We sit on the carpet in the entry,
and Vivian balances her ring
on the head of the cat and
for a long time we stay like this,
speaking of school and friends
The phone doesn’t ring.
The texts don’t chime.
The afternoon light
seems to hold each thing in its place
like photo corners in a scrapbook
and minutes stretch into forever.
There is a wholeness to the moment
so perfect I almost try to escape it.
Instead I stay and fall deeper
into the pages of this simple story.
A girl. A mother. A cat. An afternoon.
The certainty there’s nowhere else to be.
Archive for January, 2023
On a Thursday Afternoon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, love, moment, mother, photo, surrender, wholeness on January 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
Everything Is Changed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, grief, impossible, possibility on January 11, 2023| 12 Comments »
I remember when everything was impossible.
Impossible to move. Impossible to not move.
Impossible to eat. Impossible to not eat.
Impossible to sleep. Impossible to wake.
Impossible to imagine a time
when everything wouldn’t be impossible.
Today I walk out into a world where,
at the same time, the sun shines brilliant
and snowflakes sift through the air.
When they touch my face, cold and soft,
it’s as if the god I am not sure I believe in
has used this moment as a chance
to brush impossibly delicate fingers
across my cheeks and whisper to me
in a voice I don’t hear, yet I hear perfectly,
everything is possible, sweetheart, everything.
Ambition
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambition, goals, humility, simplicity, surrender on January 10, 2023| 16 Comments »
I am so far from the woman
I want to be, so far
from humility and simplicity.
I dream of clearing
not only the shelves,
not only the closets,
but also the cluttered inner rooms
that crowd out the divine.
Every day I search for ways
to best meet the day—
with poems, beautiful meals,
with songs, with praise—
so many ways to be radiant,
but I suspect all the day wants
is for me to meet it
and all that comes into my path
with kindness, with spaciousness.
In my effort to be good, to be whole,
I make it so difficult, this life.
The day doesn’t seem to hold
my exuberance against me.
It shows up as always,
generous as a new tomorrow,
quiet as dawn.
Getting Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, nature, outdoors, spaciousness, weather on January 9, 2023| 11 Comments »
Sometimes there is inside me
a space so great
my body takes itself outside—
as if the house is too restricting,
as if this inner space
must be met by something vast as field,
boundless as sky, immeasurable as interstellar space.
If it is storming, so much the better.
If rain races down the face
and saturates the clothes, this is right.
If wind rips at my hair
or snow stings my cheeks
or lightning makes my hairs stand on end,
it only serves the aliveness.
If it is warm and still,
the inner space expands
into the warm and still.
There are feelings too immense for four walls,
too intense to be trapped in the skin,
sensations that rhyme with the cosmos,
moments when we start to grasp
what we are made of—
more energy than matter,
more nothing than something,
more everything than we ever dreamed.
One Cleaning the Closet of the Mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, clothes, mindfulness, nothing, thoughts on January 8, 2023| 6 Comments »
how threadbare these thoughts
I’ve chosen to wear every day—
replacing them with nothing
The Morning After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, dream, grief, love, mother on January 7, 2023| 8 Comments »
Though I knew it was a dream,
I thrilled to see you and your sister
tap dancing together,
performing in a bowling alley of all places,
each of you standing in front of your own lane,
both of you smiling, your arms scissoring in unison,
your bodies tilted forward, your legs kicking back,
the bright tap, tappity, tappity, tap of metal on wood,
your movements perfectly synchronized.
Then off you both danced down the lanes,
flapping and turning and leaping and shuffling,
two glorious blurs as you traveled toward the pins,
long legs flying, arms extended, your faces lit up,
no music but the rhythm in your feet.
I watched you both, breathless, thinking, I love this dream.
I love it even more this morning after,
still lying in bed, eyes still closed,
heart full of wonder, cells pulsing with love.
I keep unwrapping the dream like the gift it is.
There are some who would say I’m unlucky.
