And the mountains rose
and eroded completely
and the great sea flooded all
and the great sea left and
the great sea flooded and left again
and the land was forced up,
and then pulled from both sides
until the center broke
and slid down to create a great rift
and the volcanoes spewed lava
and the ash covered all
and the glaciers scrubbed
and the rocks avalanched
and the earth slumped
and today I sit in the valley
and stare at the mountain
with a dusting of white
on its wide shoulders
light gathering in its clefts
and think, my god,
isn’t it peaceful?
Archive for October, 2023
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, mountain, peace, perspective on October 15, 2023| 13 Comments »
Autumn in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, garden, persistence, snapdragon on October 12, 2023| 6 Comments »
Though the garden wears mostly brown leaves
and dried vines, though the stems
of the sunflowers are brittle and broken and bent,
though frost has taken nearly every living thing,
the snapdragons still bloom, scarlet flags of persistence,
their heads deep red, their petals still soft,
and I know it won’t last forever,
but for now, they resist what is cold, what is dark,
and I, while I can, I want to be snapdragon,
want to bring to this life all the beauty I can muster,
even when it’s dire, and give it all away.
Stubborn Praise with James Crews
Posted in Uncategorized on October 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Change? Transformation?
Join me and my friend poet James Crews for an hour and a half of conversation and poetry about how the world shifts and how we poetry helps us to show up in the midst of chaos, revolution, adjustment and alteration. October 18, 5:30-7 p.m., Zoom, $18. To register, visit here.
Terce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, hope, light, prayer, sun on October 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
It’s the light this morning
that opens me. How is it
a certain changing angle of gold
can make the heart leap up
all nimble and sprightly and eager to praise
as if it’s never before seen such beauty,
as if it doesn’t happen every day,
this radiance that reaches
through space to find us
wherever we happen to stand
on this unlikely planet.
I don’t know how it is the light
works as a luminous key to unguard me
and swing wide my gates,
but on this morning filled with news
that makes me shutter, shut down,
close off and clench,
this stroke of light, it’s everything.
An Autumn Day Perfect for Getting Things Done, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, parenting, recovery, squirrel on October 9, 2023| 13 Comments »
When you
say,
Please don’t
go,
the day
weaves
a nest
from
the strands
of
tenderness
in your
words, and
I,
squirrel-like, curl
deep
into their
mossy
warmth. I
cache
the sweetness
of
quietly snuggling.
Come
winter, these
seeds
of autumn
gentleness
will nourish
me.
From Too Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, love, nearness, parenting, touch on October 8, 2023| 12 Comments »
To hold you the way
the shore holds
the river, this is how
I want to hold you—
that present, the way
skin holds the sweet
peach, the way lungs hold
air—that tender, that
gentle, that tight. Instead,
I hold you now
the way sky holds clouds—
too spacious, too distant,
too far, far away.
I want whisper near, breath
to ear, nigh as lullaby, want
cradle close, praise
close, soothe close, love
close, as if touch could make
everything right, want dream
close, promise close, close
as prayer, close as your
tear to my cheek.
Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, grief, loss, presence on October 7, 2023| 11 Comments »
On the highway, an empty space
where you are not driving. At the college,
a chair where you don’t learn.
In this room, a tall and slender empty space
where you are not. Not whistling,
not closing your eyes and humming,
not eating noodles, not reading the news.
Everywhere I am, this space you will never be.
Not in Ohio. Not in the woods with walnuts falling.
Not laughing with these new friends.
Not in these hands and not in these arms
and not in these words where you are
because you are not.
I would not fill these emptinesses
with anything else is. They are anything
but empty, these spaces of you.
Love Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, crow, introvert, love, song on October 6, 2023| 5 Comments »
We think only of the one-note racket,
the sharp, harsh caw of crow that claws at silence
in warning or begging or a rallying cry.
But the crow, too, sings—
not like the Romeo warblers,
so that all can hear, no—
it blends soft cooing and rattles and growls
to woo as it nuzzles and ruffles and bows,
as if the crow knows that some songs
are better when shared so close
that the only one who can hear them
is the one for whom they are sung.
