when I say my heart breaks
I mean it breaks like a wave—
as if exhausted
by its own separateness
it gives itself back to the whole
Archive for January, 2025
Redefinition
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, connection, heartbreak, union on January 10, 2025| 9 Comments »
Humbled by Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, love, remembering on January 9, 2025| 4 Comments »
Often I love best what is in front of me.
In summer, I forget I love snow, love cold.
In winter, I forget I love green.
Given green beans, I forget I love carrots.
Given a warm dark night,
I forget I’m entranced by summer light.
Perhaps sometimes, when reading,
or skiing by the river, or singing, there is an hour
when I forget I love you. Then, when
I think again of your voice, your you-ness,
there’s a rush of remembrance
and I fall in love all over again,
my whole body vibrating like a bell,
wildly amazed you exist at all
and that I, somehow, against all odds,
not only know you but love you,
love you in a way that makes me feel
I could effervesce, could bloom
right through my skin. And I am
the luckiest woman in the world then—
lucky to feel it again, the humbling joy
of knowing love is so much bigger
than my attention, so much greater
than my capacity to hold.
Lucky to be at the mercy of love.
Lucky to have thought I lost you,
if only for an hour, only to find
love holding me, cupping my chin
in its gentle hands, turning me
toward you again.
Because It Matters I Say It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged i love you, love, speech on January 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
I remember in Finland
I lived a year without once
hearing someone say the verb
for love, rakastaa. As if it were
too precious to squander.
And it is precious. And still,
this longing to spend the word wildly,
as if there’s an infinite store of love.
As if I could say I love you
a thousand thousand times
and there would still be
a thousand thousand more
whispers of love left to give you.
Sometimes I worry I say it too much
so when you hear it,
the words enter your ears
like footsteps among a crowd,
unable to be discerned
amidst the noise of the world.
Even so, I continue to say it,
I love you, as you answer the phone.
I love you, as we say goodbye.
I love you as we stand at the grave.
I love you as we buy peaches.
As we walk in the parking lot, I love you.
I love you, as we sit on the couch.
I love you as I worry I say it too much.
I say it because it’s impossible
not to say it. I love you.
Because you are my canoe
in the rapids of the world.
Because each time I say it,
it feels like planting a seed
that will bloom for the rest of our lives.
Because there is nothing
more important to say.
Letter to the Others in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, darkness, fear, maturity, writing on January 7, 2025| 21 Comments »
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
that the words on the page are legible,
no confidence you will receive this.
Still this impulse to reach out,
this longing to honor this deepening darkness,
though it is confusing, disorienting.
I find myself reminding myself
such darkness is natural, essential even,
and there is some comfort
in knowing this, in trusting I am part
of some great process, even though
it terrifies me. This is how the world
has been made and remade.
Of course we are no different
than stars. Perhaps you are not frightened.
But I am. Maybe this is why I reach out.
Because it takes so much courage
to trust the dark place, to attend to its demands,
to believe this is not the end, but a pause,
a stage between one world and another.
Please, don’t send me light either.
I don’t think I am ready yet, the pain still sharp,
not yet softened, not yet become wings,
though part of me longs to have already
arrived on the other side of transformation.
Perhaps you are reaching for me, too.
Perhaps you have already written
on this page, and because it is dark,
I can’t read what you’ve said.
Perhaps believing this makes me less alone.
And this is why I write.
Living in the River Bed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flood, past, river, self-destruction on January 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
The way the riverbank
remembers high water—
even many years later—
with logs and sticks lodged
high along its edges,
this is how it is I remember
you, the detritus of love
strewn all along my walls.
There is just a thin trickle now
and I’ve come to value clarity,
but remember the raging rush,
how it roared—a violent crush,
a terrible greatness—
how it tumbled everything
in its path. How the path
itself was never the same again.
Thank You Letter to My Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, heart, open, vulnerability on January 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
Thank you, heart for breaking open
every time you hear of the throbbing
ache of war. The devastation of hunger.
The agony of humans choosing
to hurt each other. May you always break.
May you never grow callous enough
that you listen to news of bombs
and betrayals as if you are listening
to the weather report. Thank you,
heart, for letting yourself be stunned
by joy at the slightest of beauties—
by the stilting gray hop of the bunny,
the pink pucker of grapefruit,
the crimson blush of amaryllis
as the tepals burgeon against the green bud.
Though the mind longs to organize,
you thrive on surprising me. Like the way
you rise up for the same rain I once reviled.
Like the way you crave the silence
that once I feared. Like the ways
you have taught me to love the parts of me
I once thought were unloveable.
For all the times I have forgotten
to say thank you, forgive me.
I am still learning. I will forget how to love,
will forget to thank you again.
But here, on the edge of who I will be,
here I am, open as I know how,
gratefulness growing, pushing
against my own green.
One Under the Stars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, losing the self, stars on January 4, 2025| 5 Comments »
stripped of the coat of my story,
for a moment naked enough
to fit into the universe
In the Sacred Grove
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged imagination, meditation, sacred grove on January 3, 2025| 4 Comments »
for Philip Carr-Gomm
Sometimes entering the sacred grove
is easy as closing the eyes while you sit
in a chair at home and let someone
lead you there, their voice a path you follow
to a ring of trees with roots entwined.
A sun-bright meadow in the middle.
A group of other willing hearts
who form a circle with you. How did it
ever feel far away when the sacred grove
is as close as breath, close as imagination,
real as an openness to wonder. I was there,
just this morning, my hands flat on the earth,
sky reaching in through my crown. I was there,
even as I sat in my office chair, I was there.
My hands held the hands of strangers
beside me. Alone in my room, I was there.
And after knowing the sacred grove breath-close,
all day I find it everywhere.
The Remembering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, forgetting, grief, homer, odyssey, remembering on January 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
And if I should sit at the table with Helen of Troy,
let me not sip from the drink she offers,
the nepenthe that would make me forget sorrow.
If I know anything now, it is that sorrow
helps us grow. Not that I want sorrow,
no, but neither do I want to forget my boy,
and his story is knit with sorrow.
I choose sorrow so I might continue to love.
Imagine not saying his name when I walk
alone beneath stars. Imagine not weeping
when I think of how he held me.
Imagine not laughing when I think of how
we played. Imagine not smiling
when I hear myself saying words he would say.
Imagine not learning how tenuous it is,
this thread that ties us to life;
how lovely and strong it is, this thread
that ties us to each other, even after death.
Let me not take Helen’s cup. Let the beauty
be not in forgetting our cares, but in sharing them—
connection, the most potent drug of all.
In this epic, perhaps she will offer to listen to me.
And I, I will listen to her.