More than twenty years ago,
I planted several wild iris beside the pond.
Today, I sit beside a generous patch
of fluttering blue flags and watch
a gold-dusted bumblebee clumsily
swerve from bloom to bloom to bloom.
Such joy they bring, these wild iris that rise
and multiply every spring. They remind me of how
kindness, too, is rhizomic, how
years ago you planted in me
something beautiful before you left.
If you came again to my shores,
would you be surprised to see
how your kindness continues to spread?
Archive for May, 2024
What We Sow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, flowers, kindness, wild iris on May 31, 2024| 8 Comments »
Christie Sends Me a Photo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, friendship, habits, humor, laughter, patterns, solids on May 29, 2024| 7 Comments »
Her head is pasted onto my body
wearing a very plain black dress.
My head’s pasted onto her body
wearing a flamboyant jumpsuit
with pixilated technicolor chaos,
a jumpsuit she’s tried to get me
to wear for months.
She knows wearing patterns
makes me queasy. And what
is it in us that loves to make
our beloveds squirm?
I’m an easy target.
She knows I will squeal and
splutter and rail, so when I call
in a righteous outrage
over how she’s dressed my likeness
in a blenderized rainbow,
she laughs and I laugh
and something is so right
with the world then—
this goofy, giddy moment
when the stakes are low
and I am uncomfortable and prickly
and feel so deeply seen,
so able to laugh at the lines I draw.
I fall inside the laughter,
feel it wrap around me
bright as that flashy jumpsuit.
And I, who crave what is solid,
I dissolve into that brightness.
Getting Close
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, grief, love, mother, photograph, son, suicide on May 28, 2024| 15 Comments »
In the photo he is dancing,
his arms a strong diagonal,
his tie flying forward
even as he comes to a still point
balanced for a moment
on the toes of his tap shoes,
his body a lightning bolt
in a crisp white shirt.
I focus on his face,
see the will it takes
to make his body stop in time,
see his easy smile,
the invitation in his eyes,
a blend of pride and play.
I lean in until his face is a blur,
as if by coming closer,
I might feel the breath
that isn’t there, breathe in
the warmth of his being.
I love entering
this photo sometimes,
or more rightly,
love the way this photo
enters me until
I ring with the truth
of how it is to love
this boy who did not
become a man,
this boy who chose
to make his body
stop in time,
this lightning bolt
captured on film,
unpredictable, powerful,
something no one
could hold forever,
this love that strikes me
every time I think of him,
I still feel it, the charge.
Love, Like Water
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, love, water on May 27, 2024| 8 Comments »
We could say the pain
was a block so great
it could not be moved.
We could say love
did not try to move it.
Love simply dissolved the mass
and surrounded it
the way water meets a block of salt,
breaking apart each ionic bond
until every atom of sodium and chloride
is surrounded by molecules of water.
And in this way,
and sooner than you’d think,
the pain was rearranged
into minuscule bits,
and there was no part of the pain
that was not touched by love.
The pain was no less, it’s true.
But mixed with love, dispersed,
the pain became something new.
Something vital that encouraged
a different kind of life,
a substance that supported buoyancy—
a medium to carry me.
On Memorial Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fighting, goodness, memorial day, peace, war on May 26, 2024| 7 Comments »
after watching Porcelain War
I think of every human
who has given their life
to fight not for war
but for peace. I think
of every mother and father
and son and daughter,
every baker and painter
and teacher and builder
who has learned to use
a weapon to save
the people and places
they love. I think of love—
how the Ukrainian woman
said tonight she had
never been more aware
of how good humans can be—
and how she’s learned this
midst bombs and blood
and broken trust and shattered
glass. I think of how peace
is a choice we make with
every smallest action we take.
I think of the pen in my own hand.
What will I do with it?
Make a Wish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, candle, friendship, kindness, light on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for JS
No cake and no you.
Still, I light a candle
on your birthday
and notice the way
one small flame
changes the feel
of a whole room.
I think of your light
and how many
gather around it,
how quietly you invite
the shadows to dance,
how gently one person
can change the world.
THREE ONLINE PROGRAMS! JOIN ME!
