in the temple of night
the only audible benediction
sweet hymn of your breath
Archive for September, 2024
One Wondering About All that Goes Unheard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, night, sleep, temple on September 30, 2024| 4 Comments »
Baking Cherry Chocolate Cake with Jack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, love, nephew on September 29, 2024| 6 Comments »
It takes five times longer to bake
a cake with my nephew, and I love
every minute of helping him clean up
the mess of the egg which is somehow
splattered across the counter, love
how excited he is to scrape the sides
of the bowl, how somehow he turns
buttering the pan into a game.
“That was fun!” he shouts as he leaves
the kitchen, his mop of blonde hair
flopping as he lopes away, and
I feel the great squeeze of ache
that comes from loving someone
so much we almost can’t bear the loving,
and yet it’s the only thing we want.
Y-Linked Inheritance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, father, football, legacy, love on September 29, 2024| 4 Comments »
My brother paces the length of the football field,
following the play, unable to sit. I watch him
pause in the end zone, hands in his pockets,
eyes focused to the game, chin up, body tense.
How many times did I watch my father watch him
the same way he now watches his own sons play?
“Hold your blocks,” he yells, his voice hoarse
and deep, full of certainty from his own days
in cleats. “Come on, Defense,” he growls,
half admonishment, all encouragement,
and I fall in love all over again with my father,
now dead, and my brother, so alive, how they give
of themselves as if every moment is a goal line.
I hear how every hoarse syllable, barked out
in harsh urgency, carries inside its violence
an almost unbearable tenderness,
a spiraling toss of light.
One Ongoing Dance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, love, sunflower on September 27, 2024| 6 Comments »
in a field of dried weeds
you the golden sunflower
I the bee
Ode to Digging Potatoes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dirt, earth, gardening, grief, harvesting, potatoes, soil on September 27, 2024| 11 Comments »
Go play in the dirt, she said,
and tonight, though I call it
harvesting potatoes,
what I’m really doing
is “playing in the dirt,”
the quickest way I know
to recalibrate the soul.
The potatoes are a bonus, really,
though I say they are why I am here.
Each firm, red-skinned round
I pull from the earth is a small proof
of how things can grow in the dark—
the way a woman, too,
can grow in conditions
when she forgets for a time
there is light.
I sift the cool soil through my fingers
as I pull my hands through the bed,
and I fall in love with this substance
made richer by what is dead,
this basis of all that lives,
this home for the kind of treasure
I honor now more than ever,
the kind that needs darkness and time.
After All These Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, body, self-compassion on September 25, 2024| 15 Comments »
Once they were slender,
this arm, this waist,
and I loved them
when they were slender.
Though that’s a lie.
I did not love them.
Never once did I think
they were slender enough.
But I was happier then
with my body, wasn’t I?
When it was lean and smooth
and strong? No. It’s a lie.
I was cruel to that body,
and pushed it and starved it
and glared at it in the mirror
with hateful, critical eyes.
It’s so strange that the body
I’m learning to love is the one
that once disgusted me.
This one with its strange roll
around my waist, this one with its
thick upper arms that stun me
in photos. This one with its
marbled flesh. Is it true
I am learning to love this body?
Perhaps it’s more true
I’m learning to love the one
who is learning to love this body.
How gentle it is, this learning.
How layered. How slowly it arrives.
How quiet, the invitation
to turn toward the one
who could despise this body
and not push her away.
To wrap her instead in these
thick soft arms and choose
to love her.
Nocturnal Hyperhidrosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, body, menopause, praise, sweat on September 24, 2024| 15 Comments »
I do not love it, the way I fall asleep cold
only to wake in a flush of heat.
Do not love the soaking, the drenching
the damp, then the clammy.
Not once in those small dark hours
have I thought to praise the eccrine glands,
the aprocine glands that secrete the sweat,
so much sweat, the sweat that makes me
shove down the covers and seek
a dry towel to lie on. The cool
night air never quite cool enough.
I don’t love it, the way the warmth
steals me from dreams and returns me
to the demands of body, a body
that’s changing, that’s aging,
a body with an exquisitely sensitive
hypothalamus that worries my body’s too warm.
How quick I am to complain instead of praise.
How hard to remember in these hot and sodden
hours that I admire the wisdom of the body.
Let me now remember I’m a being made of water,
a pond of a woman returning herself to the air.
I am at the mercy of evaporation.
How natural it is, though I do not love it,
this teacher in what comes next.
This is how I practice how
to disappear.
Hypertrophy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, humility, weightlifting on September 24, 2024| 12 Comments »
Perhaps it is like lifting weights,
the way we learn to carry grief.
At first we cannot lift it at all,
crushed as we are beneath it.
But then, because to live
we must move, we move
just the smallest measure.
With our lungs, it so happens.
And breath by breath, we lift grief
the tiniest increment.
That’s how it begins.
Oh the muscle of stubbornness.
How life longs to live through us,
even when we would rather give up.
How strange that the only way
to rebuild our strength
is first by breaking down.
The ache is great. Everything tires.
But eventually, the body repairs
what is damaged, relearns
how to carry what at first seemed impossible,
until we are familiar with the weight,
conversing with the weight, even smiling,
even laughing, even playing with the weight.
It’s like the way a mother’s arms
strengthen the longer she carries
her child. It’s like the way I once
could barely lift the barbell,
and then it was not that the weight
became lighter, but that I developed
until I could work with it better.
Does the weight ever lessen?
I don’t know. But I do know it’s easier now
to carry it. And sometimes
I need to change the way I hold it
in order to go on moving.
And sometimes I am simply
so humbled by grief I must
put the weight down and all I can do
is breathe.
And so I do. So I do.
In the dream I discover
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, dream, letting go on September 22, 2024| 8 Comments »
I’ve left all the bunnies
in a cupboard for two days.
Why would I put them
in a cupboard?
How is it I forgot them
after rescuing them?
They tumble out, every
shape, size and shade of bunny
and I fall in love with them all
as they explore the room.
They seem no worse for my lapse,
but I am so distraught,
my husband wakes me from
sleep as I whimper.
Hours later, I still wonder
what precious and vital thing
have I locked away?
I don’t want to wake up
to my life tomorrow or next year
or ever to discover I have
not cared for the treasure
entrusted to me. All day,
there are no rabbits, no cupboards,
no locks. Only this life
with its tendernesses,
its vulnerabilities. All day,
I open every door
of the mind, of the heart.
No doubt there are more I can’t find.
I feel for the doors with the fingers
of my heart. Whatever’s inside,
I want it to breathe.
Everything seems
to depend on this:
not only that I care
for the treasure,
but that I let it free.
After Difficult News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aftermath, healing, mountain, woods on September 22, 2024| 7 Comments »
It’s enough to wander
alone in the woods
while the aspen
turn their leaves
into shimmering light.
This, too, is aftermath—
the brilliant red
of rose hips,
fat and sweet.
The clean scent
of rain. Holy fluff
that was once
yellow flowers.
The vast gold
field of grass.