Perhaps some part of me still believes
peace is a destination,
a place we arrive, ideally together.
I notice how shiny it is, this belief,
like a flower made of crystal,
beautiful, but lifeless,
devoid of the dust and scuff
that come from living a real day.
Meanwhile, there is this invitation
to grow into peace the way real flowers grow—
in the dirt. With blight and drought,
beetles and hail.
Meanwhile this invitation
to live in the tangle of fear and failure,
to be humbled by my own inner wars
and wonder how to find a living peace
right here, the peace that arrives
when we take just one step through the mess
toward compassion and notice
as our foot rises our heart also rises
and in that lifted moment
still scraping along in the dirt,
there is a peace so real we become light,
become the momentum that is the change.
Archive for June, 2024
Toward Peace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, change, peace, reality, transition on June 10, 2024| 5 Comments »
Curvaceous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, change, self love, transition on June 10, 2024| 8 Comments »
Once, I was a twig of a thing,
a scrawny, scrappy slender being.
A sapling. A stalk. A vine.
My body rhymed with the y-axis,
with flagpole and street lamp and pine.
Perhaps I thought it would never change,
confusing my self for my form.
Perhaps I was afraid it would change,
my ideas of loving myself so small.
And now, look at me, a tree-ripened pear.
A cumulous cloud. A peony.
My body rhymes with river bends
and nautilus, helix, anemone.
And I am more me than I’ve
ever been—as lush on the inside
as I am to the eye, rounded
and softened and carved.
How sweet these hours when
I love what is here—
which is to say when I love
the change itself,
these hours when I wade
into the mystery, not clinging
to the way things used to be,
these amorous hours
when I revel in my curves
with eyes as forward as a new lover’s hands,
astonished by my own becoming.
Before the Road Trip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, clarity, love, marriage, practical, service on June 9, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though I do not ask him to,
he rises early and goes
to the car with a razor and
bottle of blue windex
to remove the smear
of the caddis fly hatch
from my windshield.
Over a dozen miles
of spruce and aspen
pass before I see the gift.
For the next three hundred miles,
it’s all I see.
One Caress
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, beauty, hands, love, touch on June 8, 2024| 4 Comments »
touching you
even these old scarred hands
become wings
Join Me for Soul Writers Circle
Posted in Uncategorized on June 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »
For almost four years, my friend and creative partner Augusta Kantra (yoga instructor, therapist, mindfulness teacher, amazing human) have been leading Soul Writer’s Circle–a group that meets once a month for six months. It’s a very special community that combines mindfulness practice, writing practice, and open-hearted conversation and listening. Whether you’ve never written before or if you’ve written a NYT bestseller, whether you’ve never heard of mindfulness or you lead your own meditation circle, please consider joining us in our next session, starting in July. There are three spaces open for the Sunday afternoon circle and two spaces open for the Monday morning circle. For more information or to register, visit Soul Writers Circle.
Grief Is Not Like the Squirrel in My Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, grief, mouse, squirrel on June 6, 2024| 10 Comments »
that’s been eating all my pansies,
eating them to the roots
so that nothing of beauty remains.
We were able to lure the squirrel
with sunflower seeds and peanut butter
and trap it in a cage and take it far away.
Grief is more like the mice that eat the lure,
then slip through the cage, though the holes
are tiny, the door shut tight.
Grief stays. It takes what I offer and escapes.
But it hasn’t devoured all that is beautiful.
See how the pansies are blooming.
Like the mice, grief makes a nest
in my garden. We live here together.
I’ve put away the cage.
Mother and Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, grief, love, mother, son on June 5, 2024| 9 Comments »
Briefly, you were taller than I,
tall enough that when we hugged
my head rested against your chest,
your body lean from growing
so fast. My body remembers
how new it felt when you
gathered me in long, slender arms
the way I had once cradled you.
It is not the same to be held
by your absence, no warmth,
no scent. Still, I let myself
be held by what is here—
no heartbeat but my own,
but oh, the love still growing.
Puhpowee
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged force, language, love, mushrooms, naming, words on June 4, 2024| 11 Comments »
—etymology from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In Anishinaabe, there’s a word
for “the force which causes mushrooms
to push up from the earth overnight,”
and I wonder if it’s the same force
that changes the grapes into wine,
that turns an acquaintance into a beloved,
that gathers a handful of notes from a scale
and constellates them
into a tune that scores our lives.
What is the force that moves through us,
that charges the world with becoming?
As much as I love the naming of it,
I love, too, the mystery,
the unspeakable wonder of it,
how the brain is humbled into blathering,
I love the bumbling that happens when our logic
tries to explain the miracle, and the heart
becomes like a blonde morel
that rises up through rocks, through duff.
It says nothing, but oh, how it feels the force.
Walking the Boundary
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged border, boundary, love on June 3, 2024| 9 Comments »
is another kind of path.
I follow its edges,
one foot on each side,
straddling no and yes.
Can a boundary be traversed
like the border of a country,
proving how grave a line can be?
Do I know the value of a boundary
only after I’ve crossed it?
Where is love on this living map?
I watch for clues with every step.
Never Too Late
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged late, singing, the present, time on June 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
By the time I rise,
it’s well beyond
the edge of day—
the clouds
of morning
burned away,
but I will not
lament the songs
for dew or peace unsung,
instead I’ll sing
into the blue
and keep on singing—
Learning from the Painting on My Kitchen Wall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, painting, rob schultheis on June 2, 2024| 2 Comments »
with thanks to Rob Schultheis
She is beautiful, the woman
on the wall with one long braid
and an owlet perched on her hand.
Not beautiful the way young girls dream,
but beautiful in the way old women dream.
which is to say she is deeply seen.
Sometimes I swear she watches me
as I slice the shiitake, as I chop the kale.
Her eyes are serious and always keen.
Her gaze makes me beautiful, too,
beautiful the way a morning is beautiful—
because it arrives every day as if
night cannot contain it; beautiful
the way the sun is beautiful, because
it needs no praise to share all its light.
Still Learning to Pray
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, death, oak, spring on June 1, 2024| 4 Comments »
The night the scrub oak leaves emerged
was the night the temperature dropped
to twenty two degrees. Whatever had dared
to unfurl has become a brown and brittle thing.
I put these, too, on the altar of the day—
not just the flax flowers purple and thriving,
not just the greens of the sedge, the rush,
but also the barren branches of oak
with their lack of growth, their shriveled hope.
The dead invite us into the mystery
every bit as much as the living.
I carry the gray sticks like a sparse bouquet.
The woody scent lingers on my hands.