We weave through tombstones,
the spring grass soft beneath our feet.
Thick roar of wind charges the valley.
Our paths braid up the hill
as we feel into where we will bury
the ashes and bone matter
of the boy who no longer breathes.
We all quickly agree on a place.
“It’s beautiful,” I say,
and fall into tears,
broken by the reason we’re here
in this stunning graveyard
rung with aspen and waterfalls,
red cliffs and spruce.
I lie on my back where he will be,
my husband beside me,
our daughter nearby,
above us all blue sky and sun.
The earth is cold and hard,
and the spot feels right to my body,
this body that carried him,
this body still learning
how not to hold.
We cry until we don’t.
Until whatever is unbreakable inside us
rises through the brokenness.
We dust the earth off our clothes
and walk arm in arm out the gate
where our lives go on, devastated and whole,
where the boy is missing,
where the boy is as present
as the wind.
Archive for May, 2022
Choosing a Plot at the Cemetery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged burial, cemetery, grief, paradox on May 31, 2022| 10 Comments »
Because
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, love, sufficiency on May 30, 2022| 24 Comments »
So I can’t save the world—
can’t save even myself,
can’t wrap my arms around
every frightened child, can’t
foster peace among nations,
can’t bring love to all who
feel unlovable.
So I practice opening my heart
right here in this room and being gentle
with my insufficiency. I practice
walking down the street heart first.
And if it is insufficient to share love,
I will practice loving anyway.
I want to converse about truth,
about trust. I want to invite compassion
into every interaction.
One willing heart can’t stop a war.
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,
I tell myself what’s the use of trying?
But today, the invitation is clear:
to be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.
To take love seriously.
To give love wildly.
To race up to the world
as if I were a puppy,
adoring and unjaded,
stumbling on my own exuberance.
To feel the shock of indifference,
of anger, of cruelty, of fear,
and stay open. To love as if it matters,
as if the world depends on it.
from The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, 2024)
Ode to Mowing the Lawn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, lawn, mowing on May 28, 2022| 5 Comments »
Sometimes I mow from side to side,
sometimes from up to down
No one’s life depends on it.
The end product is not very different.
What matters is I notice I have a choice,
especially here where the stakes are low
so that when it matters more—
when in the balance are hearts and lives—
I remember there are many ways to “do it right.”
How do I do it, this act of loving you?
How do I do it, this forgiveness,
this surrender? And how will the path
I choose today change what is forever?
Oh this practice of pathmaking,
how sometimes it’s benign,
and sometimes it changes what’s here.
I push the mower through the grass this morning,
notice the record of how I’ve passed through.
I think of you. The scent of what if
hangs green and alive in the air.
Almond Blossom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, blossom, ekphrasis, hope, Kayleen Asbo, spring, Van Gogh on May 28, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh and music by Kayleen Asbo by the same name
I want to hang a painting
of almond blossoms
above your bed
so when you wake
the first thing you see
are delicate white petals
and a sky a thousand shades of blue.
I want you to wake every morning
into an ever-emerging sense of spring—
wake into sunshine,
wake to a world of splendor
and extravagant blossoming.
Of course, the fall.
Of course, the struggle.
Of course, the difficult days.
And of course, the almond blossoms,
painted in creams, pinks and greens
each one an insistent grace note
that lingers beyond its season,
promising something improbable
and utterly necessary,
like ever-blooming beauty,
like the light and airy perfume of hope.
Celebrating My Daughter on Her Last Day of Junior High
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, junior high, resilience, school on May 26, 2022| 18 Comments »
She is the one
who sings in her room
and she is the beat drop
the melody, the bass,
she is the soundtrack
that still fills the home
even when she says nothing at all.
And she is the maker
of chocolate desserts
the one who was given
bitterness and met it
with sweetness
and flame.
She is the laughter
that rises in the dark.
She is the flare,
the generous spark.
She’s the dance, the dancer,
the stage, the shuffle flap ball change,
the pink pointe shoe
worn to the wood.
She is sweat and ovation,
she is barre and plié.
And she is the one who went to school
three days after her brother died.
She is raised hand and science lab,
t-ball and sketch pad,
she is one who thrives.
She is monarch and cocoon,
the bright wings, the wind,
she is the summer land.
