer her an elbow.
She doesn’t yet know how a virus
will use genome origami to infect and replicate
inside host cells with terrible efficiency.
She doesn’t know the schools will close
and the stores will close and the streets will close
and the doors will close and it will all happen
in a week. She doesn’t know her daughter
will cry herself to sleep each night for weeks.
She doesn’t know her son will slip
into a darkness and rage she will try to carry.
How the days of her calendar will empty.
How pixilated her life will become.
How the hospital won’t let visitors in .
How she will miss her mother, her father, her friends.
How millions and millions will die.
And that’s just the health of it.
Part of me wants to tell her what’s coming.
I don’t.
Part of me wants to hug her back,
and I can’t quite explain why I do.
Because innocence.
Because she will be here soon.
Five Poems Published Today in ONE ART
Posted in Uncategorized on May 14, 2021| 2 Comments »
I love this journal and I’m so grateful to have them publish my work!!
Over a Year Later, I Grieve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, friendship, Heartbeat, loss, singing on May 13, 2021| 2 Comments »
for Heartbeat, singing together since 1994
Every week we sang, sang blues
and ballads, folk songs,
rounds, pop songs, jazz,
love songs, chants. And we
didn’t just sing, we touched
and hugged, leaned in and loved,
ran our fingers through the waves
of each other’s hair, laughed till we peed,
and jostled and shoved and teased
and offered tissues and kissed cheeks
and brought the shared melodic air
into our bodies and returned it
into the room in currents of ecstatic song.
Oh we sang, how we sang, as if
singing were a life raft that kept us afloat
on the aching broken world.
Now, I sing alone in the kitchen.
Sometimes I’m haunted by the part
I sing—a harmony line unanchored
by the melody. With no tonic,
the tune feels off. There is so much
that’s missing, that’s lost.
Sometimes I make up a new song
and sing about what is here.
Good morning, hummingbird.
Good morning, loneliness. Good
morning big empty room.
The air holds the notes like shimmering drops
that sometimes leak out of my eyes
when I think of how we sang, the music
a life raft, and your voices, my friends, the oars.