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Archive for October, 2024

Translation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 31, 2024| 2 Comments »


 
 
Beyond words is the language
of leaf with its speckle and rustle
and moldering scent, is the language
of sunlight which even now burns
its praise into my wrinkling skin.
Is the language of cloud
with its unraveling syntax
that dissolves into unconjugatable sky.
Sometimes I can decipher
the secret tongue that whispers
its song into everything—
you are here, then you’re gone,
but you’re never really gone,
see, it’s all here, it’s all here.

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And in This Way, He Still Lives

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 30, 2024| 21 Comments »


                  for my dad
 
 
There was that time that he bought
a television for the woman who came
to the house to clean while he and mom were sick.
She had mentioned offhand hers had broken.
He was like that. Would take smoked salmon
for the men and women at the firehouse.
Would make certificates for people
to honor kind things they had done.
It was as if he could read the small thought bubbles
that appear above people’s heads,
the ones we read in cartoons
but can’t see in real life,
the ones that say what they really need,
and then he’d offer a kindness.
Not that he was a saint.
My god, could he get angry.
Not that he looked for people to care for,
more that he really looked at the people
who came across his path.
This is how I want him to live on in me,
his hands guiding mine to give.

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Consecration

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 29, 2024| 11 Comments »


 
 
Even a song can be an altar,
a place to bring an offering—
as on this anxious day
when I can’t stop giving my heart
to love songs for the broken world.  
And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar
on which the song is placed,
which would mean what is sacred
might be ever flowing through us,
a space where we might meet the divine.
To believe this doesn’t change
the song, but it changes everything 
about the singer.

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Filling in the Bubble on the Ballot

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 28, 2024| 9 Comments »

I imagine the small oval
is the center of a flower
that I link through black ink
to the life of my daughter
and her daughter and her daughter
and their bodies and their voices,
and their choices and their power;
it’s a pool I fill with hope,
it’s a note in a rising tune,
a pupil widening in the dark,
a moon that I make new.

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New Eyes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 27, 2024| 4 Comments »


 
If the body is a temple,
then I want to remind myself
the grotto, too, is a temple,
a holy chamber carved
by nature and time,
a sanctuary
where song echoes and rises
in a place that’s been scoured,
ravaged, worn.
The meadow, too, is a temple,
with a giant blue dome of sky
made more holy by its expansiveness.
Let my prayer be not to change my body
but to change the way I see it.
Let me look in the mirror and see there
a grotto, a meadow, a temple,
a being who is learning new prayers
as she’s shaped and reshaped
by the world.

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Inner Dance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 26, 2024| 8 Comments »

Dancing inside me is the one
who has spent her whole life dancing,
the one who leaps up
the moment the music begins
and starts to twirl and leap
and give herself over to moving
in any way her feet
and arms and shoulders and spine
want to move. Sometimes
she needs no music at all,
just moves for the wild joy of moving.
She is just starting to notice
the other woman inside,
the one who looks more
as if she’s standing still.
The one who whose movements rhyme
with limestone, whose eyes are clear
as deep mountain lakes.
Only recently has she
begun to see
this, too, is
dancing.

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The Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
 
I feel it before dawn—
the longing not only for light
but for the vast embrace
of the dark,
the way it links me
to the farthest reachings
of the universe,
the way it holds
each dull planet,
each luminous star,
holds me with no question,
no reservation,
holds all I love
and all I have yet
to learn to love.
With each breath
I bring it into my body,
small sips of dark,
great gulps of dark.
Inside me it swirls
with my love of light,
and this is how the certainties
of the heart are erased—
when I love and ache
in two directions at once—
and what’s left
is so raw, so open,
so alive.
 

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One Hearing My Daughter Laugh

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 24, 2024| 4 Comments »


just when I think
I’m made of sludge
you candle me

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On Waking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 23, 2024| 9 Comments »


 
 
In that vast land
that exists between dream
and waking, there is no I
and no other-than-I.
There are no borders,
no citizens, no factions,
no right side, no wrong side,
a realm of pure openness
where I am not aligned
with any feelings or beliefs,
where I am wholly breath and being.
How would it be to bring
such openness into the day?
To fly across the lines
of I and not-I
the way a bird flies
between countries,
across state lines,
across fence lines.
To know the self as unself,
as seamless, undivided,
even as it pours the coffee,
even as it drives past
the signs in the yards,
even as it watches the news.

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It’s the Forgettable Moments I Miss

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 22, 2024| 10 Comments »


 
 
I want to be in the garden
with you again,
hands in the dirt,
maybe listening
to cottonwood leaves
spreading rumors
of fall, but maybe
not even listening.
I want a moment
so mundane, just
pulling bindweed,
nodding and humming absently
as you talk about race cars,
a moment so unmemorable
I forget how damn precious
every single moment is;
I want a moment I take
for granted, want to
be bored or even fussy
standing beside you,
the beets too small
to harvest, your voice
rambling on about pole positions
and pit stop strategies,
and me utterly clueless
I would ever look back
and long to hear you
wax on about balancing fuel loads,
worn tires, soft compounds,
anything, anything at all.
 

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