You say it straight, he says.
We’re standing in the middle of a party
surrounded by curly wigs and sequin pants
and the Village People spell again into the air
as the doctor wearing bell bottoms
tells me how to share bad news:
First the diagnosis—
the symptoms and tests that suggest it.
Then how much life might be left.
Then ideas for what steps come next.
And there in my white go go boots
I think, this is how I want to love life—
want to love it straight up.
Not only when it’s beautiful.
Not only when I’m laughing.
I want to love life when I’m face to face
with what can’t be fixed,
want to love it even as I see
this is how it might end,
want to love it as I take the steps
to do what can be done,
knowing it won’t change the end of the story.
I want to love life as if it matters
to know what’s at stake,
as if it matters what I do next.
Archive for December, 2023
Staying Alive, Staying Alive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, falling in love with the world, medicine on December 31, 2023| 5 Comments »
Tender Crown
Posted in Uncategorized on December 30, 2023| 5 Comments »
It’s still here, the sorrow,
even as I make carrot soup,
even as I laugh at a joke,
even as I stand by the bonfire and sing,
it’s still here, blood deep, helix deep,
dream deep, still here
this grief I would never wish away.
Some Nights Missing You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, letter, mystery, trust on December 29, 2023| 4 Comments »
is like the letter that doesn’t come,
the one I would carefully slit open
and slowly unfold,
then hold against my chest for a moment
before letting my eyes take in the first line,
the second, the penultimate, the last,
the letter that would explain everything
in language so plain
it would make my hands shake
with the truth of it,
the one that would arrive with a return address
so I would know where to respond if I dare,
the handwriting even, familiar, easily read,
with no pages missing, no passages indecipherable,
the letter that never once has arrived,
a letter I know only by its absence.
And the emptiness itself
becomes faithful.
And the mystery becomes
the only signature I trust.
Reasons to Celebrate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, daughter, mother, Timothee Chalamet, transformation on December 28, 2023| 7 Comments »
Chocolate, of course,
the cake we baked
to celebrate the birthday
of Timothée Chalamet,
not that he will ever
taste it to know
we added pure imagination
with the sugar, the butter,
the flour, the grated beets.
Still, such joy as we baked,
as we sang. Such joy
as we made the sweet batter,
as we buttered and floured
the pans, as we waited
for heat to do its good hot work
transforming sugar and flour
into cake. Every day
the heart breaks and today
there is also the chance to play,
to make joy where before
there was only an egg,
a pinch of salt, a bit of milk,
some flour, two empty pans.
*
yes, friends, you may recall this is our THIRD year baking cakes for Timothée Hal Chalomet. He’s basically one of the family now!
Memory, Like a Passport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, memory, snow on December 27, 2023| 8 Comments »
That winter night you streaked
down the walkway in your undies
and jumped into the snowbank,
I think of it now,
your raucous laughter,
your feral joy
as you emerged frosty and grinning,
I think of how you wore your elation
on the outside,
not hidden up a sleeve,
not tucked in a pocket
where no one could see.
It didn’t save you, your wild joy—
perhaps that’s not what joy is for—
but some nights it saves me.
I still smell the clean sharp cold of it,
hear the glee-giddy,
mirth-ringing choruses of it
like an anthem to a country
that has changed its borders
and still, somehow, lets me in.
Contact Shine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, moon, shine, snow on December 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
Sometimes we don’t know
what we’re capable of
until we find ourselves
in the light of another;
suddenly we’re radiant,
downright incandescent—
as tonight, the blue snow
gathered the light of the full moon
in its facets and it flashed and sparkled,
though the snow owns no shine of its own.
This is how it is with my heart—
when I am with you,
it becomes a luminous living thing
and I barely recognize it,
resplendent-sprung and bright-winged,
where just moments before
it was dull. Even the memory of you
can make me shine.
As if nothing is lost.
As if we are made of memory.
A Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, Christmas, love, peace, river on December 25, 2023| 11 Comments »
Dear Friends,
This one is for you. And for everyone. May deep peace find us–even in places it seems impossible. Even when it’s beyond our own capacity, may it grow in us, surprise us again and again.
Rosemerry
A Blessing
And if there is peace to be found,
may it remake you
the way the sunrise
remakes each morning,
the way birdsong
remakes the air,
may peace find you
again and again,
and may it shape
and reshape you
the way the river
creates its bed
simply by flowing.
Somewhere in the Universe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, daughter, family, mother, space on December 24, 2023| 20 Comments »
There is this hour when my mother
and daughter and I are side by side
shaping soft red dough into tiny balls
to add to the green spritz wreaths;
the kitchen smells of almond
and butter, and there are carols
on the stereo and it’s going to snow.
Yes, I know there are thousands
of imperfect moments,
but there is also this moment
when I find myself smiling
in a small kitchen in a narrow river valley
in a vast mountain range on a large continent
on a smallish planet in one galaxy among
the hundreds of billions that somehow
all belong to a universe that’s expanding faster
than we think it should—
and as I hum along to a medieval hymn
about how a rose is blooming,
my heart scoured, my heart full,
how is it I, too, am a chord unfolding from minor
to major amid the cold of winter?
How is it I am a rose blooming bright,
faster than I think I should,
this dark season strangely blessed?
In a Time of Little Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, grief, growth, hope on December 23, 2023| 18 Comments »
In one day, the paperwhites
surge into life—
this heart, too,
has been forced to grow quickly.
