Sometimes the worst doesn’t happen.
The flash flood doesn’t flow through the first floor
of your home. The bear doesn’t tear into your tent.
But sometimes the train comes around a bend,
hits a rockfall and comes off the track. Sometimes
the rocket explodes in roiling orange fireball of methane fuel.
Sometimes the car launches from the highway into the air
and crashes, skids, takes out a tree, a bush,
then launches again, only to roll and roll.
When the worst happens, it doesn’t take long
before the inner narrator spins tale after tale
of how much worse it could be. It can always
be worse. Knowing this, what a gift today
to drive up to the front door, the house still intact,
to walk into the home and greet both cats,
to water the succulents on the kitchen shelf,
reheat the soup from the night before, pour
hot water over the mint tea, hold hands
with beloveds, say I love you, say grace.
Archive for May, 2026
Not the Worst
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged narrator, optimism, perspective, the worst on May 30, 2026| 4 Comments »
How the Communication Works Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, grief, invisible, loss, love on May 29, 2026| 4 Comments »
Tonight I can’t see the shape of the moon
behind a cluster of clouds, but I see
the bright radiance seeping through the edges
and know the moon is there—
that is how it is when I speak out loud
to my father and son. Hi Dad, I say.
Hi Finn. I love you. I miss you.
And aren’t you so proud of our girl?
As I walk through the dark, scent of rain
in each breath, I can’t hear the shape
of their words in my ears. But I swear,
I feel it, the shine.
The Moment I Hope to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, exhaustion, graduation, love, mother, ordinary moment on May 28, 2026| 2 Comments »
sitting on the couch,
our bodies lean into each other—
two aspen trees, shared roots
One at Graduation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, learning, school, teacher on May 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »
for every desk,
there was a doorway—
the threshold
now your teacher
The Day Before Graduation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, framing, graduation, love, parent, story, writing on May 27, 2026| 4 Comments »
for Vivian
Already she knows terrible things happen.
Already she knows the pleasure of scrambling
in the woods at night with friends and singing
too loud and making bad choices that are sometimes
exactly the right choices. She knows sobs and
silliness. She knows how much humans can hurt
each other. She knows how a touch or a tender
word erases nothing but creates its own plot of trust.
There was a time when my job was to protect her,
filling her pages with beauty and courage and honesty.
Now my job is mostly to love her, to give her her own pen.
Because terrible things happen. And she is the one now
who shapes her story. Every writer knows, we write
what we know—and what we can’t ever know.
I pray what emerges is the impossible—an irrational,
deep rooted love for this difficult, glorious world.
What Goes On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bindweed, daughter, garden, mother on May 25, 2026| 5 Comments »
Knowing it will grow back tomorrow
does not stop me from pulling
the bindweed today. Once I pulled
bindweed as if the goal was to clear it
from the garden. Now, I pull bindweed
as if the goal is to love this act of being
alive, this ritual of pulling bindweed, my
daughter beside me, soft easy chatter
rising between us. There is no blessing
or disaster yet that has ended this
communion of tugging on the long white
roots. Somehow, in this season of
endings, the bindweed seems to promise
tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Shh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, lilac, scent, silence on May 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
So soft and sweet the scent
of this lilac’s first bloom
I stop trying to praise it
and instead breathe it in—
the eager vibration
of hummingbird wings
says everything.
Intention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, growing, growth, intention, loss on May 22, 2026| 10 Comments »
In the garden, fill a hole with water,
eventually it will drain. Fill it with trash,
with poor soil, nothing—or weeds—
will grow. But fill the hole with topsoil,
intentional seed—is it any wonder
something beautiful eventually thrives?
Consider the hollow left when a loved one
is gone. Nothing will ever be the same as it was.
But if I protect the hollow, allow into it,
more feeling, more love, more honest connection,
if I sow there whatever goodness I grieve,
then how deep the roots might go. How true,
the sapling, its leaves so verdant,
so heartachingly new, so unashamedly green.
Two Thousand Three Hundred Forty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, food, graduation, letting go, love, lunch, mother, school on May 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
That’s how many school lunches
I’ve made her, more or less, since
that first day she held my hand and we
stood on the grass outside the elementary school
before the first bell rang. Her hair was blonde then,
mine not gray. I’m not crying as I make her
lunch this morning. Dilled bean and rice salad.
Fresh blackberries. Pretzel sticks.
Honeycrisp apples sliced into thin rounds
that her friends call “floppy apples.”
Maybe I’m crying.
Me and all the other mothers on the last
day of the last year of school. Thinking of
two thousand three hundred forty bleary mornings
when I woke to pour love into plastic containers
along with dried mango and tofu cubes,
seaweed strips and yogurt tubes.
Okay. So I’m crying. I nibble the squared off core
of the apple to gather every last bit of sweetness.
When it’s gone, I lick the stickiness from my fingers.
Ritual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, blank verse, holiness, losing the separate self, miracle, sonnet, swallows on May 20, 2026| 9 Comments »
As if the losing makes us more of what we are.
It’s not as if the clouds were parted and
some waterfall of golden light poured forth.
No rainbow smeared its hues across the storm-
bruised sky. No wondrous star. No kings with gold.
No angel choir. The sun did not stand still.
No burning bush. No parted seas. No feast
of fish and bread. Sometimes the aching heart
wants blatant, flagrant proof of holiness.
Tonight it was the swallows as they keeled
and curved, converged, dispersed and re-appeared
that altered me. Though truly, it was not
the birds and more the watching as they swooped,
the watching till the watching self dissolved
and the world was only space and darkling wings.
