We measure the afternoon in wild raspberries,
pulling to our mouths the abundant ripe fruits
like the feral beings we are.
Fingers stained red and lips stained red
and the moments stained red as love.
If it is not smart to speak of love,
then let me not be smart.
Let me speak of love that flourishes
like wild raspberries in a rainy summer.
Let me live into love as undomesticated
as these brambles that line the creeks.
Let me remember today
by the sweet and tart taste of wild berries,
how softly they fell into our palms.
Let me be eager for love
as the look on my daughter’s face
when she dragged me by the hand
back to the raspberry patch saying more, more.
Archive for August, 2022
Untamed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, hiking, love, mother, raspberries on August 21, 2022| 4 Comments »
So Alive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, garden, lettuce, summer on August 21, 2022| 6 Comments »
After a late summer rain,
when the low sun shines
through the still-dripping world,
I walk in the garden and slip my hands
into the lettuce rows,
easily pulling up small green heads,
the leaves not yet bitter and tough.
Oh, the beauty of things in their prime.
Soon enough, the snow will be here,
the garden a drift of white.
No way to preserve this green for winter,
so I take it into me, dirt and all,
stuffing the leaves into my mouth.
I take in the green and the diamonding dew,
take in the golden light,
take in the sound of the river
and the growing shadows.
There are moments I understand
what blessing is. In this moment,
it looks exactly like what is.
One Near the End of the Perseids
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meteor, shooting star, wish on August 20, 2022| 2 Comments »
on the last shooting star
making a wish
for one more shooting star
Mycelial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, grief, growth, mushroom on August 19, 2022| 4 Comments »
Now I understand how grief
is like a mushroom—
how it thrives in dark conditions.
How it springs directly
from what is dead.
Such a curious blossoming thing,
how it rises and unfurls
in spontaneous bourgeoning,
a kingdom all its own.
Like a mushroom,
most of grief is never seen.
It grows and expands beneath everything.
Sometimes it stays dormant for years.
Grief, like a mushroom,
can be almost unbearably beautiful,
even exotic, delicate, veiled,
can arrive in any shape and hue.
It pulls me closer in.
Like a mushroom, grief
asks me to travel to regions
of shadow and dim.
I’m astonished by what I find—
mystery, abundance, insight.
Like a mushroom, grief
can be wildly generative.
Not all growth takes place
in the light.
This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22
Unfolding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, growth, infinity, support, unfolding, universe on August 18, 2022| 7 Comments »
In a vision, I saw the self
as white flower—
a many-petalled ranunculus—
a flower that opened and opened
and infinitely opened, reaching
beyond borders, beyond atmosphere,
beyond our beautiful spiral of galaxy,
its petals unfolding and unfolding,
a timeless, unending unfolding.
It comforts me to know
there’s no edge to the universe,
no way to fall off, no way
to accidentally go beyond.
There was a moment when
the green stem snapped and I worried
the blossom had become too big.
Then I felt it, how completely
the great bloom was held by the world,
and in that moment, I trusted that holding.
The flower kept growing.
Now, back in my body,
I’m still opening into that trust.
The Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dandelion, flowers, wishes, youth on August 16, 2022| 8 Comments »
for Summer, Autumn, Lulu and Katie From the garden, the girls brought a small bouquet of late summer’s loveliest flowers: snapdragons, nasturtiums, lavender, salvia, and the fernlike leaves of marigold. And there in the center, like a guest who did not care what clothes she was given to wear to the ball, was the white globe of dandelion gone to seed, its white filigree quite unlike all the other petals. How could I not notice this orb of wishes still waiting to be wished? How I longed to spend all the wishes on these girls who had seen this fragile sphere as a gift. May they be happy. May they be sure they are loved. May they know their own beauty beyond any mirror. May they flourish in all soils. May they believe their own hearts. May they trust their own voices. May they find friends wherever they travel. May they feel vital in any bouquet. May they know love. Again and again. Live into the fullness of each ordinary moment. And wherever they grow, may they know for certain the earth itself will carry them. |
Relative Key
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, bells, death, grief, harmony on August 15, 2022| 9 Comments »
I paid extra for the bell
with a beautiful sound,
knowing we would ring it
one hundred and eight times
on the anniversary of your death.
I wanted it to be beautiful.
I wanted to play a sound
that would reach
to wherever you are
and offer you peace.
There are bells that ring
danger or failure or shame,
bells that clang with dissonance,
bells that toll only melancholy.
I have heard those bells.
But for you, my boy,
the bell we rang for you
pealed with a brilliant, shining ring,
a rousing chiming,
a surprising harmony
that opened the evening
with new light,
a ringing that rhymed
with new colors I’ve found in my heart—
the shimmering blue of enduring hope,
the glimmering gold of companioning.
I could still hear the blue
and the resonant gold
long after the bell stopped ringing.
Though I Knew Love Before
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, grief, love, support, transformation on August 14, 2022| 17 Comments »
Exactly a year ago I posted a message instead of a poem, explaining I needed a time away. Two weeks later I explained why. It was almost two months later I posted my son Finn’s obituary. In the last year, I have been so humbled by the love and support and kindness of people. So many of you reached out to me in some way, and whether it was with a letter, an email, a gift, a call, a prayer, your thoughts, a song, or your energetic presence, I am grateful. It has mattered. You, with your love and goodness, you have not only buoyed me, you have changed me. I don’t know how anyone would ever survive such a loss without such an outpouring. I thank you, every one of you, I thank you, I thank you. I am sobbing now thinking of it–all the love. This poem tries to touch it, but, well, it’s just the surface. I am swirling gratefulness around all of you. I honor your losses that have made you who you are, that have made you so tender and generous toward others.
With abiding awe,
Rosemerry
Though I Knew Love Before
Not until my world dissolved
in an instant did I begin to understand
the communion of hearts.
Not until I could not put one minute
in front of the next did I begin
to understand infinite devotion.
Not until I lost my own flesh did I begin
to understand the muscle of spirit.
I will never love the loss, never,
but I love the life that rushes in after.
I love the intimacy
of those who have lost—
how we find each other and offer
our open embrace, our unwalled affection,
our wildest wishes for peace.
Not until I was consumed
by the great wave of love
did I know not to fear
the great wave of love.
Only then did I learn the beauty
of ceding the self to something much greater.
Only then did I learn how love
not only carries us,
it transforms who we are forever.
The One Who Thrives
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, flower, grief, thriving, tuberose on August 13, 2022| 6 Comments »
for my daughter, a year later
She has learned to bloom
like the tuberose,
opening in the light
but becoming more potent
in the dark.
Sweet scent of honey.
Tenacious scent of jasmine.
The hard won scent
of hope.
Scent of the one
who has learned to thrive
when thriving
doesn’t feel possible.
Scent of resilience.
Scent of I can.
Scent of the one
who finds grace
on the inside.
Scent of elusive beauty.
Scent of the one
who meets the soils
made of sorrow,
who brings to the world
a gift as astonishing
as a night-blooming flower,
a gift as honest
as the moon.
The Bidding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humanness, mortality, opening, time on August 13, 2022| 3 Comments »
Again, I am ruled by it, this invitation to be wildly open the way a day is open, this invitation to be porous the way birdsong is porous, this invitation to feel it all the way skin feels it all when I slip into a blue alpine lake. Again this urge to fall all the way into the mystery and refuse any rope thrown in an attempt to rescue me. Morning comes with the scent of autumn, charged with ripeness and rot and the kinship of everything. What an honor to be mortal, to know the value of a day, to know how vulnerable we are and then give ourselves away. |