Perhaps I once thought I knew
what it meant to heal—to be good as new,
to be stitched back together, unbruised,
unblemished, in no pain, repaired.
But what is healing to the heart
when it has lost a beloved?
Surely not to forget the loss happened
the way the lungs forget bronchitis.
Surely not to stop the ache
the way bones reknit and forget
the break. Surely not to shun sadness,
when sadness is the only thing
that makes sense.
Is it strange that deeply broken
is the only way now I feel whole?
Archive for March, 2023
Healing the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, sadness, wholeness on March 14, 2023| 3 Comments »
Growing Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circling, god, learning, orbit on March 13, 2023| 14 Comments »
after Rainer Maria Rilke, “I Live My Life in Growing Orbits”
I am circling what is true,
with my arms open I am circling,
with eyes wide I am circling,
I am circling that which has never changed
and that which is always changing.
I circle with eyes full of tears, I circle
as I sing along with voice breaking,
lips praising, I circle with chest
expanding, feet eager, my body
exhausted, my whole being charged,
and the only words on my lips are thank you.
I am circling with the certainty
I can only do this right. I circle
the spaces I’ve circled before
only nothing is the same. I circle
the nothing at the center and the everything
which has come from it. With every step,
I see something new, something
I could not have seen before. With every step
I understand and lose my understanding.
I am circling all that can never be known
and all I long to know. I am circling
in quickening spirals and in lazy
orbits and I circle for the joy
of circling. I am circling you, God,
as Rilke invited me to do, and
still I am learning who you are,
so I circle and I circle and I circle.
So Slowly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, life, paradox, water on March 12, 2023| 12 Comments »
I don’t know how refusal
melts away like ice in the sun,
how resistance evaporates
like a puddle, or perhaps,
let’s be honest, like a sea.
I only know that since I stopped
fighting you, grief,
there is peace in me,
even when I am weeping,
even when everything I am
feels bruised with loss,
even when I burn.
I only know since I stopped
swimming against the undertow,
I have been carried
to the most astonishing places
and I did not die.
I was given new life.
It is the only
way I can live.
Let Awake Be Awake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged let x equal x, sleep, sleeplessness on March 11, 2023| 11 Comments »
Oh to wake in the middle of the night
and not wish to be asleep. To not wish
for anything but what is, which is,
in this moment, being awake.
To let the mind wander
because that is what the mind is doing.
To let the heart clench around its losses
because that is what a heart does.
Being awake in the middle
of the night is teaching me
to be so gentle with myself, to be
with what is and do nothing about it.
To not turn on the light. To let the dark
be dark. To let what is awake be awake.
To let what aches ache. To feel the deep peace
of not trying to anything. To meet
the moment as it is, as inevitable as dawn,
as loyal, as changing as wind.
Then I Stood There a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, failure, falling, let x equal x, standing, winter on March 10, 2023| 11 Comments »
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
—Mary Oliver, “It Was Early”
There is no lovely way to put this.
It was sleeting. I am not going to tell you
how the gray sky unfolded like a somber rose,
how the misty air softened every dark
and barren thing. It was sleeting.
And slick. And when I fell, it hurt.
A lot. But I got up. I got up.
Evidence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flower, hope, joy, orchid, patience on March 9, 2023| 15 Comments »
After almost two years
of growing only leaves,
the orchid that sat
on the back windowsill,
the one I have dutifully
watered and whispered to,
the one I had finally
resolved to throw away,
sent up a single spiraling stem,
shiny and darksome green,
and I who have needed
years to hide, to heal,
felt such joy rise in me
at the site of tight buds,
the kind of irrational joy
one feels when something
thought dead is found alive,
not only alive, but on the edge
of exploding into beauty,
and now it doesn’t seem
so foolish after all, does it,
this insistent bent toward hope.
When the Man I Don’t Yet Know Writes to Say He is Holding Me in the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, light on March 7, 2023| 10 Comments »
for R.S.
I feel it. I feel in my fingers
something of starlight.
I feel in my breath something
like dawn. I feel in my inner caverns
something akin to the radiance
of glow worms. As if just knowing
that someone is holding me in light
has made the moment brighter.
It occurs to me I can do this, too,
and I begin to imagine others
gathered by sunset, carried
by candlelight, infused
with the soft warmth
of a low campfire.
I picture the light
as it spreads across the world,
as it seeks out hearts
and lives I will never know.
What must it look like from space
as it spreads, as it grows,
as it blooms through this darkness
where we all live together.
Changing Wavelengths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged logic, loss, mystery, rainbow, wonder on March 6, 2023| 10 Comments »
The day after you died,
your dad and I stood
on a sidewalk in Georgia
and everything was strange—
I barely knew I was in a body.
I was so in my body.
The muggy air was unfamiliar.
With every sob, I pulled it
into my lungs and it became me.
What I remember:
The sound of airplanes.
The sweet scent of flowering trees.
There were no cars on the road.
It had rained and the night
had not yet come and there,
in the distance, a double rainbow.
I’m a logical woman. I know
what happens when sunlight
enters raindrops in front of me
at a precise angle of forty-two degrees.
And yet.
No one could ever convince me
it wasn’t you, you who had become
more spectral than flesh,
an optical illusion that doesn’t exist
in a specific spot, but, for any who look,
they cannot help but see the real
and radiant truth of it.
To this day, I remember how
those twin rainbows stitched me
back into the world, tethered me
to wonder, to mystery; connected me
to all I cannot understand.
Even now, there are drops falling
down my face. Perhaps, if the light
were just right, one might see
inside them something beautiful.
Redefining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, daughter, reverence, walking, wonder on March 5, 2023| 4 Comments »
Perhaps I thought awe required a symphony
or spinning galaxies or flagrant pink sunsets
or dropping to my knees, but today, it’s as simple
as walking beside my daughter on a quiet back road,
and her ears hurt and my legs are tired and spring
is barely a dream, but on this drab and windy afternoon
surrounded by bare branches and dirty old snow,
I feel it, reverence, how big it is, this love for her,
this wonder for the world, and I thrum
with the great gift of being human,
and the world is vaster, my god, it’s sublime.