Is it any wonder I thrill
to see this leaping up
toward light?
Any wonder I’ve begun to believe
in impossible things?
Dark Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, solstice on December 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
The long night slips into the room.
It swirls around the dinner table
Night wraps around the light
of the candles. There is nothing
in the home it does not touch.
Even the bright music.
Even the scent
of cinnamon and cloves.
Even the ache.
It travels into our hands,
our dreams, our speech,
our song, our toes.
It becomes us,
becomes the reason we pray,
the reason we learn how to sing.
On the Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, light, opening, solstice, sun on December 21, 2023| 9 Comments »
Let’s reach toward each other
with gazes gentle
as midwinter sun—
with a seeing so generous
we can’t help but turn
toward the other
to let ourselves be seen.
There are many reasons
to close, to shut down.
But when we meet
with such light in our eyes,
then we open together
like December dahlias,
soft and many petalled,
open like bird song
after a long, mute night.
Still Changing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, grief, move, stillness, story on December 19, 2023| 7 Comments »
How seldom he was still,
more humaning than human,
more aliving than alive.
Mostly he was running
or jumping or lunging.
Mostly he was spinning
or flopping or dodging.
Even as he sat,
which he seldom did,
his leg was pumping,
his fingers fidgeting.
But there were times,
like when we snuggled on the couch
to read books,
when his whole body quieted
as if to better listen
to the story,
as if he was captive
to the characters’ struggles,
every cell of him rapt
to know what came next.
Now I see how active
a stillness can be,
how far he was moved
when he was motionless,
how even now as I sit here
still as his tombstone,
I am spellbound
by the still changing story
of his life—
how because I am still
all of me is moved,
until I’m a new woman
sitting in the same place.
A Great Distance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged distance, grief, hurt, intimacy, memory on December 19, 2023| 8 Comments »
Because there is no road to yesterday,
the shortest distance to you is memory,
and so the mind searches to meet the ache
the same way a tongue keeps reaching
for a sore tooth. Relentlessly.
With purpose. With a wince.
Because pain is a brilliant teacher.
Because somehow the reaching
makes the impossible distance less far.
Because I like feeling you close.
Paradise Shared
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, Christie Aschwanden, connection, skiing on December 18, 2023| 3 Comments »
And if we have touched paradise,
let’s share it the way Christie did today
when she skied me to the edge
of the snow deep cliff and we gazed out
at the world below. I know how shared struggle
can become connective glue.
But beauty, too, adheres us—
invites us to become like wings,
knowing it takes two to fly.
Two Hushes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged silence on December 16, 2023| 6 Comments »
as if it’s featherlight,
the great muscle of silence
lifts the weight of the moment
*
with invisible arms
silence plucks me from the noise,
raises me as an offering to the day
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged divine, faith, transformation, wine on December 16, 2023| 13 Comments »
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus 2, 29,” trans. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
When so much is bitter,
it is hard to believe in patience,
hard to trust transformation,
the goodness of time.
How to turn the self
into something it’s not?
The ripest, sweetest grapes
make the strongest wine.
Whatever is sweetest in me
is not me—
is whatever shines through me.
That. I am learning to trust
the sweetness, the ripening
of that.
Spell of the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blooming, dark, magic, resilience on December 14, 2023| 10 Comments »
Something magic
about knowing
it’s the darkest days
that bring on the buds,
the extravagant bloom,
because oh, friend,
how dark it is.
The Small Stuff
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, kindness, long marriage on December 13, 2023| 8 Comments »
There is kindness in the way
he goes to four stores until he finds
the pink and purple tapers I asked for.
Kindness in the way he folds back
the sheets on my side of the bed
when I’m late to come to sleep.
Kindness in his hands
when he rests them on my shoulders.
Kindness in how he fills the hot pot
with water in preparation
for the next time I make tea.
And there is in me wild gratefulness
for such kindness,
the kind beyond the grand gesture,
the kind that arrives so quiet, so humble
it could almost be overlooked,
the daily gesture that says I see you,
I know you, you matter, I’m here.
The kindness so small it can find its way
into a heartache so big
and somehow tip the scale
toward hope, toward love.
Talking to My Son at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, nothing, silence, son, stars on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »
I miss you, I say to the stars,
The stars are not you,
but always they seem to listen,
as if what I have to say is important.
I miss you, I say again.
The stars never talk back.
Still, I listen for a response.
When I say I miss you,
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
what missing you means.
Though I live it every day.
Though missing you infuses every breath.
Though missing you shapes me—
especially at night when I’m alone
and I find myself talking with stars.
I miss you, I say to the stars.
I hear nothing in response.
I let myself be cradled
by that nothing.
Letter to Myself in the Future
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged quiet, self care, sun, winter on December 11, 2023| 6 Comments »
I want to give you this quiet hour
spent outside in the winter sun,
the slipknot of the breeze almost not there,
the sky an incandescent blue,
the river a murmur in its growing ice,
the dried grass barely a rustle.
How warm it is, even midwinter.
What I most want to give you
is not this hour, but the memory
of how you said yes to it,
how you set aside the phone,
how you turned off the screen,
how you let the book stay on the shelf
and did not touch the piano keys.
Remember sweetheart, how it felt
to slip between the cracks of the day
right into the fullness of being,
how you were so welcomed
by the air, by the light.
You could do it again,
slide out of your self.
Become wind.
Become the light.