Tucked in my mind’s back pocket
is that evening when I ran full speed
off the end of the pier
and leapt fully dressed into the water.
The air in my clothes buoyed me for a moment
before swirling around me like a purple bloom—
and the heavy sun was orange and low,
and the water held me, refreshed me,
stole my breath for a moment,
then gave me back the gift of my breath,
only deeper, fuller, a bloom in my body.
Oh the freedom—how easy it felt to be alive,
to be afloat, to be enwombed by the world.
Everything felt right. Everything felt yes.
Sometimes, like now, when worry polishes my thoughts,
I dip a toe into that pocket and feel the splash on my skin,
hear the water lapping against the buoys, the pier.
Sometimes, like now, I jump in and swim there
long enough that when I return to this chair, this room,
I find the faint lake scent lingering in my hair,
my face still wet.
Archive for July, 2021
When I Need to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, happiness, lake, swimming on July 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
How I Became a Poet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generosity, gifts, library, organizer on July 9, 2021| 12 Comments »
with gratitude to e.e. cummings, Father Blakeslee and all the other hands
There was perhaps a woman
who saw a thin book of poems
left on a park bench, and because
it was beginning to rain, she picked it up
and noticed it belonged to the library,
and because she was a good woman,
though not much inclined to reading,
she returned it through the metal slot
so the librarians, trained in organization,
could slip it back on the shelves where
it was forgotten amongst other books of verse
until, at last, it was pulled from the stacks
to be sold for pennies by the Friends of the Library.
And a man, a priest, who was looking for fiction,
picked up the old book and saw
how the words leapt across the page
and he thought of a girl he knew
who thrilled with language and how it played,
so he bought the book
and wrote in red pen on the second page,
For Rosemerry, who loves words
with their sometimes and special times,
and even dream time texture!
And she read the inscription, then
read the book. Again. And again.
And her mind was filled with
su nli ght t
o
verand
o
vering
and she fell deeper into herself
in new unpredictable ways,
and the words grew in her
like bindweed, tap rooted and
insistent, blooming profusely,
until they changed everything
about the way she saw the world
changed her the way lighting
changes everything,
filled her with wild potential
and a belief in communion and possibility.
For decades, she’s thanked Father Blakeslee
in her mind, thanked him for the gift of the book,
but more, for the gift of a path, the gift of potential—
the kindness a small act he likely forgot,
never knowing how it changed her life.
But never until today
did she think to thank all the others
who delivered cummings to her hands—
thank the librarians, of course, who curated it,
and thank whoever made the clear plastic sleeve
so the book would not be ruined in the rain,
and thank the woman who perhaps found the book
in the park and took it back to its home.
Yes, bless all who return things to where they belong,
bless all who help things find their “right” place,
things such as this treasured old book of 73 poems on my desk,
which smells of old paper and gratitude,
its pages open even now to a poem
about how it is we live in a magic world.
Latent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bike, joy on July 8, 2021| 4 Comments »
Riding our bikes through the warm summer night,
the dark itself parted to let us pass;
wind in our hair, soft whir of the wheels—
and an almost irrational joy grew in me then,
such simple joy, as if joy were always here,
waiting to flourish, needing only to be noticed.
And is joy latent in everything?
I have felt it sometimes in the washing
of dishes, in mowing the lawn,
in peeling the carrots, even washing
the fishtank and scrubbing the floor.
So could it be, too, inside worried pacing?
In envy? In sighing? In the clenching of fists?
Is there joy where I can’t imagine it?
Joy—waiting to spin like a wheel,
waiting to rise like laughter
that careens through the deepening dark.
Visiting the Marble Sculptor’s Symposium, Marble, CO
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, creativity, Marble, sculpture on July 7, 2021| 4 Comments »
We watch as the sculptors pitch
and chisel, splitting the stone
to separate what is wanted
from what is not.
The marble, recently quarried,
is still soft. Can be worked, refined,
polished. As we watch, horses
emerge from one large block.
A dragon appears in another.
There—eyes. There—a hand.
There—a rabbit’s ear. Marble
dust hangs in the air
and the rhythmic beat of mallets
rings out a creation song.
I like best the statues
that appear unfinished—
a roughened breast,
an incomplete cheek,
smooth innuendo of a fold in a dress.
I swear I feel my own story
being chiseled by some great hand,
the block of my life not yet hardened,
not completely. Here the rasp of grief,
here the riffler of joy to enhance the shape
of my days—I am yet a suggestion
of what I will become.
It takes so much breaking to find
the final form.
