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Archive for May, 2025

Annual

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
I know they will die,
the dahlias, the zinnias,
the petunias, the geraniums,
will die come autumn,
and still I buy them, still
plant them and sing to them
as I do. Looking up
from the garden beds, trowel
in hand, I see it in everything—
the spruce, the ants, the swallows,
this hand—all that lives will die.
And staring at the basil, pungent
and green and ephemeral, I feel
so darn lucky to unfold
for whatever time I  am given.
To bloom while I can. To be marigold.
Calendula. Mother. Begonia. Gratefulness
floods me like low summer sun.
I turn my face toward that light.

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The Mindfulness Bell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 30, 2025| 8 Comments »


“You might consider your own minor annoyances and turn one into a bell … let it be a bell to remind you to come back, and remember, soon all of this will be gone.” —David Keplinger, Another Shore (May 30, 2025)
 
 
And so today when the very slow driver
in front of me starts going ten miles
over the speed limit right when we get
to the passing lane, I imagine
my frustration is a bell. Instead
of calling him an idiot, as usual,
instead I think, Ding. Can you be
grateful to be alive right now?
Ding. Can you bless this body?
Delight in this canyon? Find joy
in the burgeoning green of spring?
Ding. Ding. Ding. Can you come home
to this moment and realize all belongs?
Even slow drivers who speed up.
Even your impatience. Ding.
Here’s your chance to imagine whatever
provokes you becomes a mindfulness bell.
There will come a time when you think
oh, what a lucky woman you were
to drive these roads at all. Could that time
be now? Ding. Ding. Oh that idio—. Ding.
Please, let him pull over. Don’t honk. Please.
Ding. Ding. Ding.

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The Secret of Contentment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 29, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
To be the seed and not
wish to be the flower.
Or to be the flower and
not wish to be seed or rain.
To be the rain and be grateful
to be the rain. Which
is to say, to be the self
and delight in being the self.
But when I say self, I mean
to know the self as seed.
As flower. As rain. When I
say to know, I mean to
ever be in wonder.

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Watching the Goslings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 29, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Those milky, down-fluffy, bumblesome
bodies stumbling in tall green grass—
just seeing the goslings, I feel it, a rush
of tenderness, an inexorable
softening. Not that I brought
my hopelessness here on purpose.
Just that I seem to always carry it
with me these days. Not that the baby
geese make anything better.
Except they do, opening me to the story
of life beyond myself, beyond my kind.
Suddenly I sense it everywhere,
the great story. There, in the bitter
scent of the chokecherry; there,
in the stonefly climbing the coyote willow;
there, in the eagle that would eat the rabbit.
Everywhere the story of what it is
to be alive. And in me, a tenderness
for all of it, a tenderness that grows and grows
until I can be tender even with my own
hopelessness, my own bumbling. No antidote
for humanness, but oh, this tenderness.

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Revival

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 27, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
For so long he lingers on the edge
of the feeder, as if he knows
I am willing to stand here for hours
to marvel at his bright yellow forehead,
the white patch on his wings—
such an ecstatic thing to watch
this first evening grosbeak
to ever find a way to our yard.
Aren’t you beautiful, I tell him.
He raises his head. I swoon
with raw joy, with full-bodied
love for this bird, for this day,
for this world with its wings.
Was it really just this morning
I was weeping?
 

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While Staring at My Flag on Memorial Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
I think of those who died fighting
for our country, and how
when a child dies, a part
of a mother dies, too.
Tonight, as the low sun streams
through the red and white stripes,
mothers of soldiers, I honor you.
 

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How Do I Ever Forget It?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »


That moment that opens
when the evening light
makes the whole field glow
so everything is luminous,
every blade, every leaf, every stone,
even the weeds, even the carcasses,
even the ones who are watching—
not to forget we can also be cruel,
can kill, can lie, can betray,
but oh, we can also be as receptive
as a field in the golden hour,
letting light pour through us until
we, too, are that radiant, that generous,
that willing to be in service to beauty.

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And Then It’s Exponential

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 25, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
I made a cage out of doom.
Thought, who am I
to change the world.
Believed that thought.
It’s not so much that
the doom dissolved,
no. It’s never been
more real. But the cage?
Just one story of just
one person who chooses
to stand up for integrity,
equality and peace
is enough to show
what one courageous
person can do.
Then the bars of that cage
bend enough for the most
courageous part of the self
to slip through. I’m not
saying it isn’t scary.
But this is how
one becomes two.
 

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Six Weeks After I Break My Foot

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

 
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t  
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.

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Beauty Lesson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 22, 2025| 9 Comments »


 
It used to embarrass me when my mother
would wear her bright palazzo pants printed
with enormous yellow and purple flowers,
red petals, blue petals—I mean every
single possible color of petal. And she
loved them. Flounced in them. Flowed
in them. Strutted and glided and felt
beautiful in them. I wanted to hide.
Now, when mom sends me pictures
of her dressed in bold patterns and sharp colors,
I delight in her delight. How strange
it would be for mom to slink
around in solid black and gray like me.
Laughable, even. My mother is audacious
in her taste. Now when I say, You look great, Mom,
I mean, You are a garden in full bloom.
I mean, You are exotic bird. A wild
kaleidoscope. I mean, I am still learning
how our differences are gifts. I mean,
Mom, you are beautiful.

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