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.
One Incongruous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embroidery, irony, worry on September 20, 2023| 12 Comments »
this tattered cloak of worry—
with my best silk thread
embroidering the holes
An Incantation for My Little Brother’s Pillow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, pillow, sister, support on September 19, 2023| 4 Comments »
(on the night before a difficult day)
Because I can’t be there now to hold him,
I will my brother’s pillow to be more soft,
will it to offer him the deep magic
no pillow actually owns—will it
to bring him dreams in which
the light is gold and the air
smells of dark violets and
white trillium like it did
when we were kids.
I want his dreams
to feel so real, so
full of love he
wakes with
a smile as
inevitable
as today.
Learning to Be Soft
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, softness, tenderness on September 18, 2023| 5 Comments »
for my father
He was a large man, but soft,
his body no longer chiseled
from football, from youth.
To be held by him
was to be enveloped,
to be cradled, to feel wrapped
in his presence. He was soft.
Except, of course, when he wasn’t.
I had seen his anger turn steel,
turn sword. I knew the full weight
of his no. Perhaps that is why
I knew the great value of how soft
he was with me. I was shaped
as much by his tenderness
as I was by the firmness of his rules,
shaped by the warmth in his voice,
shaped by his gentleness
when I confessed my darkest shame.
One night, when I came to him, broken,
scared of the ways I had hurt others
and myself, he did not rail,
did not blame, did not speak in claws
or spears. He spoke in gauze,
in salve, in velvet cushion,
and though it would be years
before the wounds were healed,
the healing began that night.
In softness.
I remember, even now,
how he held me—
how his softness invited my own.
How I still feel him, holding me—
his softness, my softness.
our strength
Survival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, driving, softening, survival on September 17, 2023| 13 Comments »
At the left hand turn
at the busy intersection,
my fifteen-year-old daughter
tenses in her body,
her fingers grip the wheel,
her breath comes fast.
What do I do? she asks,
voice tight with fear.
My hand wants to clutch at the door.
I do not.
My chest clenches with alarm.
I will my body beside her to be soft.
I speak in hushed tones.
Drive forward. Now wait. Now go.
And the turn is made
and her shoulders relax.
My shoulders relax.
I praise her as again,
she picks up speed
and follows the yellow center line.
Later my friend tells me
that sometimes she fakes being soft
as a way to buy time
until a genuine softness arrives—
she says it’s a way to not do damage
while she regulates herself.
I marvel at all the ways
we learn to survive—
there is fight, flight and freeze,
and there is softening.
Softening, which allows
the next step to be light.
Softening, which leaves space
for goodness to arise.
Softening, which helps us
to meet the intersection
of the next moment
as if it’s an open road.
Stopped
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, hiking, small detail, Telluride on September 16, 2023| 8 Comments »
We walked for hours through cliff bands,
past old mines with roofs collapsed.
We sat on a huge flat rock in the middle
of a high alpine cirque rung with green.
The rosehips were fat and softened by frost,
and their skins tasted sweet and bright.
There was snow on the trail. There was gold
in the trees. The sky deepened bluer all day.
And there was one white seed that rode the wind.
I watched it rise and watched it fall again.
Somehow it feels essential to explain
that for that moment, it was everything—
True Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, generosity, graveyard, kindness, labor day, loss, tears on September 16, 2023| 9 Comments »
with enormous thanks to Kristen
In this story, the grave keeper
is a woman named Kristen.
She plants grass seed
where soils have been disturbed.
She pulls weeds by the roots
instead of poisoning them.
She learns the birthdays of the dead.
When a mother comes to sit
by her child’s tombstone,
the grave keeper gives her space,
but as the mother leaves,
she offers her a quiet smile, a hug.
Kristen knows the name of the child.
In this story, when the mother
leaves the graveyard,
dead flowers in her hands,
she is filled with no less grief,
but there is something generous
alive in her now, too,
soft as the new grass that thrives
around her son’s headstone,
loving as the grave keeper’s voice
when she whispered, Happy Birthday.
When the mother tells this story,
she weeps every time.
It’s not for sorrow
tears slip from her eyes.
Rebuilding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged basil, cooking, garden, pesto on September 14, 2023| 12 Comments »
Perhaps it is no Eiffel Tower,
no theory of relativity, no treatise
on law or philosophy of man,
but I did it, I constructed
the perfect recipe to turn fifteen cups
of fresh basil into a rich and delicate pesto,
the kind of pesto that makes fettucine
grateful to arrive naked to a plate
so that it might swim in such green.
The kind of pesto that makes me want
to eat it from a bowl with a cracker.
God knows I have failed before—
made it too lemony, too garlicky,
too salty, too thin. But this pesto—
built with dry roasted almonds
and lemon zest and parmesan cheese—
this pesto carries the taste
of every word I whispered
into the plants as they grew—
In each bite, I swear I taste the words,
“That’s right, you can do it.”
Despite drought. Despite frost.
Despite hail. Despite heat.
God, this pesto tastes like fruition,
like life itself triumphant.
It tastes like robust green luck.
I savor each bite, strong and bright,
I will it into my being.
Gleaning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gleaning, memories, pears on September 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
with thanks to Erika Moss
She arrived with a dozen pears
she had gleaned from an orchard.
I place them in a scalloped dish
and sniff the naked air,
hungry for the scent of pear.
I think of gleaning,
the wisdom in gathering
what has been left behind.
how now, I glean memories
that at first were passed over
in favor of others that were sweeter,
or bigger, or more perfectly formed,
but now, it’s these smaller, harder
memories that sustain me.
I love walking the rows of the mind
and finding memories still hanging,
ready to be picked.
I gather them into the bowl of my heart.
How precious they are, every one.
Peace in the Middle of It All
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, feelings, paradox, peace on September 12, 2023| 13 Comments »
Memories pile on each other
like leaves in autumn,
each one charged with sweetness
or sorrow or worry or bliss.
Soon, the stack is over my head.
I fall in, the way a child might fall
into the pile—letting gravity take me
with no thought of catching myself
from the fall. What surprises is
that even as I am buried in memories,
I am not crushed by their weight.
Even as I roll in all the feelings they bring,
there is a peace that does not leave,
a peace that stays and asks nothing of me.
I once believed I could only know peace
when there was no tumult, no upheaval.
Now, in the wild chaos of it all,
I feel how peace is also here—
a peace so constant that while I tremble,
while I struggle, it breathes me.
Sitting Quietly in the Night for Twenty Minutes while Nothing Happens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, nothing, quiet, sign, stillness on September 11, 2023| 8 Comments »
Perhaps I wanted a sign—
an owl call. A meteor.
The brush of an invisible hand.
Instead, I got a sky full of stars
and an ear full of riversong
and the certainty that no matter
what happens or does not happen
in the world outside of me,
there is always, inside me,
a love that grows and changes.
Is it strange now, I am grateful
for nothing—the nothing
that teaches me
the most important thing of all.