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Archive for October, 2025

Right Here

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 30, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Not easy to hear the soft chant of my breath
with the rumble of river nearby.
Even the low water hymn of late autumn
is loud enough to cover the small,
familiar song of inhale and exhale.
Further out is the sharp thwack of hammer
head meeting nail. Another nail. Another.
An elated whoop from the man with the hammer.
And further out, the growl of semi trucks
migrating east on the highway. If I close
my eyes, do I really hear better? Can I hear
into the distant pinion forest, the silence that gathers
there in spiraling trunks? Can I hear
past that into the vaster silence of mesa?
To the vacant sound of sky?
More than the sounds themselves,
something about the reaching stills me,
brings me present until I am more ear
than mind. Not a single thought brays as I follow
soundwaves to the shores of presence.
Such simple practice, attentiveness,
and yet how often I wander away
on paths of should and want. But now,
attuned, I hear it, even with the river,
this small luff of breath, a living metronome
beating here, here, here.  

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When Bert Sends Me an Mp4

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 29, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
Though she’s been dead more than a year,
Donna sings to me through the recording,
her voice bold as she belts into Ladder Canyon
a song of celebration and goodbye.
The cancer by then was a longtime companion.
She laughs as the lyrics bounce off of sandstone,
and then she starts leaving space for listening:
And all I’ve done      (   I’ve done      I’ve done  )
for want of wit      (  of wit      of wit   ).
When the first verse is sung, she exclaims,
“That was fantastic!” Years later, the echo
resounds, though it comes in the sound
of my own voice pealing around my own room,
“That was fantastic!”  I shout back. And it was.
Fantastic to feel her again in the drums of my ears,
in the hum of my throat, in the thrum of my blood.
Fantastic to hear her singing those words we have sung
together how many thousands of times. But this time,
Donna’s not singing to blend. She’s shouting it out
like a shanty, haunted by shadows and lit up by life.
I’m so stunned by her voice, I don’t even try to sing along.
I absorb every wave of her, as if I could take her all in
and not have to give her back to death.
I play it again and again. Every time, I echo back,
“That was fantastic.” And by that, I mean the echo
in the canyon. I mean the song. I mean the gift
of hearing her voice again. Fantastic. I mean her life.
Fantastic. I mean her. I mean her. I mean her.

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One When I Feel Shoreless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
your voice on the phone
each word a stepping stone
toward acceptance
 

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Reunion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 28, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
And though it has begun to rain
and the Bernedoodle jumps and squirms
between us and though it has been
thirty three years since last I saw her,
I want to linger in the yard when I hug Susie,  
and for a moment I am again eighteen
and we are snowshoeing up a fourteen-thousand-
foot peak. The winter sun is brilliant; we
are laughing and I’m exhausted and so alive,
and I am standing in a suburb as golden
leaves whirl and Susie is in velveteen pants,
her hair streaked gray, and she is not at all the same
girl I remember and also exactly the same,
meeting me with a smile, offering to carry
what is mine, speaking of gardens and knitting
and tea. And we’re on the summit of Mt. Elbert
and I wrap my arms around those girls we were.
I thank them for loving each other then,
how that love opens a door to this very moment
to create an intimacy that needed no tending,
as mullein seeds sometimes wait decades
before they bloom. I release Susie and bend
to nuzzle her puppy, a marvel of zeal and scruff.
Is it rain on my face, or tears? I take that young
girl I was by the hand. She walks inside with us.

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One Encouraged by the Leaves

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

flying the story of myself
like a kite in the wind—
can I let go of the string

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Carving the Pumpkins

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 26, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
We plunge our bare hands into our pumpkins
and pull out seeds and strings and thick orange
goo; we scrape at the walls with grapefruit
spoons and all the while as we scoop at the earth-
scented mess, I never once think how I was dreading
this, this annual ritual I’m supposed to enjoy, but don’t.
But tonight it’s as if the part of me in charge of delight
has taken over and I remember I want nothing more
than to be exactly here on the floor with my girl
and my husband, sawing a giant smile into my pumpkin,
fueled by a gratefulness so honest it shines like a votive
through whatever inside me is hollow.

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Ever Changing 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 24, 2025| 9 Comments »


 
In my urgency to clutch it,
I made peace a thing
to be protected,
like a jewel, like a token,
instead of a force
that transforms.
What if I let peace sweep
through me as branches
are cleared by wind?
What if I let peace flood me,
scouring what I thought
I knew? What if, no matter
how hard I tried to
capture it, peace slipped
through my grasp like mist,
like rain, like time?
If I trusted an ever present
peace as much as I trust
ever present chaos,
who would I be then?

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What the Mirror Said

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on October 23, 2025| 14 Comments »


                  after lucille clifton
 
 
After all these years
of looking in the mirror,
you still don’t see
what’s in you. There
have been times
I wanted to shatter
into slivers so you
won’t be tempted
to trust me, but I
am not the problem.
Listen, sweetheart:
Trust yourself. Trust
no mirror could
ever know the truth
of you. There are whole
mountain ranges
of wonder inside you,
unfathomable oceans
no mirror could ever
show. Go wander
and swim in your
own wilderness
until you don’t
need me anymore.

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Dear Finn,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 22, 2025| 14 Comments »


 
On the way home from the protest,
It occurred to me you likely would have
stood quietly on the corner of Oak and Colorado
with a sign that said, I stand with the President.
It makes me grateful we were able
to talk about such things when you were here,
both of us loving our country in such different ways.
I’m sure somehow you know they flew
the American flag over the capitol building
in DC for you, a gift from someone we never met.
They sent us that flag. It flew over the school
on the day you didn’t graduate.
I sat in the school parking lot that day and watched
the breeze lift its corners, giving life to the flag,
somehow giving life to you, too.
Every time I see the American flag, I say hello to you,
especially the flag at the bottom of our drive.
I know you don’t hear me when I greet you,
but somehow I know you do. Like the way I don’t
hear the sun, its wavelengths measured
in hundreds of miles. Just because I can’t
comprehend the sound doesn’t mean the sound
isn’t there. So I send my small yawp into the air,
and trust our mutual love for our country still brings
us together somehow. Me in person, you in the wind,
the wind that catches this hello from my lips
and carries it beyond what is here. What is here?
The chance to remember how deeply we can love
those who are so different from us. The chance
to remember how unity can look like disagreement.
The chance to remember what is here is sometimes,
like peace, what doesn’t seem to be here.  

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Eyesight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 21, 2025| 9 Comments »

 
I’ve never seen the world the bee sees,
a world of iridescence in which petals
change color depending on the angle,
a world in which a field of sunflowers appear
not as a smear of yellow but as individual
blooms. I’ve never seen the bullseye
pattern in the primrose or the pansy,
these human eyes unable to perceive
designs in UV light. Today I look out
at the empty garden where just last week
there were marigolds and calendula,
and I see the absence of flowers, but also,
I see mounds of golds, yellows, oranges, and
I see the boy who used to sit on the edge
of the wooden beds and I see the young
version of me, not yet gray, weeding
the rows, while the boy tells me stories
about school and the things he longs
for beyond what he has. They’re there,
I know, the flowers, the woman,
the boy, though somehow they’re so far
beyond the spectrum not even
the bees can see them.

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