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Archive for December, 2022

Walking into Winter Solstice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2022| 9 Comments »




Because it is dark
I walk in the dark,
walk with no moon,
walk with the chill
of the measureless dark.
There is peace that comes
from letting the self
be with the world
as it is, and tonight,
it’s a dark world,
a world where I cannot see
far ahead, a world
of silhouette and suggestion,
a world that seems
to cherish whispers
and relish mystery,
a world where
the invitation is
to walk in the dark
without wishing it away,
without championing its opposite,
the invitation is
to be one who learns
how to live with the dark.

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Pupil

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 20, 2022| 10 Comments »


 
 
Tonight I invite in the snow-covered field
and the towering ponderosa
with their bark that smells of butterscotch
and the thin winter river capped with deep ice.
I invite in the dormant soft-leafed mullein
and the rabbit brush nibbled by mice.
I invite the hungry mice.
I invite it all into my being—
fling wide the doors of my heart that somehow
forget to stay open.
I invite in December’s chill and the vast blue sky
and the dark before the moon and the moon.
I invite in the braille of rabbit tracks
and I invite the rabbits that made them.
The jays and the chickadees and the grosbeaks.
The dried sedges and the evergreens.
I don’t want to play favorites.
I want to be open to the all of it—
want to know the truth of how
it is already at home in me—
the thistle seeds waiting for spring,
the badger, the spider, the wind.
Every thing and every being.
What is not my teacher?
Let me make of myself a body spacious enough
for an inner circle in which all may speak.
And let me listen. With my whole being
let me listen—to what is seen,
to what can never be seen.
Every day, the earth sends thousands of invitations
for us to meet this world.


 

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After Writing Love Letters Back in Time, I Realize

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 19, 2022| 7 Comments »




Perhaps someone in the future
is writing love letters to me
the way I have done for Chopin,
van Gogh, Neruda, Akhmatova.
Are we, the living, already ancestors?
Could these waves of love
have been sent back in time
to arrive today while I am walking
in the department store
and begin to weep
near the kitchen implements?
I feel it, this invisible current of love,
buoyant as salt water,
as it carries me through the aisles.
I begin to believe it, the continuum,
the mirrored stream,
begin to believe the waves
of love travel not through time
but are directly transmitted
from heart to heart
to timeless heart,
to receptive present heart.

*

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December 17, 2022

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 18, 2022| 9 Comments »




Mom makes the chocolates
while I chop nuts and make dough—
we listen to carols and sing along
as we have since before I remember.
The kitchen smells of mint and sugar
and I try to press the memory
between the pages of the day.
Perhaps it is a blessing
to know how fragile it is, this life.
I let myself fall all the way into the moment,
the sun long gone, but the house
still pulsing with love, still warm.

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Dear Ludwig,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 16, 2022| 5 Comments »




Before I knew of you,
I knew your music.
When I turned the flat metal handle
of my pale pink jewelry box,
Für Elise would play as a ballerina
in a white tutu would spin and spin
and I would hum along
until the music slowed
into garish metallic plinks.
Part of me envied Elise—
that someone would write her
such a beautiful song.
Now I know you wrote it for Therese,
a woman you wanted to marry,
but in transcription
your handwriting was misspelt,
and the error lasts to this day.
And Therese, she had no interest
in marrying you.
Oh, Ludwig, I, too, know
how the heart sometimes longs
for what it will never have.
I know how our words are twisted
till they plink, till they plunk.
I know how mistakes
sometimes stay with us forever.
What I meant to say is Happy Birthday,
Thank you for daring to love
even when it hurt.
Thank you for transforming your pain
and rejection into music so relevant
that 250 years later its played
as cell phone ring tones.
Thank you for teaching me
as a girl how to hum along—
for giving me the reason
to turn that flat metal handle
again and again and again.

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Aftermath

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 16, 2022| 11 Comments »

For years, I have run
from this anger.
Tonight I stopped running,
let the anger catch me,
let it burn in me,
a wild conflagration,
it terrified me,
and then I watched it leave.
For the first time in years,
I am not running.
How still it is.
Whatever has turned to ash
was not essential.
What is left is so raw,
so beautiful.