The Night I Remembered What Love Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, breathing, heart, heart energy, love, panic attack, unwanted on May 19, 2026| 12 Comments »
What is unwanted still serves.
—Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”
I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe,
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe—
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me,
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared,
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.
Over Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, connection, flower, garden, growth, lily on May 18, 2026| 2 Comments »
The way my grandmother tended
to her daylilies, that is the way
I want to attune to your words—
knowing how each utterance blooms
only briefly, but when cared for,
the plant itself is hardy, long lasting,
abundant, able to survive both
heat and chill, both loam and clay.
Come love, whisper to me.
I cherish every petal. And when
there is no bloom, I have learned
water and fertilize anyway, to honor
the place where the bloom will be.
Self-Portrait as Seedling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, growth, self-portrait on May 17, 2026| 4 Comments »
To know the self as seedling again.
To push against the home I’ve known
before launching into ecstatic stretch.
To trust again how the slenderest threads
will anchor me to the world.
I had become so enamored with blooming,
I forgot the joy of initiation,
the thrill of not knowing,
the startlement of reaching through
darkness into light.
I’d forgotten the earnest striving
that comes before bud, before petal,
before effulgent perfume.
To be held by it again,
that sacred uncertainty.
To feel the flush of becoming
what I already am.
Walking Across Snowfields at Tree Line in May
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, husband, mountain, partner, snow, tree line on May 16, 2026| 4 Comments »
for my husband
And we’re scooching on the surface,
and we’re skimming on the surface,
and we’re walking on the crust and
we’re up to our crotches in rotten snow,
sharp crystals scratching our legs,
our shoes drenched, our toes cold,
and we climb out to skim again on the surface
and sink. And skim. Get stuck. Crawl out.
It was, of course, a relief to find
ourselves again on a dry dirt trail,
but it was wonderful, wasn’t it, to flounder
and still find our way, I mean
today, but I mean for thirty two years,
falling in deep and choosing again
to take the next step.
Portal
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, holy, lens, nature, pause, thank you on May 15, 2026| 12 Comments »
Not only the golden yellow belly
of the evening grosbeak as he bobs
below the feeder; not only
the rich purple flash of the black-chinned
hummingbird charging the air with iridescence;
it could, in fact, be any gray-winged thing,
even, for instance, a cricket, common as grass,
prehistoric and segmented in its armor, yes,
it could be anything—ant hill, moth dust,
soft moss, ginger—anything at all
that makes you, for a moment, pause
to take in the miracle of what is here, and
the attendant miracle that you are here, too,
as witness, and in this pleat of a pause,
you might find yourself stunned with a gratefulness
you could never hope to name, a thanksgiving
beyond the syllables of prayer, a throbbing
thanksgiving for the utter marvel of this life
that none of us did anything at all to deserve,
yes, gratefulness for the pausing itself,
that portal through which we travel
to find everything, everything is holy,
even the pill bug, even the tick,
even the one who cannot stop stuttering
thank you, thank you, thank you.
The Gift of Forgetting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, loving the world, remembering, spring on May 14, 2026| 4 Comments »
A Thursday so ordinary
I might forget it is another
chance to love this world
until the delicate flowers
of service berry bushes
start to throw their lacy white petals
onto the trail as if I’m a bride
walking the aisle—
and maybe it’s a gift
each time I forget the wonder
of Spring because each time
I remember, I’m remade again
by the simple splendor
of May, how tender the green
of the new aspen leaves,
how urgent the rush of snowmelt
as it pumps through the gorge
with its cold, clear song,
how warm the air playing on my face
like a lover’s hands ever so gently
lifting the veil.
At the Table of Loss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, loss on May 13, 2026| 2 Comments »
As many chairs
as humans.
No way to refuse
what we are served.
We choke on
the courses.
How is it they
nourish us?
Beneath the table,
we hold hands.
In Its Own Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bats, forgiveness, humility, surprise on May 12, 2026| 7 Comments »
Long before dark
a single bat zig zags
and dips, its erratic
twisting and diving
so unlike the smooth
loops of swallows—
it’s like when forgiveness
grows wings before the mind
is on board, moving inside us
with its own mysterious
intelligence. More agile than we thought,
surprisingly flexible, wild, clearly blind.
How strange to see it fluttering
in the light, something we’ve been told
is improbable.
We couldn’t say it’s beautiful,
yet we can’t stop staring.
How humble it is. How hungry.
What the Heart Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, car, control, grief, safety on May 11, 2026| 51 Comments »
In every moment, there is a car
and an infinite hill and the chance
you will roll down that hill. With no brakes.
Backwards. When grief first yanked me
into its old beater, I was too stunned
to try to stop gravity from doing what
gravity does. Mostly, these days,
I forget what can happen. Mostly,
there’s a rope attached to the car
that keeps it from careening, a rope
made of friendship, of family,
of trust in the self that has grown over time.
The rope is a lovely illusion.
Sometimes I fool myself into believing
that the stability I feel is because
the brakes are fixed and I’ve become
better at parking, even in the steepest zones.
I fool myself into thinking the rope can’t be cut.
That is why, perhaps, it’s so surprising
when I feel the lurch, my stomach rising
into my chest. So surprising to see loss
is sitting in the driver’s seat looking
at me with its uncompromising gaze
as if to say, No, sweetheart,
that seatbelt won’t do you any good.
If you pray, now’s a good time for that—
but don’t bother to pray for the car
to stop. Pray to be able to laugh
as we speed down the hill.
Pray that as the world blurs by,
while terror squeezes your throat
what is most alive in you also notices
how radiant the sunset, how briefly
it shines, that tender pink.