I know I am wildly blessed to have known you so closely,
blessed to love you and your sister,
blessed to have been changed by you both,
blessed to know your agony and your beauty,
blessed to know by heart the sound your feet make
as they dance across this world.
On Epiphany
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, miracle on January 6, 2023| 4 Comments »
I take my heart
to the frozen pond
and together
we walk on water.
This act, we’ve been told,
is a miracle—
today it is as simple
as one foot
in front of the other.
Waking Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being present on January 6, 2023| 12 Comments »
Wait a minute, what if this is it?
—John Tarrant
This is it, I think, as I lie in bed, not wanting to leave the warmth.
This is it, my feet meet the cold wood.
This is it, I water the orchid.
This is it, I boil water, make tea.
I think, I’ll be a better person tomorrow.
This is it, me dreaming of fresh starts.
This is it, defuzzing the sweater.
This is it, paying bills, answering mail, frying eggs, washing pans.
No life but this one.
No fresh start but here.
This is it, the cat sits on my papers.
This is it, the phone doesn’t ring.
This is it, the floors need mopping,
the letter needs written, the class needs planned.
This is it, me wishing I could be more perfect.
This is it, this. This only. Only this.
This is it, this flutter in my chest
when the sun enters the room,
the natural leaning toward the light.
This is it, this silence.
This cold. This warmth.
This longing. This song on my lips.
Open Eyed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken heart, flower, opening on January 5, 2023| 12 Comments »
The more we open our eyes,
the more the heart breaks.
Still, the invitation to open our eyes,
to choose to live broken heartedly,
as on this day when I hear again
of the greed and cruelty of humans
and the heart breaks and breaks
and I feel how it is in the breaking
the heart stays open.
On the windowsill, the amaryllis
has opened two enormous blooms of red
and I am so rich with the gift of it,
as if this one flower is teaching the heart
how to unfurl its lush petals
as it moves from tight bud
to spaciousness, dusting
the world around it with gold.
How the Light Came
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged epiphany, firefly, light, love, sharing our gifts on January 4, 2023| 4 Comments »
The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.
—Shakti Gawain
And it was in the darkest time
when she was most lost,
before she even knew to ask for help,
it was then the light arrived—
as a firefly, it so happens,
a radiance so tiny
she might have missed it
had it not lit up right in front of her face
at the very moment her friend spoke of love.
Perhaps she would have resisted it
if she’d had energy for resistance.
Even the smallest brilliance can be terrifying
when it asks us to see life as it really is
instead of the way we wish it would be.
As it is, the love light entered her,
humble as a beetle, significant as a star.
It glowed so brightly others could see it.
It responded to her trust.
It met her in silent rooms and lonely days.
It shined into deep uncertainty,
It offered her no answers.
It suggested a thousand right paths.
We could say the light didn’t change a thing.
We could say the light changed everything.
Who was she to receive a miracle?
Let’s not call it miracle, then.
Call it wonder. Call it unlikely luck.
But there is no way to pretend
it didn’t happen.
Even now, she tends that light,
marvels at how it glows even brighter
the more she gives it away.
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Oh friends, this was a difficult poem to write. I am reminded of the quote from Marianne Williamson, Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. So I wrote the poem in third-person past tense–which helped.
I wrote it in preparation to co-lead an online exploration of epiphany. Perhaps you will join me on Friday, January 6 to wrestle with your own story of being led/wanting to be led/not wanting to be led by light, of being lit from within, of sharing your gifts.
Epiphany: Stories Written in the Stars
Friday,January 6, 10:30 am -Noon PST
Mythologist Kayleen Asbo, poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, artist Johanna Baruch and archetypal counselor Ingrid Hoffman explore how we can follow our inner star to bring light to the world in a celebration of Epiphany from Dionysus to Jesus and the Magi through art, story, poetry, music and creative writing practices that liberate our inner gifts.
And here is the link for registration:
https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejjic613b83e1aa4&oseq=&c=&ch=
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