How many wishes end this way,
like this gossamer froth of milkweed
matted with brittle brown bits.
I think of your beautiful heart,
how soft, how wounded it is.
Lately, almost everything makes me think
of your heart. I pick up
this white milkweed seed. Cradle it
in my palm, detritus and all.
I honor the beauty of your
wish. Matted as it is, bedraggled.
God, it’s so brave to wish.
Archive for September, 2023
For My Brother on His Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, brother, wish on September 30, 2023| 2 Comments »
Undreaming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, smile on September 28, 2023| 7 Comments »
Though I’ve dyed his pants pink
by accident, not black as he’d hoped,
the seam of his smile
spreads easily across his face,
a smile easy as sunrise, easy as moonset,
forgiving as the smile of someone who knows
what doesn’t matter and what does.
When I wake, his smile
stays with me. Every time
I close my eyes, there it is,
widening as my heart unravels
itself in my chest.
There it is, that smile, so real
it’s still there when my eyes are open,
stitching me back into the world.
Years Later, the Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, light, memory, mother, time on September 27, 2023| 10 Comments »
Sometimes, for no reason, I remember
a car ride with my mother, driving
the old frontage road from school to home,
and I don’t remember what we spoke of,
don’t remember which car we were in,
don’t remember how old I was,
I remember only the way a bow of light
seemed to connect the sun
to the hood of our car, as if we were being
led forward by light itself, and
I, who knew so little of life, felt so deeply
and sweetly tethered to beauty.
Decades later, I still recall that awe,
but now I focus more on the woman
who sat in the driver’s seat, consider
how luminous she is, consider
the radiant bow that links her life to mine,
how even hundreds of miles away
she leads me with her light.
*
One Inside the Blossoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mystery, silence on September 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
though I tell you everything,
there is so much I don’t say—
the way an orchid
is nourished by shade,
the way silence is nourished by silence
Autumn Walk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, beauty, light, lose the self, loving the world as it is on September 25, 2023| 3 Comments »
Perhaps it is the autumn light
that makes the walk up
this familiar old dirt road feel
so lucky, so fortunate? This is how
I want to meet life—as if
there is no way to contain all
the beauty so it leaks out and floods
the world with gold. Simply strolling
up this gravel road, already I
am less whatever I thought I was
and more what an autumn evening
is, something at the edge
of impossible. I want to know
the beauty that comes from
release, the radiance of loving what
is, and with tenderness, letting it go.
Ten-Dollar Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, compassion, feeling it all, grief, opening on September 24, 2023| 12 Comments »
The woman at the farmstand
with the smile in her eyes
sold me a vase with pink dahlias,
pink zinnias, white daisies
and two stems of mint.
Even with all that beauty
waiting for me in the car,
I cried in the grocery store
when the woman I hadn’t seen in years
asked how my son was doing.
When I told her he had chosen
to take his life, she cried, too.
And the stranger who overheard
our conversation cried, too,
and pulled us into her generous arms
and we hugged by the checkout,
laughing and crying in an unlikely
knot of compassion.
I don’t want or need
to be freed from grief—
don’t want to forget the loss
or pretend it didn’t happen.
I want to live in a world
where the broken heart
might meet other broken hearts,
a world where pink dahlias open
in extravagant loveliness,
a world where I, too,
might open, might know beauty,
despite the fact I have been cut.
Saving Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, salamander, saving the world on September 23, 2023| 9 Comments »
I didn’t even see
the slender red salamander
curled in the middle
of the country road,
but Brad stopped to kneel
beside it and told us
if you pick them up
by the tail, they will lose
their tail—an attempt
to distract a predator
while the rest
of the body escapes.
So tenderly, he brushed
the small amphibian
into his open palm,
then gently placed it intact
in the wet grass beside the road.
If this day were a novel,
I’d say the morning walk
was foreshadowing.
Everywhere we went
there were hands
that opened in kindness—
to greet, to serve cake,
to hug, to wave—
as if everyone agreed it matters,
the way we treat each other.
How quickly we can fall apart
when threatened.
How easily, sometimes,
we are saved.
Translation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged quiet, silence on September 22, 2023| 15 Comments »
In a quiet house
a woman can have
quiet thoughts,
can sit in the quiet
and let the quiet
inside. In a quiet house,
a woman can sit
on the couch
in a quiet room
and watch the leaves
out the window
as they do not move
in the wind
that is not there.
How quiet it is,
the kind of deep quiet
that makes a woman
slip into the quiet
as if it’s inevitable,
and the quiet seeps in
and fills her the way
water seeps quietly
into the sand,
and the house is quiet
and the air is quiet
and the woods are quiet
and the world is quiet
and the woman is quiet
until she rhymes
with quiet,
until she becomes
the attention
that meets the quiet
and the quiet
becomes her.
To Everyone Who Has Offered Me Support
Posted in Uncategorized on September 22, 2023| 10 Comments »
I have been stunned, humbled and opened with gratefulness for all the love that has flooded our family the last two years. I wrote this poem a while ago, exploring how sometimes our own darkness is a chance to be amazed by the light of others, and now it’s part of the new album, DARK PRAISE.
Featuring guitar by Steve Law, art by Marisa S. White, and the video skills of Tony Jeannette, I want to send this poemvideo very personally to every one of you who helped to carry me. I cry almost every time I try to read this poem aloud (I know, not too surprising) just thinking of how grateful I am.
THIS is for you. Please share it with others who have brought light to your darkest times. You can download this track and the whole album on Spotify or iTunes for free. You can also support the album by buying it on Bandcamp.
Fullness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, thisness, time on September 22, 2023| 12 Comments »
for Brad and James
Around the old barnwood table,
we drink coffee and tea and talk
about fathers and hawk migrations,
holding hands and peacock feathers,
and if there is somewhere a clock
that ticks, I don’t hear it—as if
everything’s stopped—
the Monarchs ever winging
above the butterfly bush and
the mounds of rudbeckia
ever opening into exuberant gold
and the hydrangea forever blushing
into pale pink tips and the deep
green woods ever balanced
at the edge of fall.
I know they don’t last,
these honey-slow hours,
but somehow they do,
as if already it’s years from now
and we are still sitting
around the old barnwood table,
nowhere else to be,
our laughter still rising,
the flowers still blooming,
our mugs still warm in our hands.