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Archive for December, 2025

At Her Last Dance Recital

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 14, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
It was not all for this one moment
when she stood alone on stage,
poised on her toe shoes, both arms
raised, her hands and wrists pulsing
in delicate waves—all the pink tights
and hair nets, blisters and tears
and long rehearsals for fourteen years—
it was not all for this winged moment
when Saint-Saëns played and she leapt
and pirouetted and pas de bouréed—
but this was the moment when I knew
with certainty that in a world of ache
and cruelty, we can change the world
and be changed by beauty.

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One Waiting for College Admissions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


after Hokusai
 
I fall asleep, wake,
fall asleep, wake, meanwhile
the sapling becomes a great spruce

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The Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


for B
 
The day after you died,
everyone was you.
Every man behind a counter,
every woman on a phone,
every child, every grandmother,
every stranger in the airport,
every driver on the highway.
Every voice was your voice.
Every face was your face.
Who else, I wondered, was
certain they could not live
another moment? Not knowing
the answer, I imagined love
carrying all our fragile,
floating hearts. I had never
been more certain of
the holiness of everyone.
This, the gift you gave me.
When I arrived home, I lit
a candle. It was your name
I said into the flame,
wishing you peace.
It was you I wept for,
you I wished for.
And you were everyone.

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On Her Birthday, a Thank You Letter to Emily Dickinson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 11, 2025| 9 Comments »


Dec. 10, 1830-May 15, 1886
 
 
Dear Emily, your words expressed
the weather of the soul—
the hailstorm no less right than sun—
the heart has room for all—
 
you understood how anguish
is what opens best the heart—
the sadder our circumstance,
the more we speak with stars.
 
And as I am a wanderer,
your poems are the pasture—
they help me ground myself on earth
but nod to something vaster—

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What Leaves Us

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


 
 
Once I knew the names for these clouds,
rounded, puffy and rolling.
I rush out the back door
to see them gather in the west
turning vibrant rose and dusky rose and
deeper shades of darkened rose,
and the only word that rises is “oh!”
I remember how I loved the naming.
Now I love the clouds. How they
sow light in the wild blue fields of sky
and invite every dark thing in me
to look up and be part of the beauty  
without trying to own it, to practice
loving what is beautiful knowing
for certain it will go.

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This, Too, Is What I Was Born For

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


                  with a phrase from Augusta Kantra
 
 
To sit late at night by the small fire
my daughter has made using cedar wood
split by the man I married over thirty years ago.
To feel the good heat of it reach through
the thick muscles of my back, infusing
me with such honest contentment
I unfold in the warmth.
To feel grateful for this small constellation
of family, humbled again and again
by the tenderness we offer each other.
Is it everything, this whispery moment,
with its soft glow of enoughness,
this ease that arrives in me,
as quiet as evening, when I am able to honor
every wanted and every unbidden thing
that conspired to bring me here to this hearth
in winter’s dim light. And like a violet
that can’t help but open at the slightest warmth,
I fall in love again with this life.  

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Present

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 7, 2025| 9 Comments »


 
 
I open the moment as if it were a box
and, shocked by the cruelty I find,
I want to close the lid.
Want to pretend I don’t see the tears,
don’t hear children screaming.
I want to not feel my own heart whacking
like a club inside my chest.
 
In the myth, Pandora closes the lid
on hope and keeps it locked in.
But more than I want to close the box,
I want to keep it open.
I want to stay with the ache.
I want to be with what is real.
What is real: I keep the box open.
 
What is real: There is no box.
What is real: Sometimes I fear
there is no hope left. And sometimes
when I am very still with what is,
hope flutters inside me. How?
I don’t know. But its small wings
open like prayer inside my breath.

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The Outing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 6, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
Because once I was an ocean
and now I am a mother,
because every single moment
is integral to ever after,
I give myself to this snowy hour
skiing into the woods with my daughter
and know that no matter how brief a day,
an hour lasts forever.

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The Layers

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


 
 
Furrowed and runnelled and rough,
the gnarled bark of this old cottonwood.
The dead thickness protects living tissue
from cold, from wind, from flames.
I, too, am older, but somehow survival
shows up for me the opposite.
Any shields I would build up as barriers—
life keeps peeling them away.
 
What thickens around me now are layers
of dynamic compassion—vital, vulnerable,
ever-growing. They do not protect
against wounds. Instead, they seem to say,
Be with what aches, my dear. Trusting
discomfort is the only way.

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I could not have asked for it

Posted in Uncategorized on December 4, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
but there was that moment
when I, so stunned with shame,
bent with the ache I had caused,
went to the middle of the field
and flattened myself to the ground,
face up, arms wide, legs splayed,
and I felt into the full horror
of what I had wrought—
never wanting to hurt anyone.
And I did not die. Though perhaps
parts of me died. The part that believed
I could get through this life
without hurting anyone else.
The part that wanted to blame
anyone besides myself.
I don’t know how long
I stayed there, breathing deep,
lying still in that tall dry grass,
but I thank that old version of me
who chose to meet every terrible truth
and feel the awful weight.
She could not have known
how beautiful that moment
is to me now. I remember
the cold earth on my back.
I remember how the weak sun
bloomed warm on my chest.
How free it felt to be honest.
How the wind moved across my body
and touched me everywhere.

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