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Archive for December, 2022

One Maleficent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 11, 2022| 2 Comments »


            for my daughter
 
 
cheering the villain
in black pointe shoes—
her evil so magnificent

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One Translation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 9, 2022| 2 Comments »

tide of your breath
the only poem
I need

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By Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 9, 2022| 11 Comments »




 
 
So familiar, how the dusky pink sunset
glows above snow-covered mountains,
The color blesses me as I walk alone
while Eva Cassidy sings in my ear,
I know you by heart,
I know you by heart.
My son has been dead
for over year, and now by heart
is the only way I know him.
No longer by touch, by sound, by scent.
Eva sings about how old joy
lives on and on,
and I breathe into the truth of it.
Two years ago I sent my son photographs
of this same dusky pink sunset
over snow-covered mountains—
there was joy in sharing it with him
and I feel that joy now as I talk to him,
my words coming out as visible air
as I speak to what cannot be seen.
Eva sings it again, a descending line,
I know you by heart.
I am grateful for the certainty
that rings through me in song.
He is here. As is joy.
Though he is gone.

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Video: Poetic Exploration of How to Meet a Day

Posted in Uncategorized on December 8, 2022| 4 Comments »

“Mom,” says my teenage daughter, “real life is not poetic.” That was the prompt for me to create a poetic exploration of how we might meet a day when I was featured for Bardic Trails, hosted by Joanna Spindler, zoomed on December 6, 2022. A twenty minute poetry reading is followed by a Q & A in which we talk about poetry habits, favorite (and least favorite) poets, and then an open reading with the theme “adjust.”

Poems read:
Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About
As You Have Done for Me
Setting
Lumbricus terrestris
Wild Rose Chooses a Tail
The Prayers
What’s in a Broken Cup
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking
Apricity (at the very end)

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At the Edge of a Wild Sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 8, 2022| 2 Comments »


 
 
I step into the boat.
You offer me an oar.
Thank you, but sweetheart,
what I really want
is to be in the boat
with no oars
and you.

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The Darkness Writes to Rosemerry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on December 7, 2022| 12 Comments »


 
 
I will teach you to know the world
by the way your song bounces from the surfaces of things—
to make light inside your own body
like the angler fish that swim in the deep.
I will teach you to open your eyes wide, then wider
until you see what you thought could not be seen.
And I will teach you to bloom for no other eyes,
to bloom only for the pleasure of blooming.

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The Long Marriage

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 6, 2022| 14 Comments »




Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
that nightly shrine
where my belly meets your spine,
where the bend of my knees
meets the bend of your knees,
where my warmth meets your warmth,
the night a vase
in which we place
the stems of our bodies,
in which I know myself
through touch.
And nothing must be said
and nothing must be done
except to meet the long familiar flesh,
this honoring of nakedness.

Perhaps I know you best in the dark—
these lightless hours when
we sit in the midst of brokenness
and my hand finds your hand,
and my silence finds your silence,
my loss finds your loss,
and together, somehow,
we find peace.
And nothing can be said.
And nothing can be done
to change the past.
We meet in the these darkened hours,
with nothing but our willingness
to meet these darkened hours,
these hours we would have pushed away,
these hours that bring us closer to each other.







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Dark Praise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 4, 2022| 16 Comments »




In each of us thrives an inner world
that does not love the light.
An inner world of womb and breath,
the most essential dark
where blood moves and lungs expand,
where neurons fire and cells divide,
where the heart pulses and muscles build,
where all words form, where all thoughts nest,
the secret world of humanness—
the dark we are, the dark we need,
this secret dark we cannot see.
For all its wounds, its rest,
its miraculous repair,
I praise this living dark
we carry everywhere.

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What the Peach Knows

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 4, 2022| 7 Comments »

 
It is night
that keeps the peach
from ripening too fast,
 
the cool of the dark
that allows the sugar
to develop, to grow—
 
oh soul, is it any wonder
I have started
to pray for longer nights?

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How I Made It Across the State

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 3, 2022| 6 Comments »




Through sleet, then slush,
through blizzard and ice,
I drove mountain passes
and listened to a love story—
and as my hands gripped
and my shoulders tensed,
my heart cheered for forgiveness.
And as snow fell
and SUVS flipped
and semis slid,
love put its hand
on my hand on the wheel
and though it did not promise me
my own happy ending,
it did crook its finger as if to say
just one more mile, sweetheart,
in the dark current
of the world,
now one more,
now one more,
now one more.

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