The whole time I walk in Spring snow and wind
I am prompted by a lovely man’s voice
to repeat many phrases I’ll need in Spanish.
I learn, for instance, to ask how many blocks
I must walk to get to the bank, only to learn
it is closed on holidays but will open
the day after tomorrow. I learn
how to ask if you are good at playing tennis
and insist you are better at playing than I am
(which is certainly true). I learn to say Wednesday
is impossible, but perhaps we can play tennis
Thursday morning because it is a holiday
and we do not need to go to the office.
And, in the midst of learning how to talk about
what our kids are studying in the university,
the lovely man teaches me to say, Es mejor
terminar una cosa antes de comenzar otra—
and I understand I am like the recalcitrant
child in the Spanish lesson, starting out
to be a musician and then deciding to be
an engineer. So often I do not end something
before beginning another. It is not so easy
in this life to draw clear lines. At least
not for me. It seems I am always saying yes
to something new while in the midst
of something else. Like the fact I’m learning Spanish
while still finishing the introduction and end notes
for my next book. Like planning my garden
while still walking in snow. Like loving this world
while I am in the midst of deep grief.
I don’t know how to say in Spanish
there are so many ways to do it right, this life.
What doesn’t live on in matter or in memory?
Doesn’t everything tendril out to touch every other thing?
Haven’t they proven long after a butterfly wing
is done flapping in China it will affect the weather here?
Is anything ever really finished, I wonder,
as lesson twenty five ends and in the snow
has become rain that even now is finding the roots
of the spruce. And all I see as I look around now
are more and more beginnings.
Archive for March, 2024
Spanish 2, Lessons 23, 24, 25
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginnings, endings, learning, Spanish, spring on March 31, 2024| 11 Comments »
For Easter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, dawn, easter, eggs, happiness, joy on March 31, 2024| 4 Comments »
We drop six small,
bright-colored tabs
into six glass cups.
Add vinegar. Water.
And my girl and I
make plaid eggs
and striped eggs
and eggs painted
with feathery strokes.
We sing along to country
songs, and joy colors me
like dawn colors sky,
a beauty so fleeting,
but while it lasts,
it lights the whole world.
Growing Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, silence, spring, trust, winter on March 29, 2024| 2 Comments »
Inside this silence
with its hum of life
and shush of wind
is another silence,
a pure silence
I have never heard
but trust is here—
the foundation
of all sound—
just as I trust that
inside my imperfect
love with its pride
and its pain is another
love—a pure and
generous love.
Sometimes when
the voices of hate
in and around me
are loudest, I feel
my understanding
of what trust is adjust—
the way trees in winter
continually adapt to keep
their vital cells alive,
the way animals deep
in the dark of the ocean
keep evolving
to make their own light.
Live Performances & Workshops in Denver & Paonia in May
Posted in Uncategorized on March 29, 2024| 1 Comment »
Risking Love!
Hi friends, I am going to have two live performances with my amazing guitar player Steve Law–A solo performance May 5 in Denver at Rag & Bale and May 18 in Paonia at the Paradise Theater as part of the Moonshine Traveling Medicine Show with Goodnight Moonshine.
Flirty. Smart. Electric. Raw. Both performances and workshops will explore how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is. At a time when bad news seems to charge the air, falling in love has never been more important—with the earth, with each other, with ourselves, with the divine. Playful and provocative, it’s a strong dose of soul medicine—like whiskey, like honey, like straight-up joy.
For tickets to May 5 workshop, visit here
For tickets to May 5 performance, visit here
For tickets to May 18 workshop, contact hello@paoniabooks.com
For tickets to May 18 performance, visit here
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged melting, rabbit, spring on March 28, 2024| 16 Comments »
I know the rabbits were here
because the snow is melted
where their bodies have been,
small patches of green grass
in a vast field of white.
When winter is gone, their tracks
will again be invisible,
leaving no way to know when
the rabbits have visited our home.
I marvel at how even an absence
can become precious when we
are aware of what is gone.
Like when I find signs
my boy was here. Just today
I passed a narrow smiley face
on a cottonwood trunk where
he once was with a can of blue
spray pain. Here, a dent
in the wall where his anger
has been. Here, a hole in my life
where his life has been.
Here, the place where
the ache is melting and beneath
the ache more green
than I would have ever dreamed.
If It Were in a Book, I’d Write Praise All Over the Margins
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, falling in love with the world as it is, ordinary, sick, treasure on March 28, 2024| 14 Comments »
No day but this day
with its sloppy snow
and the rabbits living
beneath the porch and
the single easter lily
that opened this afternoon,
its too-sweet perfume spilling
all over my thoughts
as I made my daughter
a warm homemade syrup
of lemon and cherry
and honey for her cough
before I snuggled into
her rumpled bed and put
my cheek to her fevered head,
no holier place in all the world
except every other place
where life is honest
and love has dared—
and how is it sometimes
we can be so aware
that every little thing,
from the cold breeze
coming through the open window
to the cat hair that seems
to be everywhere, yes
every single little thing
is treasure.
One While Flying Away from My Mom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mom, mortality, sunset on March 26, 2024| 4 Comments »
longing to love you forever
I watch the sun go down
desperately red
Why I Stay Up Late Walking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emotions, healing, walking on March 25, 2024| 12 Comments »
At night I walk. Because
it is easier then to not
be my story. Easier to be
more flesh and less brain.
Easier to be the one
who is gathered into
the field of darkness
by night’s great hands
and planted there.
Because sometimes
rain and sometimes wind
and sometimes stars
and always the world
so much larger than I,
so much vaster
than a small room
with a narrow doorway
and a tale relentlessly sad.
I walk not so much from,
but not so much to—
more that I walk through—
my ribs and lungs
becoming ladder rungs
that form a path
between earth and sky,
and I am more breath
than blame, more step than
shame, more now than why.
Lessons from a Small Bush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enough, joy, mom, mother, quince, sufficiency on March 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
Because it brings her enormous joy,
this pink-petalled flowering quince
that grows just outside
my mother’s back door,
I long to give her a thousand
such quince bushes,
all of them long-blooming,
voluptuous, thornless,
all of them lining her walk.
Though the other part of me
wants to honor how
it takes only one plant
to bring her such elation.
I am instantly stunned
with the wisdom of enoughness,
astonished again at how praise
needs nothing more than a crumb.
Somehow letting go of a thousand
imaginary quince bushes floods me
with a emptiness so great
I fall more wildly in love
with a single pink flower
and the luck-drunk awe of my mother.
Cleaning Mom’s Blue Glass, I Think of My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, daughter, grief, mom, wound on March 23, 2024| 9 Comments »
Barefoot, I balanced
on mom’s counters
and I handed her
the blue glass
plates and vases
from the highest shelf.
They were dusty,
as all things are
when unused. Now
they shine, draw
the eye upward,
bring beauty to the room.
It makes me wonder
what parts of my life
I have not touched
for too long—
like that wound today
I brushed so tenderly
with my thoughts.
What was dust
now gleams this evening,
has become the only thing
my eyes can see.
And though I might
avoid it if I could,
somehow the wound
makes everything around it
all the more lovely,
as luminous as newly
polished blue glass,
as shimmering as any tear.