this tattered cloak of worry—
with my best silk thread
embroidering the holes
Archive for September, 2023
One Incongruous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embroidery, irony, worry on September 20, 2023| 12 Comments »
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.