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Archive for October, 2025

Watching the Shy Young Poet Receive Her Applause

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 11, 2025| 6 Comments »

Like a river in flood stage,
her smile broke its banks
and changed the landscape
of the room, or perhaps
her smile was more like
a night-blooming cactus
that charges the dusk
with honest perfume.
That moment she stood there
and let the cheering in,
receiving our appreciation like rain,
oh, her smile then, may I never forget it,
so rare, this gift released,
the girl untamed.

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You, the Light

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2025| 7 Comments »

 
 
I thought the way
to hold you
was by folding
myself around you,
gentle but tight,
the way the hand
wraps around pebble,
acorn, coin,
and now that
you’re not here,
the love no less great,
I stand outside
with my empty,
upturned hands
and understand
opening them
is the only way
to hold light.

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Sometimes a Prayer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 9, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Sometimes a prayer
arrives like a stock phrase—
like well-worn beads of syllables
others have strung into smooth
and beautiful strands.
But the prayers that have saved me
are the ones that arrive like burrs.
They hurt a little, hook into my skin,
such stubborn, dogged prayers.
They make me a living agent
of spreading their seeds.
And with every move I make,
they don’t let me forget
they are here.

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On the Street in Lancaster, Ohio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2025| 10 Comments »


 
 
I like your costume,
the woman said, and I said,
Thank you. Thing was,
I wasn’t wearing a costume.
I was dressed as me,
a middle-aged woman
in tall black boots,
black yoga pants,
a long gray sweater
and my dad’s gray hat.
It wasn’t till after she left
I laughed, delighted
to be called out on
dressing up as myself,
a person I’ve been
trying to be my whole life.
And where, I wondered,
does the costume end?
Does it include my hair?
My skin? My name?
My stories? My resume?
My voice? All of it
a costume of self
worn by whatever
is most alive inside.
This human frame
is just some get-up the infinite
has slipped into for a time,
even as it slips into other
costumes, one that looks
exactly like you. And hey,
I like your costume.

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When We Argue 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 7, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
I do not love it, the tension
between us, dark-viscous and thick,
or red-spined and prickly. I don’t
love the way a fat fist forms
in the softness of my belly,
then fossilizes into righteousness,
or unravels into something fetid
and festering. I don’t like when words
feel like sandpaper on my skin,
or worse, when silence feels
like a moat, like a wall, like a sword.
I don’t like feeling like a tree in November
with not a single leaf, barren, stark.
But maybe I love the way meeting tension
eventually teaches me to loosen
my certainty until I am less cement,
more soil. Maybe I love how it
acts like a neon sign that blares
inside me with scarlet all caps:
WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.  
Maybe I love the way wrestling with tension
invites me to ask more questions of myself,
of the world. This gift I don’t want to unwrap.
How alive I am then as the fierceness of it
fades, leaving me opened in ways
I didn’t know to explore, and feeling
again into how deep they are, these roots.

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One Dissolving

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


 
 
slipping through
my own fingers
these thoughts of who I am

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The Change

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 5, 2025| 14 Comments »

Overnight, the frost
took every pink zinnia
every creamy dahlia,
fading their colors to brown.
The nasturtiums have slumped
into dense wilted tangle.
The marigolds hold themselves tall
in a blackened and upright
surrender. For now,
the bright, fresh bouquets
I made yesterday are still
bright and fresh in their vases.
This beauty, we know, won’t stay.
The message is simple:
All that rises passes away.
I see it in these hands
that planted and watered
and weeded and picked—
my skin now wrinkled and thin
as frost-withered petals.
Here: the chance to witness
my own rising and passing.
How natural to age, to die.
The flowers in the vase will wilt.
With every day, so do I.
Such strange gift. First
the joy of putting the self
in service to making something
beautiful. Then, beyond joy,
the grace in learning to let it all go.

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Calendaring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2025| 4 Comments »

since I last held you
I measure the days 
in fallen leaves—
great brown mounds
beneath empty branches

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For as Long as You Both Shall Live   

Posted in Uncategorized on October 3, 2025| 4 Comments »

             
for Rachel and Dorell
 
 
The way a grow dome allows
the life inside it to flourish,
so may your marriage hold you.
Not so you become one, exactly
but beautifully, connectedly,
symbiotically, wondrously two—
a closed-loop system in which
you continuously support each other.
May your union offer warmth
when the world is cold,
offer space in which you thrive
both together and alone.
May you be each other’s gardeners
with hands tender, strong and true.
And when all around you is hostile
and harsh, may your love
ongoingly root and grow,
bloom and reseed and renew.

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After Four Hours of Driving, We Arrive at What Google Maps Said Would Be a Park

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2025| 3 Comments »


 
 
There is no park.
Still, we park at the edge
of the road and look out
over the Hudson
beyond the thick trees,
inhale the yellowing
scent of autumn,
reach our arms up to the sky,
play chase around the car,
and laugh the whole time,
at first in disbelief,
and at last in surrender.
One more chance to meet
the world that is here
instead of the world
we expect. One more chance
find ourselves grateful
to be exactly where we are.

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