Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It’s hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That’s the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Breathing Wind Podcast: Honoring the Full Range of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged All the Honey, breathing wind, grief, podcast on March 21, 2023| 4 Comments »
Oh friends. I was interviewed by the most beautiful cohosts for the most moving podcast. Breathing Wind is, as they say, like an audible hug–warm, moving, intimate conversations about grief. The episode that came out today is a very raw, vulnerable conversation in which we talk about losing my son, writing as part of the grief process, how love has shown up to support me, learning to trust life and love in a time of trauma, and much more. I read a few poems from my new book, All the Honey, which comes out April 18, and we talk about opening, doing nothing, being lived, saying hello to what is difficult and more. I am in awe of the grounded, gentle, loving nature of the co-hosts and have fallen in love with their podcast. I hope you will listen and subscribe–Naila and Sarah offer such a beautiful, heart-opened, loving way to feel connected in a time of loss.
The Mystery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, falling in love with the world, mystery on March 21, 2023| 1 Comment »
By now I know it’s impossible
to make someone else
fall in love with the world,
so when you say to me,
Look, Mom, the sky, it’s so beautiful,
and you stand there in the glow of sunset,
soft pink shining on your face,
I fall more in love not only with you
but with whatever it is
that opens us to wonder—
whatever grand mystery it is
that breathes warmth on our tight scales
and whispers to us, open,
then helps us get out of our own way
as one by one the petals unfurl,
and my god, the beauty,
the mystery, the beauty.
A Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, loss, love, presence, time on March 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
In the dream, you are ten
and your slender body
curls into my side. We
lie on a purple bed.
Our awareness wings
at the edge of sleep,
our bodies more stone
than bird, your head
on my arm as heavy as time,
and I think, I love this
sweet sapling boy.
In the dream, you are alive,
and I sink all the way
into the sweetness
of the moment
the way I sometimes don’t
in life. I sink full weight
into the tender present
and no part of me wishes
to be anywhere but
in the low golden dream light,
your body warm and gentled,
my body quiet and easy.
Two days later,
I feel it still, the heft of love
unending and generous
close against my side.
It invites me to be more here
with the ones I am with.
With that same arm that held you,
I hold them. Time lifts.
Launch Day! The Poetic Path on the Ritual App
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged audio poem, The Poetic Path on March 20, 2023| 9 Comments »
When we show up every day with poems, it changes the way we see the world. That’s the premise for “The Poetic Path,” a new daily audio poetry program I am hosting. It’s available on your phone using the Ritual app.
Since last October, I’ve been talking with the good folks at Ritual, a fabulous app of wellbeing practices led by compassionate leaders in self-care, faith, and culture. Guides include New York Times best-selling authors, Olympic gold medalists, and renowned self-care experts (Alex Elle, Parker Palmer, Simone Manuel, Sharon Salzberg)–and now me!
As you know, friends, I’ve been writing a poem every day for over 15 years, and this practice has changed everything about how I live my life. I’ll bring that experience to the daily segments–they run around 6 minutes each. Every day on Ritual, I will read a poem I have written (not the same one from the daily blog), talk about where it came from, read it again, then offer optional ideas for conversation, thinking or your own writing. The whole idea is simply to show up and listen. That’s it. From my experience, daily engagement with poems changes how we meet our day, how we frame our choices, and how we engage with others in our lives. Poems make us laugh. They punch us in the gut. They make us cry. And help us embrace paradox.
I hope you’ll join me on The Poetic Path, and start meeting the same world in a new way.
To sign up for Ritual and listen daily to The Poetic Path, using your phone, visit here.
While Doing Laundry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, laundry, trash on March 19, 2023| 3 Comments »
this wrinkled yellow candy wrapper
found in the pocket
of your old blue coat
suddenly precious
because once you touched it
Two Days Before Spring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, blessings, bluebird, luck, waking on March 19, 2023| 6 Comments »
Without knowing it this morning,
I woke to the day
the bluebirds returned.
Every morning it is like this—
the chance to rise into a day
of unexpected blessings.
All afternoon the bluebirds weave
through the field, perch on the roof,
bob in the grass.
I marvel at how easily
beauty slips in to help me
fall in love with not knowing.
All day I feel lucky,
like a woman given
a truth so precious
not because she deserved it
but because she woke up
and met the day.
On Language
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, grammar, language on March 17, 2023| 6 Comments »
You, language, that rises
out of quiet air, from where?
How syllable? How syntax?
From whence come gifts
of fricative and nasal,
glide and vowel? From where
these translations of mood
into ooo and thhhh
and mmmmm and ah?
Sweet miracle, language,
the kindness of phonemes
the sweet generosity
of grammar—glorious
as a cherry tree in spring—
that teaches us to say
I am, you are, we have been,
we will be, we are going
to be, we might, we are;
all those truths spilling
from our mouths
that escape the known
like petals that form,
then flutter away
from the bough
into silence.
The Great Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, frame, grief, love, reframe on March 16, 2023| 11 Comments »
Let this sorrow
that has opened me
to love
be like a frame
that has no photo—
so I might know
how to be this broken open,
this tender, this compassionate
with anything,
not only toward the one
who first filled the frame.
Let me not try to control
what is worthy of framing.
Let me trust everything
is worthy of prayer,
of consideration.
Let sorrow continue
to teach me generosity.
Let the frame be big enough
to hold it all.
While I Sit Quietly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, inner child, Rumi, spinning, whirling on March 15, 2023| 7 Comments »
The child inside me is spinning. She
loves the way her skirt rises
as she twirls. She knows nothing
of the Coriolis force
that acts on objects
in motion. She knows only
that she is in motion. She knows
her skirt rises higher and whirls more
the faster she goes, and she
likes it, the way it ripples
and flows, how it swirls around
her legs in a happy yellow
froth. She likes it so much
that she spins and spins
until she is dizzy and
stumbling, spins ’til she drops
in a laughing yellow heap on
the floor. She loves her new
discovery. She is eager and
silly, alive in her body. She jumps up
and spins again. And what of the woman
with graying hair, the woman
sitting quietly in the soft green
chair. She appears still, but
what no one can see—on
the inside she spins like
a dervish, a hypnotic whirling
born of grief that helps her meet
the illusion of separation, she
spins like the earth itself is spinning, spins
while her center stays still, and
what rises is peace, flaring
around her in long white waves
and she doesn’t lose her balance, and
the laughter of fifty years ago escapes
through her lips and
ripples, amazed, through
the silence.