Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, empathy, film, tears on August 31, 2024| 3 Comments »
my daughter’s tears
find their way
into my eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, peach, peaches, tenderness, vulnerability on August 29, 2024| 5 Comments »
Like skinning a peach,
I sometimes want to peel back
the masks of the world and myself
to uncover in each other what is
naked and glistening—
an essential sweetness
that can no longer be contained.
If it is wrong to wish this, I wish
it anyway, wish to meet each other
defenseless, with softness,
so moved by proof of how easily
our flesh is bruised, reminded
how tender with each other we must be.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged personal growth, transformation on August 29, 2024| 4 Comments »
these places
I once dreaded
now my playground
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, memory, peaches on August 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
For hours today, I hold
the sweet weight
of ripe peaches
in my palm, and
with the other hand,
I slice into the fruit,
the golden juice streaming
between my fingers,
sticky, delicious,
before I drop the slices
into the bags for the freezer.
What is it in the body
that knows to gather
what is ripe and preserve it
for a time in the future
when the world is barren?
I have tried to do this
with love. Sometimes,
midwinter, I pull out
a memory. I swear
sometimes it’s even
sweeter, but sometimes
it leaves me
ravenous.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, dream, god, hand, surrender, trust on August 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
All around me, the world
was normal—people eating dinner
or walking down the street—
but my world?
Some massive, invisible hand
kept capturing me, then
tossing me into the air.
And I’d somersault
and fall and be caught,
then placed upright again
on the ground. All night
it went on like this.
I’d be walking and then
I’d be flying and then
I’d be falling and then
I’d be caught, until finally,
by morning, we couldn’t say
that it wasn’t disconcerting,
but we could say I
had become more fluent
in this strange upheaval.
We could say I
had begun to trust
the same hand that tossed me
would catch me.
We could say that when
I woke up, I was still myself
and nothing felt the same.
And though my feet
never left the ground today,
I was tossed.
And then I was caught.
Even now, I almost feel them
around my chest,
those great fingers
as they set me on my feet again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, dying, Heartbeat, love, singing on August 25, 2024| 11 Comments »
for D.B.F.
The white and blue folds of her sweater.
The hand of her daughter on her shoulder.
The rain.
The cancer blossoming in her brain.
The story of when she did dishes for the dying woman.
This dying woman in the home she just built.
The glasses lifted high for a champagne toast.
The medicine waiting for tomorrow.
The snapdragons on the table not yet starting to droop.
The song we have sung with her for thirty years.
The tears.
The missing harmony where her voice would be.
The smile on her face as if nothing was missing.
As if nothing was lacking.
As if she was opening the gate
and showing us this, this is the way to walk through.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, blessing, car, daughter, love, mother, self blessing on August 25, 2024| 9 Comments »
Bowing at the Feet of the Ordinary
May I remember this day
with its two-hundred twenty two
miles of pavement and my
daughter beside me and both
of us singing her favorite songs.
Remember this day not because
it was special but because
it was the way it always is,
with us laughing and talking
and sitting in easy silence.
With a stop at the car wash
and her grumbling about vacuuming,
then doing it anyway. With
a stop at the coffee shop
and me grumbling about
cake pops, then buying one
anyway. With the sweetness
of ripe Cresthaven peaches
we bought at the roadside stand—
how the juice dripped down our chins.
With the rich green of late summer
a blur out the window. The day
so infused with commonplace
love I never once doubted
I belonged with my girl, in that car,
in the world, in the universe,
the days getting shorter
but still so luminous, so warm.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, music, performance, piano, resilience on August 23, 2024| 8 Comments »
listening to Trio Duende play Allegro con Brio, from Piano Trio 1 in B Major
Once, on a rainy night, I sat in the home
of a family I did not know and listened
to a trio playing Brahms. Though
it is only hours later, I unwrap
the memory as if it is tied with silk ribbons
and wrapped in gold tissue—something
precious as a time-smoothed stone
on the banks of a slender river. Unlike
a museum piece, this memory wants
to be opened, to be held, to be touched,
to be cradled by bare hands. Wants
my finger prints all over it—
the memory of how beauty swells in us
and then breaks us, breaks us
the way the piano itself broke apart tonight—
the pedal rods clattering to the ground
mid-movement. Beauty bids us play on
as the pianist did tonight. Play on.
Though broken. Though we know
the work eventually ends in a minor key.
Play on, as if we trust the line of beauty
will not be broken. No matter how intense
it gets. Even if the world explodes.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humor, magician, rhyme, second chance on August 22, 2024| 5 Comments »
Said the man in the cape
and the big black hat
to the top of the woman
he’d just sawn in half,
But it usually works.
He looked askance.
Do you think I could have
a second chance?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged listening, silence, sonnet on August 21, 2024| 4 Comments »
Emptying my eyes.
Opening my hands.
Not answering the phone.
Not answering the door.
Not even stroking the cat
when she nudges her nose
against my neck.
Not trying to answer
any question of why.
Rising of chest. Falling
of chest. Listening to the tide
of breath. Listening.
Attending to silence. Noticing
how silence attends to me.