She is the one who brings beauty with her.
She is story. Plot. The turning page.
The one with the pen
in her hand.
On a Day When Life Feels Black and White
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, ekphrasis, gray, Kayleen Asbo, paris, Van Gogh on May 25, 2022| 10 Comments »
Inspired by “Impasse des Deux Frères” by Vincent van Gogh and Kayleen Asbo’s musical response, “Moulins de Gallette.”
Some days, like today, I long for rain,
long for the muted, grey kind of day
that unfolded in the oils of van Gogh,
when he’d stroll through the flat
and quiet daytime streets of Montmartre,
those dreamy hours when the world
is not too bright, not overly exultant,
not too sure of its gaiety,
a day when the wind is the only thing
that feels it needs to move,
when I don’t need to know anything
about anything, can notice how
the world resists resolution,
how the barest scrap of color
can change the whole scene,
can let myself be content to be gray,
can let myself be a student of windmills,
notice how it’s the invisible forces
like silent love, like persistent wind,
that make the whole world spin.
When I Told My Teacher About My Dream
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, dream, heart, Joi Sharp, love, perfectionism, student, teacher on May 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
The heart doesn’t have perfectionism.
—Joi Sharp
All night I dreamt
I was teaching a class
I’d never prepared for.
I’d never even seen
the textbook,
didn’t have a roster
for the students,
and couldn’t understand
how I’d arrived in this place
where I seemed destined
to let everyone down.
Even the chalk wouldn’t work
on the chalkboard.
All night I fought
an inner monster,
the one that says,
You are not enough.
All night it chased me
through the channels
of my fears, those
synaptic paths
well-traveled for years.
Oh world, let me be
the student.
Let me be one
who learns to live
through the heart,
who loves with confidence.
Let me study the ways
love meets the monster—
not with a fight
but with indifference.
Walking with Lisa to Horsefly Mesa
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, conversation, courage, friendship, truth on May 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
Beside the purple lupine
she says, “The thing I most
don’t want to talk about—”
and then, with a sigh,
she talks about it,
and the path and the wild iris
and the bear bell and I
all listen as she meets
what she most wishes not
to meet. There are moments
when we step right up
to the line that delineates
the world that is and the world
as we wish it would be,
and no matter how much it hurts,
there is such relief in meeting the truth
that I swear as she spoke
the world was even more itself—
the lupine more purple,
the sky more blue,
and my heart more a heart
because of her courage
to take off her mask
and says this, this is what’s real.
At the Graduation Party
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, grief, love, mothers, party, smiling on May 22, 2022| 12 Comments »
for Lara Young, who pulls in all the wounded mamas with love, and for the other mamas, I am so grateful for you
At the edge of the happy throng,
we found each other,
five women who had lost a child.
Of course, we cried,
but damn, how we laughed
as we mobbed the photo booth
and dressed in bright wigs
and pink glasses and mustaches.
One woman was a blue crayon,
another wore a crown,
another held a bottle of red wine
as if to guzzle the whole bottle down.
And as the photographer lifted his lens,
the woman in the gold top hat howled,
When life fucks you up the ass,
and lifted a hand as if to say,
What do you do with that?
And we all knew what she meant.
What do you do with that except
weep when you weep
and laugh when you can
and love all the more
and slip the pink sequin gown over your arms
and smile for the camera
as one of the other moms squeezes your ass
and another one rests her head on your shoulder,
smile because that’s what a naked heart does
when surrounded with love,
smile because there is collateral beauty
you never could have dreamed of,
smile because the memory of these beloved children
is so alive here,
smile because. Because.
Serotinous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, effort, fire, lodgepole pine, opening on May 22, 2022| 6 Comments »
Even the word surrender
suggests some agency,
but perhaps
what is asked of us
is zero. Perhaps
we are like the seed
of the lodgepole pine
that opens through
no effort of its own.
It needs the heat
of a wildfire blaze.
Then the seed is released
into the very blackened,
desolate world
that seemed hellbent
on destroying it,
but it is the carbon-rich
soil left by the fire
that feeds the seed
and helps the tree grow.
No surrender.
No effort.
Who could ask
for the fire?
The seed did not.
It did nothing at all.
And now, the pine,
how green, how tall.