I want it to be said
I was the kind of woman
who would weep in the concert hall,
undone by the beauty of song.
I want to be remembered
as a creature who loved
spring grass in her bare toes
and dirt in her hands
and the sun on her skin,
and I want everyone I love
to know for a fact
I chose them as my family.
I hope they will say
I loved the blank page
more than any word on it,
though I thrilled for words, too—
It was weird, they might say,
how she would sit there for hours,
days, years, wondering
about the next true thing,
letting the blank rub off on her.
She was so happy, eyes closed,
fingers hovering above the keyboard,
leaning into that moment
when anything is possible,
that edge where she learned
she had wings.
Archive for March, 2022
Rosemerry Imagines Her Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, death, obituary, writing on March 31, 2022| 10 Comments »
Contemplative
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being wrong, contemplative, knowing, map, thought on March 31, 2022| 15 Comments »
for Mabeth
I assumed at its root, it was speaking of time,
related to tempo and temporary,
assumed it was speaking also of place,
as in plateau and plat and platform.
In fact, I had quite convinced myself
the word contemplative was an invitation
to be one with place and time.
I was wrong. It’s related to temple,
which comes from a root for “to cut,”
as in a place cut off or reserved
to be occupied by the divine.
Of course, the divine’s at the center
instead of time.
Oh, this desire to make meaning—
this longing to find the story
that will help me make sense of the world.
The mind will use any trick it can
to think it has a handhold in the mystery.
Meanwhile it leads me astray.
It’s like discovering the map I’ve been using
is the wrong map for the city I’m in.
And now that I have the right map,
one with a temple at the heart of it,
I can begin again.
Two Unspokens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, haikuling, unname on March 30, 2022| 6 Comments »
slender trunks of aspen—
commemorating this grove
by not naming it
*
all those books
I haven’t yet written—
dogearring my favorite pages
How the Healing Happens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, slow, teaspoon on March 28, 2022| 10 Comments »
Again today
I dig with my teaspoon
into the soil
of sorrow.
It is said
there is healing water
somewhere below.
Perhaps I wished
for a shovel.
Perhaps there was
no shovel to be found.
Perhaps I did find a shovel,
but the work was
too heavy, too hard.
It is not hard
to dig one teaspoon
at a time.
Anyone can do it.
The hole gets wider,
deeper. Soon
it feels like a well.
It is easy work.
It’s the hardest work
I’ve ever done.
I thirst.
Yet what heals us
is not only
the promised water.
What heals is
the work itself,
dry and slow,
one spoonful,
and another spoonful,
and another parched spoonful,
and another.
Revelation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, death, freedom, life, skate skiing on March 27, 2022| 10 Comments »
After skate skiing on groomed track for months,
following only the preset path, today
I wake early enough to ski on the hardened crust
of spring morning snow. Suddenly,
the whole valley is a playground. And
it’s freedom. Freedom to move in any
direction. Freedom to loop or climb or follow
the river. Freedom that seeps into breath, into smile,
into my understanding of what it means to be alive.
And the whole time I skate and pole
and propel myself over snow
I hear an inner refrain from Romans:
And death shall have no dominion.
Not a still small voice, but a resonant boom.
And I, so alive in this sweet slip of time,
know that though my son has died
and my father has died, here I am,
carrying their love, and alive. Alive!
Alive through the winter.
Alive though I grieve. Alive. Alive as I skate
through willows and aspen and wide open white.
Lungs burning, legs striding, heart beating
hard in my chest. I know myself as breath
and return to the wholeness that never left.
Skating across the frozen world, the sparkling crust,
I live into this life that so wants to be lived,
this life that asks everything, everything of us.
Three Unlikelihoods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, praise on March 26, 2022| 6 Comments »
crushed by rusted weight
stalled by my own brokenness—
still this urge to praise
*
despite cosmic odds
that tend toward vacuum and void,
this pale flower, these buds
*
even in cold darkness
hear the growing rush of snowmelt—
somewhere it is warm
In Copley Square, Off the Green Line, One Block from Trinity Church
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Boston, found, lost, people, place on March 25, 2022| 1 Comment »
In Copley Square, off the Green Line, One Block from Trinity Church
I stepped off the train into the subway station,
ran to the news stand to look at candy,
then turned to ask mom, Can we buy it?
Blur of strangers. Thunder of trains.
Voice of man announcing arrivals.
Heart pounding. Heart pounding.
Where is my mother?
Child crying. Stale scent of piss.
Did she leave me?
I ran through the turnstile, then up, up,
up to find sidewalk, taxis, traffic, sirens,
businessmen, tourists, panhandlers,
and the smallness of myself,
a seven-year-old girl alone in a city
a thousand miles from home.
That was when I learned
you could know exactly where you are
on a map and still be lost.
That was when I learned
how desperately the heart
longs to be found.
When the Audio Engineer Told Me She Needed a Few Tracks of Me Laughing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged laughter on March 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
I sat in the closet with a microphone and laughed,
spinning golden mirth out of nothing.
I giggled and chuckled and let the laugh grow
like a peony in spring, like the shimmer of a gong
when struck soft and often, like the scent of coffee
that starts in the kitchen but soon infuses every room.
The laugh began stilted, perhaps, but soon I was laughing
with honest glee like a baby amused by its own hand,
laughing like a woman who has lost something precious
and now knows the value of laughing. Laughing like
a weed seed that lands in an irrigated field. Laughing
like dry kindling found by a match.
Laughing like a puddle that expands in a downpour,
like a door that’s picked its own latch. And the laughter
made so much space inside me—as if my inner map
had new boundaries drawn. As if I were released
from some old metal trap. And long after I’d recorded
a long track of laughter, I laughed. Till I cried, I laughed.
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, growth, loss, opening, surrender on March 23, 2022| 5 Comments »
If the day is a hinge,
then loss is the hand
that swings the door
so that what I would never choose
becomes my opening.
What I would never choose
becomes the thing
that makes me need to be
a better person.
What I could not choose
becomes the spring board
to devotion.
So let me open.
In this time of broken hope,
love says to me,
Be the yes.
And if you cannot be the yes,
then stop trying anything
and let yourself fall
into to the opening.
Letter to My Daughter, March 22, 2022
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, gravity, love, New York on March 22, 2022| 8 Comments »
I hope we remember forever
this trip to New York—
remember the trees in pink bloom
along the High Line in Chelsea,
remember the tiramisu
at Joe G.’s near Carnegie,
remember the reflecting pool
outside the Lincoln Center,
and how the whole city shined
after rain. And I hope we remember
forever the way the man stole my brown hat
when the wind blew it off my head
and he shouted It’s mine, It’s mine, and ran off,
how unsettling it was to be interviewed
by the newspaper of a cult, and
what a bummer it is to have food poisoning
and try to watch a play.
I hope we remember forever the memorial
where the twin towers once stood—
how beautiful the falling water is
and how grave.
This is the way the world is—
so lost and so precious all at once.
Each time something was tough,
I would say to myself, well, no one died.
But you and I know that sometimes
the one we love dies.
And we can bear it.
Not only can we bear it,
we can thrive. We will find beauty
and gravity everywhere we go
and still, we can love this world,
we can love each other,
still we can love, we can love.