Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for December, 2023

On the Winter Solstice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

Still Changing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

A Great Distance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.
 

Read Full Post »

Paradise Shared

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

Two Hushes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 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

Read Full Post »

How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.
 

Read Full Post »

Spell of the Christmas Cactus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

The Small Stuff

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , 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.

Read Full Post »

Talking to My Son at Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

Letter to Myself in the Future

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »