As the sweat beads on my chest,
I ask my daughter to ladle water
over the rocks. Steam rises
to fill our lungs and heat our skin.
My lips move to whisper
Ihanaa löylyä, “beautiful steam,”
but it is my Finnish host mother’s voice
I hear. She taught me, too, to crave it,
to love it, to long for the shock
of its intensity, helped me practice
learning to desire what is good
for the body, though it is uncomfortable.
Ihanaa löylyä, I say to my daughter
as she gasps from the heat.
She repeats it in Finnish, in English.
Beautiful steam, though her syllables
lack conviction. The steam is,
I trust, doing its good sauna work—
cleansing the body, relaxing
the mind. Now it’s natural
to want it, even as I struggle
to stay with the heat. Sweat rolls down
my cheeks. I praise it, call it beautiful—
the steam, the feeling, yes, but also
this learning to love what is sometimes
not easy at first to love.
Archive for December, 2024
From the Sauna
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Finland, heat, resistance, sauna, surrender on December 31, 2024| 1 Comment »
Unresolution
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, opening, resolution on December 30, 2024| 6 Comments »
Because after all these years
of focusing on the goal as if
happiness is a thing I attain
or a place I might finally reach,
now I thrill when I see through
the myth of arrivals.
I see where I have grasped
and clutched and clawed
and scrabbled to be somewhere
not where I am. Not that I regret it.
The memory of grabbing
helps me feel how beautiful it is
each time the hand opens
like a morning to what is here,
opens as if the opening itself
is what I am here to do.
One End of the Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, openness, permeability, river, thoughts on December 29, 2024| 1 Comment »
these solid thoughts—
the river flows
right through them
Love, Death Desire & Madness: Writing into the Sacredness of our Humanity
Posted in Uncategorized on December 28, 2024| 1 Comment »
5-7 p.m. Mountain Time
Wednesdays in January (January 8, 15, 22, 29)
Zoom, $125, hosted by One Spirit, recorded
We will explore:
*how reading poems can help us explore our own lives
*how writing can be a tool for entering difficult topics in a playful or non-judgmental way
*how practicing self-compassion can change our experience of writing
One of the greatest gifts of poetry is it allows us to explore our humanness with compassion and playfulness, even when the subjects challenge us. Psychologist Michael Brant DeMaria identifies four topics we often shy from meeting openly—love, death, desire and madness—and this four-week class, we’ll circle each of them through reading and writing poetry. Curiosity will be our guide. How might exploring raw, vulnerable states open us to depth, startle us with wonder and invite a more profound relationship with the sacred? In each session, we’ll read poems, write poems of our own, discuss process, and have a chance to share the writing we do together—or not. All levels of writing are welcome.
To register, visit here.
Celebrating Timothée Chalamet’s Birthday … Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, daughter, joy, mother, Timothee Chalamet on December 28, 2024| 1 Comment »
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
—Mary Oliver
I could not have imagined
how every year my daughter
and I would bake a chocolate beet cake
for Timothée Chalamet’s birthday—
nor could I have foreseen
how it would thrill me—
this sweet ritual in which we celebrate
the life of an actor who brings
us joy. Joy needs such a meager
door through which to enter and reveal
itself. A door I can’t imagine
with a handle I can’t find
except by loving the world
and the people in it.
I would have thought loving
made the heart more full.
And it does. But it makes
the heart more spacious, too,
a place where anything could happen,
even what is real: a daughter,
a mother, and hours in the kitchen
singing and stirring, the scent
of chocolate, earthy and nutty,
floating in the air like a song.
One Deepening Connection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, meditation, mindfulness on December 27, 2024| 2 Comments »
each breath
a sanctuary
I carry with me
On Christmas Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, breaking, christmas, ephemera on December 26, 2024| 3 Comments »
It was broken when I opened the gift,
the long ear of the small clay bunny.
The giver apologized, but how could she
have known that in the breaking
it became that much more precious—
aligned with the truth that all things
break, and the breaking makes
them no less beloved. Perhaps more so.
What surprised me was how the break
cleaved a perfect heart shape, a message
hiding inside the whole. I cried then,
not because the figurine was broken, but
because I am gloriously, terribly broken, and oh,
it’s so beautiful to see it, the love in everything.
The Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amaryllis, beauty, gift, grace on December 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
How does the amaryllis bulb do it,
store so much life inside its thin brown
wrapping? How, from such a small
round package, does such a large
stem continue to rise? I don’t know
how it offers such abundance
from such a small space, but
whatever grace it is that infuses
the amaryllis, I want to believe
it could happen anywhere—
so that a country or a woman
or even a minute could be
a gift wrapped in nothing more
than its own dry skin, a gift
that surprises the world as it
produces extravagant beauty
day after day, perhaps even
surprising itself as, seemingly
from nothing, it begins to bloom.
One Night Before Christmas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mystery, stars, trees, winter on December 24, 2024| 1 Comment »
ornaments for the galaxy
between bare cottonwood branches
hung by what great hand, the stars
Reciting Hopkins by Heart with Peter and Gabriel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blank verse, friendship, gerard manley hopkins, reciting poetry, sonnet on December 23, 2024| 3 Comments »
The first few words we all knew well, but then
we stumbled, stuttered, reached for precious lines,
our halting voices so unlike the smooth
and sweeping windhover that Hopkins wrote
about. And still, despite our bumbling,
despite our clumsy starts and awkward spurts,
an ecstasy of plume still winged through our
attempts. The language sang, its embers glowed,
its music stirred vermillion. And our eyes
were shining, too. No wonder of it: even
plodding, ploughing fields can make the soil
gleam. With love, we ploughed that sonnet’s lines
until they shined, until the air between
us plumed and swooped, until we, too, were shining.
here, friends, is the poem we were reciting.
On the Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged sleep, sunshine, winter solstice on December 22, 2024| 1 Comment »
I sleep. I sleep and sleep and sleep
like a bear, like a snail, like a bee,
I sleep until the sun finally slips
above the riverside cliffs
and enters my bed like
a lover. I do not open my eyes,
but the light and warmth
slide into me anyway
as if all of me were waiting,
waiting to be entered by light.
And I have been waiting—
which I might have denied,
snuggled in deep as I was,
drowsy and night-drunk,
certain of my joy in the dark,
but oh, such a way to wake,
discovered by the light of a star
as it kisses my face and strokes
my skin, offering to give me everything
if only I open more.
Kinetic Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged billiards, daughter, joy, mother, physics, science on December 21, 2024| 5 Comments »
for my daughter
It’s perhaps like billiards,
in which the cue ball collides
with another ball, and the kinetic
energy passes on to a second ball—
that’s how it is when you,
in your joy, collide with me in a hug,
and your joy passes on to me,
my every molecule vibrating
as your bliss becomes my bliss,
your joy becomes my joy, until
I’m dizzy with it, spinning with it,
rolling around the room with it,
in fact it’s what I was made for,
to be moved by you, by your joy.
Inner Acreage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner world, intention, stillness on December 20, 2024| 3 Comments »
There are caves there where
I can rest without light
and radiant meadows
with room to expand
in every direction
They’re not real, of course.
Nor is the wasteland.
The glorious abyss.
Which is to say nothing
could be more real
than these inner landscapes
that always receive me,
whether I’m on a bus
or in line at the market
or lying in bed before dawn.
Sometimes I forget
the inner world is there. I start
believing only in the outer world.
How exhausting life is then.
But when I remember
to live through the gate
of intention, when I still,
it’s as if I am being breathed,
being lived. I’m out of the way.
Then everything is the way.
It may not always be pleasant.
It’s always exactly as it is.
There are no words there,
but look at me, trying anyway
to explain this nothing to do
and nowhere to go
and nothing to experience
which is everything.