Posted in Uncategorized on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
All of them will raise funds for these nonprofits …
June 3
Poetry as Portal
hosted by WholeHeart
WholeHeart facilitators frequently use meaningful and evocative poetry in their programs and events as portals into deeper listening. Poetry can be a powerful tool to help participants listen to themselves and access new reservoirs of inner knowing as they hold life questions. This new offering, Poetry As Portal, will highlight some of the poets whose work is among our favorites! Each 90-minute evening will feature: 3-4 original poems read aloud by the poet; a conversation with the poet about their own listening process, as well as some fun background about the pieces they have produced; reflection and small-group time with one of the featured poems to spark our own insights; community sharing to nourish our personal practices.
register here
June 5
The Mystery of Grief: Writing Into the Loss
hosted by Evermore
When we lose loved ones, writing can be a powerful tool for helping us remember them, helping us re-encounter the world without them, and helping us re-know ourselves as the loss transforms us.In this two-hour online program, Evermore Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will offer a few suggestions for writing. Together, we will read poems about grief and discuss them. We will have chances to do our own writing, there will be optional time for sharing what we wrote, and we will have time to reflect on the effect writing has on us. The poems we read and write won’t be able to hold all the feelings, but they will offer us a way to touch our grief, to connect with the lives and deaths of our loved ones, to give voice to our anguish, to find compassion for each other, to fall in love with the world that is left, to express our heartache, and to explore the landscape of our hearts.
register here
June 26
Escaping Into the Present: Poetry as a Practice for Reseeing the World
hosted by ONE ART
The act of writing a poem can bring us more closely to the essence of the moment, can help us exist in immediacy. In this two-hour online playshop, both practical and playful, we’ll sharpen our observational skills to engage with the poetry that lives in everything—objects, locations, situations, conversations. We’ll practice meeting what Hopkins calls “thisness.” As Mary Oliver writes, “the world offers itself to your attention, over and over.” Let’s meet it together, pen in hand. All levels of experience welcome.
register here
The Choosing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, connection, daughter, grief, happiness, intimacy, love, mother, vulnerability on May 25, 2024| 10 Comments »
Perhaps I no longer believe in happiness
as the goal. Not that I am against happiness,
but being in this very uncomfortable moment
with little light and a vicious chill, my arms wrapped
around my growing girl, both our hearts breaking
from sorrow and fear, both of us too well aware
of what can be lost, well, I would not trade this moment
for any wide-grinned hour of beach and sun,
wouldn’t rather be anywhere else with anyone—
I would choose again and again to be here
on the dark sidewalk with my girl in my arms,
our hearts so raw, the space between us so warm.
Not a Still Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, birds, life, may, spring on May 23, 2024| 10 Comments »
As if they’d been waiting for the wild wind to wane,
the mother and father goose guide their goslings
on a walk through the field, a dozen small graylings
bumbling between them, and the May evening light
has not dulled yet to dim so every new birch leaf
and every spring blade and every bright red willow stem
seems to outgleam itself with aliveness, and the air
blurs with hummingbirds, whirls with violet-green swallows,
and it’s spring, my god, it’s thrumming inside me, this life saying
Live, live, live, live, as everything I am unfurls and expands,
even the parts I thought seemed dead, yes even the sticks
now swell into bud, erupt into reckless bloom.
Coming Home the First Time after Our Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, friendship, grief, help, loss, love, receiving on May 22, 2024| 20 Comments »
Someone had taken small rocks and shaped them
into a heart in the center of our drive
so when we arrived, we knew we were not alone.
At the front door, we stepped over
another small heart made of stones
filled with blue petals of larkspur,
golden petals of sunflowers,
the tiny red petals of geranium.
We walked into our home
to find wildflowers in a vase on the counter,
our fridge filled with fruit, soymilk and hummus,
the shelves lined with cans and boxes of tissues.
There were love letters tucked into every room.
The house itself was quiet,
too quiet without the boy who wasn’t there,
but it was not a lonely silence.
Those were the days when I learned
to say okay every time someone offered help.
Can I bring you lavender lotion? Okay.
Can I make you a meal? Okay.
Can I pick up your mail? Okay. Okay.
What a gift to be carried by others,
to learn by heart the sacred bond
between those who are broken
and those who offer their hands
to cradle the ones who are broken.
Years later, those same small stones
still grace our front porch,
though the shape of the heart
has been rearranged many times.
As has mine. I want to remember
how we need each other.
The petals I add never stay.
The love infused here has never gone away.