It takes so much abrasion
to bring out the shine.
the other track
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, love, mercy, record on July 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the b-side of love
a song of mercy—
sweet groove of forgiveness,
beat of a thousand
soft wings
Immersed in van Gogh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, gold, sunflowers, Van Gogh on July 5, 2021| 1 Comment »
at the Immersive van Gogh exhibit in Chicago
Dark, and then suddenly
gold, gold in a major chord,
gold as if living inside Sunflowers,
gold in the ear drums, gold pulsing in pores,
gold thrumming in breath.
golden thoughts of only large sunflowers
van Gogh painted in anticipation.
Gold is perhaps the color of hope,
and so, bombarded with gold
on the walls, gold on the floor,
gold on my skin,
is it any wonder golden tears
fall like petals down the cheeks?
Perhaps, you, too, have prepared
for something beautiful
that hasn’t come to pass.
Perhaps, you, too, have lived
in that golden world
long enough to know it is real,
to know the beauty of bloom
so vibrant and full, know, too,
the beauty of withering.
Perhaps you, too, have known
love so golden the longer
you live it, the richer it becomes,
so rich you must create new colors
to know it, must give it away
to know at last how rich it is.
Perhaps you, too,
know the sunflower inside.
Packing My Parents’ Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, moving on July 5, 2021| 2 Comments »
Happy Birthday Dad!
Into the boxes I slip
my father’s birth certificate,
his high school yearbooks,
his wedding album,
and the diploma for his PhD.
I fold waders and coats,
pack saws and hammers,
wires and electrical things
I can’t name—but he can.
I pack journals filled with notes
of his favorite trips,
crossbow arrows
and feathers for tying flies.
But a life doesn’t fit in boxes.
No way to pack his glittering eyes,
his quick smile, the way he laughs
in recognition as I hold up
an old favorite knife.
No way to pack the hard years,
the wrestling with pain,
his drive to show up anyway,
day after day,
determined to bring his best
to the world, determined
to love life outside
the box.
The Fireworks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, fireworks, fourth of july on July 4, 2021| 2 Comments »
In the middle of the city
surrounded by sirens
my daughter and I stand in the dark
on the balcony
of my parents’ small apartment
and watch dozens of tiny fireworks on the horizon
and I am once again a girl of ten
and we are out on the boat
on Pewaukee Lake
and my mother teaches me
to say ooooooh as the firework colors
drizzle down in the sky,
then to clap and say ahhhhh for the next firework
right above us, sparkling as if we’re inside it.
Tonight my daughter and I oooh and ahh,
though the beauty is far away.
Sometimes it’s like that—
it feels as if beauty is a distant thing.
Perhaps even more important, then,
to celebrate it. To let the self
notice how dark it is,
to appreciate the dark,
to appreciate even in the distance a spark.
Blessings, Blessings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, humanness on July 3, 2021| 4 Comments »
Believing it matters,
today I bless all that seems unable to grow.
I bless the stems of larkspur
broken in yesterday’s storm.
I bless the broken. Bless those in pain.
Bless all who feel as if they are drowning
in the ache of aloneness and betrayal.
I have felt the wide blessing of sky,
cold blessing of rain, green blessing of field,
I have felt the dark, sharp blessing of loss.
How it’s changed me.
For all I cannot fix, I bless it.
For all I cannot hold, cannot heal, cannot mend,
blessings, blessings, impossible blessings,
tender blessings, blessings
mighty as wildfire,
blessings as gentle
as tears.
Aging
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, transformation, wine on July 2, 2021| 4 Comments »
The wine in the glass
remembers the long days in darkness
how it couldn’t breathe,
how it lost its scent of grape
and became more grapefruit,
more green pepper, more grass.
How it lost its harsh taste,
lost its astringence, and became
rounder, more smooth, more
wine. I, too, am changing
in these long days.
I, too, am converting what I’ve known
into what I will be.
I, too, am becoming something
I almost don’t recognize—
heady with transformation,
yet tethered by memory
of what it was like
to feel trapped,
what it was like
to steep in that darkness,
to have to learn to trust
whatever came next.
Crashing into the Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, garden, high school, memory on July 1, 2021| 7 Comments »
for Marne
And though we have not spoken
in over thirty years, today I invite
the memory of my friend to walk
with me in the garden.
That girl would laugh
to learn I’ve become a woman
who weeds, who waters, who grows.
We were uncultivated together,
unrooted, unmanicured,
and blossoming anyway,
windblown and wandering and wild.
I bring that sweet madness now
into the tidy rows and marvel
at how things change.
For a moment, I am running with her
over a hill and spinning
and crashing and laughing.
For a moment, I am again that girl
who is more dream than flesh,
more wish than should, more
me than I ever could be.
How beautiful the song of that memory,
how it rhymes even now with whatever
is green in me.
Even now, I am running,
spinning, crashing, though anyone looking
at the garden might think
I am peacefully deadheading flowers,
talking to the spinach,
painstakingly pulling the weeds.