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When Mom Suggests I Could Rest My Head in Her Lap

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2022| 8 Comments »




I resist. There is so much to do,
but soon my eyes are closed
and Mom is pulling her fingers
through my hair the way I love
and I am ten again, or four,
or twenty-five, or two,
lying on the plaid couch
in our old house
with my head in Mom’s lap,
her fingers in my hair.
I wake up drenched in forever,
this timeless stream
I sometimes can see for what it is—
like a fish that leaps for a fly
and sees, oh! an infinite world
beyond the world it knows.
Is it any wonder, this water
clinging to my cheek
as I rise from the couch
and swim back into the night.  

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No Longer Empty Handed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on December 14, 2022| 30 Comments »


after the poet pointed out there are dozens of well-known euphemisms for male masturbation and none for women


How could I not start to think
of circling the black hole,
polishing the pearl,
rubbing the rose bud,
loosening the tight knot,
spreading the soft butter,
frosting the sweet cake,
stirring the soup till it’s hot,
dancing on the vortex,
getting sucked into the eddy,
diving into the deep end.
What does it mean
that we don’t have language
for a woman who pleases herself?
Consider the tectonic shift,
the solitary wiggle,
the single squirm,
the one-handed time warp,
churning the cream
climbing pink mountain,
traveling to the temple,
spinning the dark silk.
No choking chickens,
no spanking monkeys,
no beating meat,
no wanking.
More like swirling the universe,
mining for diamonds,
finding hidden treasure
wading in the whirlpool,
the reason I can’t answer the phone.

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Dear Heather,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2022| 11 Comments »

on William’s birthday

There was a time before we lost our sons,
a time before the long walks in the frozen woods,
a full-bellied time when we cherished how they grew.

Today the snow came again, at last,
though it was more sifting than deep drift.
I notice I want more.

It’s so human to want more, I tell myself.
More snow, more time, more love,
more memories of making fires in winter,

tasting summer s’mores, feeding hummingbirds,
making cookies, speaking silly languages,
skinny dipping in the river, singing to Rusted Root.

It feels right their birthdays should feel heavy—
heavy as the snow that didn’t fall today,
heavy as the bodies they didn’t grow into.

Oh, the weight of love—light as the sunshine
that slanted through the room between squalls,
substantial as the tractors our boys are not driving.

I think of how much we’ve grown in their absence—
which is to say how much we’ve grown
in the company of heartache, the company of love,

how powerfully loss has stretched us.
Somehow, these boys linger in our being.
They arrive through song, through silence.

In this after time, we feed them with memories—
some true, some more than true.
Each time we say their names, they grow.

It’s so human to want more, no matter
how reconciled we are to what is. Oh,
for more time, somehow, between forever and now.

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What the Silence Said

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 11, 2022| 4 Comments »



What did you want to hear
when you knelt at his grave?

After you spilled your own words
into the afternoon shade,
what did you think you might hear
when you listened?  

By now you know the gift of listening
is greater than the gift of sound.
By now you don’t expect his voice.
You know my voice by heart.

I am not the sound of loss,
but the sound of infinite presence,
which touches equally
the living and the dead.

And I am what holds you as you speak.
I hold you as you say nothing at all.
In your listening, you join me
in the most intimate of conversations.

You rise. Together, we walk to the gate
then through the gate,
and long after you’ve left the grave,
I am with you.

In fact, I am the one thing
that will never leave you.

*

How do we fall in love the world, even when it feels difficult? In this 20-minute poetry reading, I explore this in poetry, followed by a brief conversation and Q & R. Hosted by the wonderful Larry Robinson. If you want info about more monthly poetry readings, AND/OR if you want to be a part of Larry Robinson’s daily poetry list (sharing the poems of others) you can write him and ask to be included at Lrobpoet@sonic.net

Poems from the reading:
Becoming
Cruciferous
The Letter I Never Wrote to Pablo Neruda
Making Breakfast with Dolly
No Slam Dunk, But
Though I Knew Love Before
It Comes Down to This
For the Living
Bioluminescence
You Darkness by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. Robert Bly

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