With love, I score the insides of the eggplants
into diamond-shaped slashes and slather
the cut side with oil. With love, I crumble
tiny, fresh thyme leaves onto the sweating flesh,
then roast the halves till the dark, tight skin
pulls easily away. It’s heaven in the mouth,
the creamy, tender scoops of eggplant served
with garlicky buttermilk sauce and pomegranate seeds.
I want to believe even the smallest acts—
like sprinkling the tiniest bit of za’atar onto a dish
or sprinkling a real smile into any interaction
or making the call, or writing the letter—
yes, even the smallest acts can be part of
the greater change that infuses everything.
Archive for February, 2025
Even the Smallest Acts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, eggplant, love, small acts on February 9, 2025| 15 Comments »
One Unpronounceable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, nature, river on February 7, 2025| 4 Comments »
the river decides
it’s discovered me,
renames me after itself
What I Didn’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged activism, fear, love, love languages on February 6, 2025| 6 Comments »
At last I am learning it’s okay
to be scared to the marrow
and still show up whole-hearted.
No shame it took so long
to learn this truth,
just giddy relief to finally trust
I can be clenched like a hedgehog
or poised as a snake
and still be open to finding love
at the center of what scares me.
And when I find no sprig of love there,
that is the chance
to offer love to the world
any way I know how—
with a gift, with my time,
with words, with touch,
or with a simple act of kindness.
And if I find I have no love
to muster, then that is the chance
to plant seeds of love in whatever
soil I find. And amend the ground.
And bring light. Bring water.
Doors Where I Have Knocked
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, door, loss, opportunity on February 6, 2025| 2 Comments »
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Door of tenderness that opens with breath.
Thick door of safety. Wide door of rest.
Windowless door to the future. Hingeless
door of hope. Door of patience. Door of no.
Door that requires I take off my name
before it will let me in. Door of prayer.
Trapdoor of sin. Door of courage.
Door of less. Door where the password
is always love. Trick door that appears
when I’m too weak to move. Door of
the heart where someone knocks back,
where I listen as if I might understand.
But it was the unwanted door of loss—the door
where I didn’t chose to knock, forged
from despair and gnarled wood—
that was the door that changed me for good.
Unlikely Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, betrayal, forgiveness, grace, gratefulness on February 5, 2025| 14 Comments »
Hello friends,
So seldom do I feel I need to preface a poem, but … this one. It was so not easy to write and I don’t know that I have said yet what most wishes to be said. I think that happens sometimes … when I have a feeling so big that I’ve felt for so long, I put too much pressure on the poem to tell the whole story when really, something much simpler wants to emerge. All this is to say I am wrestling with questions of love and forgiveness and humility and betrayal and grace … and will likely be wrestled by them as long as I live. You, too?
Unlikely Gratefulness
I will not excuse what he did.
His words, cruel.
His actions, callous.
So deliberate,
the way he turned his back.
Did he not see another path?
Or did he, with spiteful intent,
choose the lowest road?
And after the fact, did it matter?
The dark seed he planted
could not be unsown.
Perhaps my brokenness was a gift,
because if I had been less broken,
I would have mustered the strength
to hate him.
Perhaps because I was so broken,
my eyes could not not remember the way
his face reddens and crumples when he cries.
My throat could not not remember
how often I sang him to sleep.
And my hands still remember
holding him when he was scared.
My ears still hear the raucous ways
we laughed while in the car.
But how it is I still let him in?
How is there room in my heart for his?
I don’t know. I don’t know how to name the gift.
What is this grace that holds me
so I can still hold him?
What Comes Next
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged diana butler bass, love, political action on February 3, 2025| 16 Comments »
Love relentlessly.
—Diana Butler Bass
Love relentlessly, she said,
and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound
of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes
a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench.
Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave,
how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open
wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
Love relentlessly.
Even saying the words aloud invites
both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous
urgency and willingness. A radical pulsing
of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational
every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising,
upwelling, ongoing, infusion
of love, tide of love, honest love.
Why I Go Nordic Skiing in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embodiment, losing the self, skiing, winter on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
Because the world.
And then, with one step,
I slide into snow-mind
in which I am glide,
sun-bright and crystalline,
field-vast and drift-found,
a boundaryless being
of sparkling immensity
moving inside a glittering realm,
and whoever else I might be
in the small world of rooms
and stoplights and
screens and keys is not lost
exactly, but is too little here
to not see beyond as I become
soft meadow, receiver
of birdsong, inhaler
of evergreen, an ecstatic
point in infinite space
sliding from grace
to ever expanding grace.
One Expanding Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, beauty, daughter, love, sky on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
for Vivian
when she can’t stop
falling in love with the blush of sky
I can’t stop falling in love with her
When I Listen Tonight to Slack Key Guitar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, mothering, self love, self-forgiveness on February 1, 2025| 10 Comments »
I am again in a small blue room
with the bedroom windows open wide
and the breeze is alive in the thin
white curtains and the boy in the crib
doesn’t cry as he lies on his back
and my eyes are closed as I try
to be boring so he will sleep.
The music on the radio is smooth
and full, soothing and warm.
I had never heard slack key before.
Eighteen years later, it is easy
to feel the sweetness of those shaded
hours in a way I couldn’t then.
But I do not chastise that younger self
for not perceiving beauty. She was
tired. And hurting. A gaping wound.
I don’t lecture her about how
she should be better. I just hum
to the music now familiar and love her.
The notes shimmer like forgiveness in the air.