I’m like a traveler trying to take
a dozen photos to represent
a whole country, only to discover
they’re all blank.
Like a child in a fairy tale
trying to leave a trail to get back,
only to have the crumbs
disappear.
The Man Who Rings Me Up at Target
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, hope, labor, mother, transformation, work on December 19, 2024| 4 Comments »
tells me he used to be mean.
Tells me used to not like
who he was. Tells me he dreamed
of his mother after she died
and she told him that though
she was no longer with him,
she still could teach him
how to be alive, which,
in practical terms, meant
how to be kind.
In the time it takes for me to buy
lint rollers and lip balm,
I am so moved by this woman
I will only meet through
a dream and a checkout lane
conversation that I walk out
into the night with a smile
on my face. This is the way
we share hope with each other,
one thin strand at a time.
By the time I get to the car,
I’m still smiling, wholly tethered to life
by a gift that appeared so slight
at first I didn’t even know
it was there.
After Wendy Pulls the Fool for Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fool, joy, tarot, Wendy Videlock on December 18, 2024| 7 Comments »
The Fool doesn’t ask
what is past the edge—
what some might call
The Wrong Direction.
He simply smiles
and continues toward
the beginning—
Barefoot. Grinning.
A rucksack the size
of a honey hive.
A walking stick.
Pockets full of maybe.
A shining, walking
sacred energy.
All day, I feel as if
I might step off
the world. All day
I put my faith
in laughter. All day
I notice how in moments
of terror lives also
the chance
to be extravagant
with my joy.
Before Winter Solstice, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, night, solstice on December 17, 2024| 5 Comments »
This, too, is what we are born for,
this waking in darkness, unable
to see, but still able to hear the shush
of wind in bare branches, able to feel
the charge of our heartbeat, the swell
of our belly as it fills with borrowed air.
I have spent my life learning to love
these shapeless hours before the light
finds us, these shadowsome nights when
my whole being seems to stretch beyond
the bed, beyond the room, beyond the home,
beyond the valley, beyond even the globe,
as if I rhyme with the dark all around us,
the dark that holds us, the dark that surrounds
this whole swirling spiral of galaxy.
Sometimes, I feel how that infinite darkness
calls to the darkness inside me as if to say,
remember, remember where you come from,
remember what you are. And the darkness
inside me sings back.
Falling Asleep with My Head in My Mom’s Lap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged age, daughter, mother, relaxation, trust on December 16, 2024| 11 Comments »
Mom slips her fingers through my hair;
my eyes close, and I am again
a sigh of a girl, a wisp made of trust,
and I don’t know where she goes,
the middle-aged version of me
who works, who carries, who forges on.
It’s not that I ask her to leave,
she just disappears as I curl deeper
into the den of dreams, my body limp
as a kitten picked up by the scruff.
Maybe I purr. I nuzzle in deeper.
I forget to remember there is anything
else to do. It’s a lifetime before I wake.
One at The Nutcracker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, daughter, light, mother on December 15, 2024| 3 Comments »
so bright the light you carry—
watching you dance
I, too, am glowing
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, healing, light, reiki on December 14, 2024| 9 Comments »
while receiving Reiki, with thanks to T. V.
For a moment,
there appeared a circle
of golden light,
the way sunlight
sometimes streams
through a gap
in the forest canopy
to form a small shining pool
on the ground.
It wasn’t that I
stepped into this light.
More that the light found me,
and for a moment
I knew what it was like
to be found.
This is perhaps
what grace is like—
when we wander
in the dark, cold, lost,
and the light finds us,
not because we deserve it,
not even because
we have asked for it.
It simply arrives,
and it is ours to receive it,
to know gratefulness,
even astonishment,
and to let it inform
what we do next.
One New Teacher
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, birdsong, teacher on December 13, 2024| 3 Comments »
while I sit and stew about the world,
the bird across the river
never ceases in its singing