In the middle of a Monday morning
I let my hands rest in my lap
and truly feel them rest, feel
them empty and open, these
hands that scrub and type
and wash and chop and rub
and dig and yank and knit,
these hands that twist off
and turn on and lift up and
wring out, I let them rest,
and because they have slowed,
a dream from last night lands
in my upturned palms, a dream
in which my father arrives
wanting to write a beautiful letter,
so I find for him thick creamy
paper and an elegant black
pen with dark black ink and
I clear for him a wide cherry desk,
wipe clean the dust and oh,
how wide his smile then.
It is only in the honey-slow
moments I am able to receive
these sweet tendrils from the dead—
only when I defy the momentum
of the human-made rush and
enter into the pace of the real
that I feel the gifts of their presence.
As now, midmorning, my hands
still as fallen leaves in the grass,
fall open to receive my father,
his thick hands poised above the page,
his laughter ringing through the dream
and into this golden, sun-flooded room.
Archive for November, 2025
Only When I Am Not Rushing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, dream, slow, writing on November 10, 2025| 8 Comments »
To the Self Who Thinks Faster Is Better
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloe, slow, transformation on November 9, 2025| 10 Comments »
As slowly as this aloe grows,
could I dare to flow that slowly
from this uncomfortable moment
into the moment that follows?
Not just slow, no, but deliberate—
willing to notice all that is here.
For so long I have trusted the part
of me who believes faster is better.
Now I’m exhausted, and of course,
I want to get over my exhaustion, fast.
Truth is, I love slow. I love the juiciness
of presence and quiet. Oh paradox.
Can’t I move fast and still feel spacious?
The aloe knows a single leaf a month
is leaf enough. I touch my palm to my belly
and whisper aloud what Augusta said.
Slow is enough. Slow is a blessing.
Slow is safe. The self who wants this ache
to go away fast and faster sits beside the aloe
and imagines it might open to aloe wisdom.
I imagine my blood thick as gel in the aloe leaves.
I imagine a single leaf of a thought at a time.
I notice the prickle of discomfort and
name it discomfort. Notice the impulse
to get up and run. Notice the part of me
that wants to feel better right now. Notice
how the more I notice, the more slow
feels like home.
Oh the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged news, what continues on November 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Every day a new wound,
some new hurt I could
not have prepared for
that wallops me. Every
day I wonder, how long
can it go on like this?
Every day, it goes on.
How does it go on?
It festers. It chafes.
I ask the grass in the field,
the algae in the river,
the lichen on the rock.
It goes on, they say.
It’s never the same,
but it always goes on.
Strange
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, memory, paradox, quince on November 8, 2025| 9 Comments »
So darn ugly, the quince,
pockmarked and shriveling,
lumpy and mottled,
sloughing their thin gray fuzz,
but from across the room,
I smell them, intensely sweet,
exotic and milky, rose-like,
honeyed, apple-ish.
They’re like a bowl of painful
memories I’d rather not look at
and yet find myself nose-deep
in them by choice, astonished
at how complex it all is.
Ache. Beauty. Repulsion.
Desire. What most moves us
is seldom simple. Or perhaps
it is simple as this: The world
is full of the strangest gifts.
Like the scent of the quince
floral and tart. Like that
memory I once ran from
that now is treasure
to my heart.
The Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, biodegrade, halloween, mold, pumpkin, transmutation on November 6, 2025| 2 Comments »
Rather not to lift this rotting pumpkin,
its cavern a fuzzy quilt of black, green
and white circles, intricate thread-like
filaments, a moldering world I glimpse
through the sagging holes of the eyes
and the gap where the toothy smile
has curled in on itself. Such disgusting
deliquescence, this clear puddle beneath it.
Of course, the hands would resist to touch it,
and yet, there rises also this awe for the way
life feeds on itself to nourish the whole. What
inside me is ready for such transmutation?
What story, what rule, what old and sturdy should
is ready to change from something solid
and weighty into puddle, then into nothing at all—
How He Loved to Fish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father, fishing, love, memory on November 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.
Fourteen Years Later I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, Narnia, reading, restaurant, story on November 4, 2025| 8 Comments »
that morning in the Cajun restaurant
when the kids and I sat in the corner at a small
square table and after placing our breakfast order,
we arrived in Tashbaan at the home of the Tisroc,
following Shasta who had escaped being sold
as a slave. The waiter brought us eggs
and roasted potatoes tossed with thin slices
of softened red pepper and onion, splash of vinegar,
which we ate as we overheard the Tisroc discussing
the Narnian’s escape and the plans to kidnap
Queen Susan. It was hours after the waiter took
our plates, when the restaurant was fully empty,
that we re-emerged into the world of camping
and swim lessons, all of us fed by the magic of story,
a magic so potent I feel it still, not just the story
of Shasta, but the story of a mother and two children,
how they slipped into their own world, bodies leaning in
toward each other, hearts thundering, eyes bright.
Snapdragons in Autumn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, autumn, bloom, garden, snapdragon on November 3, 2025| 4 Comments »
They no longer bloom,
but the snapdragons bring
an extravagance of dark green
to the garden otherwise bare.
I almost missed this pleasure,
poised as I was to rip them
from the soil when frost took
all the flowers. But there
is something past bloom
in me that thrills now
to see them there, growing
for the sake of growing,
tall and fully leafed out. Grow
while you can, they seem to say.
Until it’s all over, don’t you
ever stop with your growing.
Oh, Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cemetery, gratefulness, wonder on November 2, 2025| 6 Comments »
My wonder has a hill in it,
grassy and steep, and a sky
so blue it feels as if I must have
imagined it. There are gravestones
there, some so old and covered
with orange lichen I can’t read the dates,
and other stones engraved with names
of people I love. My wonder has in it
the scent of fallen leaves and the warm
laughter of women, bright yellow feathers,
and a song I once learned from listening to the air.
A candle filled with marigold petals
that stays lit despite the wind
and sometimes a Stellar’s jay flying through.
There is room enough in it for every version
of myself to enter, even the selves
I have yet to meet, even the selves
I might push away, even the selves
I have thought were myself. All of them
slip away. Wandering the hill,
I am certain of little except the fertileness
of not knowing, the necessity for love,
and the gift of being given new eyes.
After Feeling Stuck for So Long
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enmity, opposites, possibility, relationship, tectonics on November 1, 2025| 7 Comments »
If Hawaii can move closer to Alaska every year,
and it does, those sunny beaches drifting closer
to aqua blue glaciers, then perhaps, I, too, can move
closer to you in my thoughts, though the gap
between us seems wider than the vast Pacific.
At a rate of 7.5 centimeters a year, there’s little
chance of my black sand and your white peaks
ever sharing a shore. For now it is enough to trust
that great unseen forces might help shift us toward
each other. Even now I am feeling it, the possibility.