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Archive for May, 2024

There Is an Old Woman Inside Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 5, 2024| 10 Comments »

There is an old woman inside me
with long gray hair and fuzzy green eyes.
She is soft in the way stones are soft
when tumbled by waves for a hundred years.
She is still as I run from room to room
content to listen to my bluster,
to watch the day unfold.
Her smile is gentle as dawn light
as she hums a wordless tune.
And as I make calls and check schedules,
she curls in the lap of my busyness
like an ash-colored cat,
her body warm and relaxed.
I love the old woman inside me,
gnarled as the branches of an old peach tree.
She is no stranger to how the world changes.
Every day I practice to be more like her,
slow as honey, quiet as moonlight,
familiar as the woman in the mirror.

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As I Walked Out the Door

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 3, 2024| 8 Comments »

for Wendy
 
 
Into my hand, she pressed
a smooth rock she’d painted copper.
In all capital letters, turquoise and navy,
she’d written the word RESILIENCE.
Beneath it she’d drawn a lopsided helix.
I thought of her own spiraling with death.
Two years later, she volunteers
to teach in schools and dances
before breakfast every morning
with her husband in their living room.
She finds compassion for tough neighbors
and welcomes the wayward into her home.
She knows in every cell
the definition of resilience,
and so when she offered me
resilience on a rock,
I felt it, the full invitation
to be both grounded and vital,
to be both solid and springing,
the chance to be both the anchor
and the hand that reaches as if to say
come on, let’s leap, I’ll show you how.
 

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Spelunking of the Soul

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 2, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
I woke in the cave of my heart,
a slim shadow nested inside
an unbounded shadow,
and there, after decades of chatter
and prattle, I found you, silence.
Or more truly, after my clanging
and crying, my praising and soothing,
silence found me.
Quiet comforter.
Place of no promises.
Infinite cradle. Infinite womb.
An endless invitation to wake
forever.
I woke in the cave of my heart
being tuned to join a song I knew
but had never been taught,
a song ringing inside every cell.
Whatever I’d thought
was my own voice was one silken thread
in a warp made of silence,
a weft made of song.
I met there all the beauty I could bear.
Is it here even now as I sit in my room
with the low hum of lights
and the long list of things to do?
I close my eyes,
empty my pockets of certainty,
listen for what is real.
 

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Ready for It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 1, 2024| 7 Comments »

 
“Mom, what’s the title of this song,”
she asks me. I listen to the lyrics
for cues. Luckily, Taylor Swift starts to croon
in her mezzo voice, part velvet, part thorn,
“You’re on Your Own Kid.” And I shout
out the title. Vivian smirks,
knowing I was rescued by the song.
“Album?” she says. “Red?” I guess.
“Wrong,” she says. “Evermore?”
I guess. “Wrong.” “Midnights?”  “Yes.”
She nods in mock exasperation
it took me so long.
She loves it when I get it wrong
in her endless quiz of popular songs.
She loves that she can teach me.
I love it, too, that she shares with me
these lyrics that grow her, shape her.
We walk along the river trail,
one white air pod in her ear,
one white air pod in mine
and the river braids by and the next song
begins to play. “Title?” she asks,
and I listen for clues until Taylor
demands in a gravelly rush
“Are You Ready for It?” And I look
at my daughter, just fifteen
and becoming so wholly herself.
As much as I want to stop
in this moment with her hand brushing mine
and the musky scent of river
and sunshine warm on our skin
and I think yeah, I’m ready for it,
though it brings me to tears, yes I am.

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