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Archive for April, 2023

Doing the Heart Work

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 30, 2023| 10 Comments »

The heart circulates blood through the body
a thousand times a day and not once
do I give it a thought. Not once do I think
of those four chambers, flooding and releasing,
the valves opening and closing to keep blood flowing.
It does this while I eat, while I crumple, while I teach.
It does this while I hold my daughter as she weeps,
while I stumble, while I fall apart, while I sleep.
 
Oh body, though I speak of being broken hearted
and the gifts that come in the breaking, meanwhile,
you go on with your ceaseless heart work, the work
of flow, the work of current, the work of push through,
of never saying no, the work of life, the necessary work
that allows all the beautiful breaking open to happen.

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Timeless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 29, 2023| 15 Comments »

after Ruth Stone, “Train Ride”

There are not enough hours to walk by the river,
not enough hours to work and make soup
and dream and sit and do nothing at all.
Is it true there is not enough time?
There is time for every word
you have written, every petunia you’ve planted,
for every path you have walked,
for every lover you’ve kissed
and kissed and kissed there is enough time.
No. Not enough. Not enough time for reading
the tall stack of books on the desk.
Not enough time for making the pie crust
from scratch. Not enough time for wandering
in the forest with the soft green hanging moss
until you, too, remember you are a tree.
And yet you have read tall stacks of books.
Many, many tall stacks.
You have made cherry pies and rhubarb pies
and pumpkin pies from scratch.
You have wandered for hours through dappled glades
and draped your hair with moss.
There is enough time for everything you have ever done
and for every moment spent doing nothing at all.
How is it you feel such lack?
Here is the moment. Open it.

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One Path Toward Intimacy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 29, 2023| 4 Comments »

Sometimes
a piece
from another
who is broken
finds its way
into my frame,
and our shattered
bits fit
with each other.
Perfectly.
And I am
forever changed.

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Wordlessly

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 27, 2023| 12 Comments »

 
With such gentleness,
he stood behind me
and held me as I wept,
held me the way a pond holds a lotus,
the way a scarf holds perfume,
the way a man who has lost his child
holds the mother of the child,
his hands so light on my hands
as our fingers laced into a tender weave,
held me the way the pericardium holds the heart,
the way the eye holds a tear
then lets it slip away.

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The Call

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 26, 2023| 4 Comments »


 
 
Dawn, and the geese announce
their landing on the pond—
and though the reluctant body says sleep,
the heart rouses to attend their arrival.
So many awakenings seem to happen like this:
when I feel least ready, least willing, most averse,
something demands I rise—
something strident, insistent, wildly alive,
saying, Now! It’s time! You’re here.

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One Late-Night Conversation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 26, 2023| 2 Comments »

 
 
as if we had eternity
we spend it together
this hour

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When Everything Is Field

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 24, 2023| 13 Comments »


Again I fall in love with the field
as if for the first time—the first time
I ever saw a pair of geese land there
then waddle through tall dry grass;
the first time I ever watched it transform
from drab ocher to brilliant green;
the first time I ever felt its spaciousness—
how it becomes a basin for light.
Every day I fall in love again with the field,
many times a day. Every day, I marvel
there are new ways to fall in love.
Once, I didn’t know how intimate it was,
this relationship to the land.
Now I know it as the truest thing.
Inevitable, this love affair with color,
texture, change, scent, the sound
of grass moving against grass.  
Inevitable, the love that rises
out of dew, out of frost, out of vastness,
out of wholeness, out of loss,
and reteaches me what it is to love, to be loved.

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Like Sunshine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 23, 2023| 6 Comments »




The way the sunshine warms me
through my coat, through my clothes,
that is the way I want to listen to you—
want to listen so closely I feel
your words permeate anything
that covers me, listen so closely
to your thoughts and fears and hopes
that they slip in and touch me.
When you are quiet, it is as if the sun
has gone behind a cloud.
I want to listen, too, to that—
to know the shadows of your silences.
Even then, there is so much
you are saying. I think of how,
on cloudy days, too, my skin
becomes brown. I want to understand
you—not just to listen but to learn,
not just to learn but to open to you,
to let you see how it is you change me.

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On Earth Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 23, 2023| 2 Comments »




We walk on the back road
through ponderosa forest
laughing and singing for hours,
and the sky comes down
in tiny white balls
shaped like flowers
that land in our hands
and melt into our gloves.
We don’t get to hold anything
for long—not the snow,
not this fabulous day
with its freedom,
its braiding streams, its mud.
We don’t even get to hold
each other, not forever,
though we try—
but for these hours,
surrounded by trickle and trill,
I feel how surely we are held
by the scent of spring,
by the shadows, by the deer,
by the jay’s bright squawk,
by the sun breaking through.

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Why I Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark Again (and Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 21, 2023| 2 Comments »



I already know Indy will be trapped
in an ancient room full of snakes
and survive, but I watch again, anyway,
though I wince, because my husband
is on my left and my daughter is on my right
and the cat curls under the blanket
on my lap, and though I hate
how my heartrate skyrockets
when Indy is dragged on a rope
behind a military jeep, I would
watch it all again another thousand times
for just that moment when
my girl snuggles deeper into my side
and rests her head on my shoulder,
yes I would watch any night
the melting flesh when the ark is opened
just to hear beneath the soaring theme
the quiet soundtrack of her breath.

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