I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.
Once I might have longed for a weed-free
world. How did I not see the bindweed
for what it is—a chance to touch
again and again what humbles me, and
to learn with my hands the art of acceptance
so my hands might teach my heart.
Archive for June, 2024
Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, bindweed, garden, hands, practice, touch, weeding on June 20, 2024| 2 Comments »
There Is This Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, home, joy, music on June 20, 2024| 12 Comments »
with the full moon rising
and a large bird of prey
gliding spirals in the sky
and my husband on my right
my sweet friend on my left
and the two-person band
transforming sorrow into joy
just by singing it in harmony
and giving the song their everything,
and maybe that’s what is ours to do—
to give ourselves wholly to a moment
as if we are the singers and life the song,
so I give myself to the low summer sun
and the dust on my feet,
to the pucker of lime
and the tears of my friend,
give myself to the ache that never leaves
and the relentless beauty that ever arrives,
and the more I give myself to the world,
the more the world rushes in
and says home, home, home,
you are home.
A Closer Look
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, curiosity, daughter, father, lake, science on June 18, 2024| 6 Comments »
I recall how dad gave me glass vials
and encouraged me to go to the lake, take samples,
then bring them back to the house
where he’d taught me to use a glass dropper
to put a small bead between slide and slip,
then focus the microscope
to spy on all the life pulsing there—
thin oblong shapes and zooming dots,
spinning green circles and segmented strands—
it was like eavesdropping on adult conversation,
like being given the key to enter life itself,
and I, an eager traveler into invisible realms,
spent hours staring into that intricate world.
Memory is, sometimes, a chance to meet
a drop of the past, then wonder about the world
beyond what we first see. I thought this
was a memory about lake water, glass slides,
a microscope. I look closer. I see trust.
Pulsing love. A father teaching curiosity.
Time Travel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, pond, swimming, time on June 16, 2024| 6 Comments »
Slipping alone into the pond is like slipping
deeper into the world—how alive every
inch of skin is then—as if I’ve slipped
through an hour glass and
swum into the timeless
self
and my father is here, my
son is here and in half an hour
I live a lifetime surrounded by blue
damselflies, opening to the bluing sky and
goodbye is not a word I know, only hello, hello, hello.
On Father’s Day without My Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Father's Day, grief, Louis Armstrong, love on June 16, 2024| 10 Comments »
Sometimes I crawl inside
“What a Wonderful World”
where I am cradled not only
by the lyrics and the velvet
of Armstrong’s growlsome voice,
but also by my father who loved
the song so much that now,
almost three years after his death
the tune has become his arms
and each note carries some trace
of his love so that by the time
Louis croons “oh yeah” at the end,
I am moved in the same way
the wind moves a dead flower
across the field.
I am one with the leaves
and the roses, the skies
and the cries of the babies,
one with the love that stays,
one with the pain my father
was in in and one with the pain
of loving anyone whose death
leaves us feeling both empty and full.
In his last hours, Dad said,
“From our birth to our death,
the wonderment.”
I curl into that wonderment.
I sing along.
After Many Weeks of Sun
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, rain, sun on June 15, 2024| 8 Comments »
I woke to rain,
in love with rain,
and the rain made its
soft rain music on the roof
and I listened to rain
in the rain-soaked dark
until my dreams were rain
and my waking was rain
and the morning was rain, rain, rain—
scent of rain in my lungs,
shine of rain in my eyes,
and the green song of rain in the grass,
and I gave my whole self to the rain
not thinking of anything else I had lost,
only rain in my thoughts,
only rain until I thought of you
and then somehow you were the rain.
WordWoman Joins the MCU
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Marvel, movie, superhero on June 13, 2024| 26 Comments »
Long after the Avengers have obliterated Thanos
and Ant Man has saved the Quantum Realm,
after the Vibranium is secured by Wakanda
and the Guardians of the Galaxy protect the universe again,
the Russo brothers return to the silver screen
with their newest hero, WordWoman, disguised
as a middle-aged mother and wife.
She wields a pen. A journal. A library of slender books.
No one would ever suspect she could be a hero,
least of all her. Heck, she can’t even keep the rodents
out of her garden, much less root the evil out of the world.
Audiences yawn as they watch her sit at her kitchen counter
in her slouchy sweater and wool slippers. For hours.
“Where’s the action?” someone shouts as he gets up
for another bucket of buttered popcorn.
That’s when Stan Lee shows up as the UPS man,
shocking everyone, and he delivers her a copy
of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Cut to the next scene,
she’s in a black pleather bodysuit wearing lots of mascara,
a dark ponytail high on her head streaked with silver.
She’s ripped and ready to do what it takes to make peace.
“Was that Neruda?” someone whispers in the front aisle
as she slings poems, one after another,
stunning her enemies into silence.
“I think Amichai,” someone says. “Or Shihab Nye.”
When the movie is over, most people are grumbling
that superheroes just aren’t what they used to be.
But in the back, perhaps, a young girl is scribbling
words on a napkin. She’s ready to save the world.
Swimming Lessons
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged going down, job, nursery rhyme, summer, teaching on June 12, 2024| 6 Comments »
How scared they were that first day,
the ones who had never before put their faces
into the cold blue water of the pool.
Goosebumps rose on their tiny limbs,
mine, too, as we shivered in the shallow end.
I’d take their hands and we’d move in a circle,
Ring around the rosies—
Their little voices rang out with lisp and shine.
Pocket full of posies—
scent of chlorine and sun screen and
Ashes, ashes, we all fall—
Years later, afraid of a much different
deep end, I notice who is holding
my hands. Sometimes we sing
while we meet what we fear.
It makes it easier as we all fall down.
The Welcoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, friendship, singing, welcoming on June 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Moudi
With an open umbrella, he met me
in the rain having walked barefoot
to the place where I’d parked.
He handed the umbrella to me.
In the warm bright home,
he offered me a soft, dry chair.
He served warm bread wrapped
in a green and white cloth
and his partner sprinkled zatar
and olive oil on the labne.
The kale salad was crisp
with sweet chunks of beets
and thick creamy slices of avocado.
And in the warm, rich stew
offered to us in a rounded pot,
the eggplant disassembled itself
alongside chickpeas and tomato.
But before we ate, he served us a story
of a place where people begin a meal together
with spontaneous singing of sorrow and praise.
What stopped me then, while I sat at his table,
from singing? So I sing now,
of sorrow that I let my fear of singing it wrong
be louder in me than the urge to sing.
I sing of praise for the second chance.
I sing a prayer for the courage to learn
how to sing a new song, and the chance
to sing it again. And again.