The Invitation: Poetry Video
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark praise on October 6, 2023| 2 Comments »
Two nights after my son died I had a powerful moment that changed how I was able to show up for myself, for my family, for anything. I write about that in this poem, The Invitation. I love how the guitar by Steve Law opens up the poem, how the art by Marisa S. White, illustrates the kind of receptivity (and dare I say magic) than can happen in the night. I love how the video by Tony Jeannette speaks to how on that night I went from utterly broken to more whole.
“The Invitation” is part of the Dark Praise poetry album on endarkenment, available now to download free wherever you listen to music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music. OR you can dowload it and purchase it (just to support our work, even though you can listen for free) on Bandcamp.
Friends, I am so delighted with this album. I really hope you will listen to this remarkable collaboration. You can join Steve Law and me LIVE in Buena Vista on Friday, October 14. Details HERE. (also a writing workshop the next day). You can also join us live in Colorado Springs on October 26 with Marisa at the True North gallery. Details HERE.
Tumbling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fall, grief, help, love on October 5, 2023| 9 Comments »
When everything’s falling,
when everything’s broken,
when all is ravel and rubble
and ransacked and ruin
and the world is a stuttering,
guttering blunder,
a plundered and ravaged thing,
that is when wonder arrives on the wings
of forgiving, and living arrives
on the wings of the dead, and
devotion arrives in the wreckage
of loss. And if to love
is to risk being tumbled
and fumbled and wrung out
and sprawled, to love
is also to trust there are hands
that will raise us,
amaze us with kindness,
calm hands that will lift up
our hurt-heavy hearts
as if it they’re as light
as red leaves in the fall.
Three Travel Haikulings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikulings on October 4, 2023| 2 Comments »
four a.m. goodbye—
above the sleeping dreamer’s lips
kissing the air
*
opening the book
surprised to find my old story there
with a new ending
*
scent of old leaves—
what is dead brings such beautiful
memories of youth
How the World Goes On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, love, milkweed, softness, survival on October 2, 2023| 10 Comments »
There’s the burr that relies on brittle prickers,
the cheat grass with sharp and spiky barbs,
and then there’s the milkweed
that attaches its seeds to gossamer fluff
and spills forth in an ecstasy of diaphanous floss,
white puffs of wish-downy, dream-gauzy,
breeze-easy lushness. Oh, heart,
this, too, is what survival looks like—
an almost impossible softness
that gathers light in silky froth,
that entrusts itself to the wind.
Home Ec, Seventh Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged junior high, teenage, woman on October 1, 2023| 13 Comments »
Mrs. Johnson, newly married,
looked like a Charlie’s Angel,
and while the boys were in shop class,
she taught us girls to be women.
We learned to make white sauce
from butter, flour and milk.
Learned to sew stuffed animals by hand,
how to make skirts with a machine.
Learned to balance a book
on our heads while we walked,
and we learned
the proper measurements
for a woman: thirty five, twenty five, thirty five.
Mrs. Johnson wrapped the yellow tape measure
around her own chest, her own waist, her own hips,
proving herself.
Then she put two tape measures
on each table and told us to measure
the girl assigned to sit next to us.
Kim Fields. She wore Wranglers. Mascara.
Gold combs in her feathered hair.
She had a boyfriend. They’d kissed.
She ate lunch at the popular table.
I never wanted to be like her.
I totally wanted to be like her.
The smile on her lips was vicious
as she wrapped the cloth measure
around my chest,
her fingers tugging the strip tight
as I crumpled inside.
She smirked as she called out the numbers.
In pencil, I wrote twenty-eight on the handout,
filling in the top blank
that was supposed to represent me—
me, a textbook example
of unkissed, preteen prudery.
When it was my turn to measure Kim,
she grabbed the tape from my hands,
said, “Let’s see what a real woman is.”
She wrapped her own hands
around her puffed out chest,
the same hands that held
Louie Floyd’s hands between class,
and she pushed out her breasts,
those same breasts
we all knew Louie Floyd had touched.
“Thirty-five,” she sang out,
filling in her blank, her voice a ripe fist
that squeezed my flat chest even flatter.
I cared too much then about those blanks.
Months later, I, too, learned the pleasures of kissing.
But it was years before I learned
those were not the blanks that mattered.