Someday I will miss a morning like this,
when I rise in the dark to slice apples
and scrape ice from the windshield
so I can drive my daughter to school.
My husband in the kitchen making toast.
My tea warm. Raisins sweet.
The backyard geese a riotous racket
and a black-haired cat who wants nothing
more than to nudge my chin with her chin.
A morning so ordinary it would never dream
of flaunting its gold—no, it just spends it
on the light that streams in through the window
to land on my shoulder as if tapping me
to say, this is it. This. This.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
A Humble Aliveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daily, humble, morning, ordinary, simple on March 21, 2024| 10 Comments »
Falling in Love with Life on the Equinox
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, equinox on March 19, 2024| 4 Comments »
Because after the sunshine
slipped under my sweater,
snowflakes teased my cheek.
Because this morning’s silence
became mid-morning geese.
Because waking. Because sleep.
Because after the memorial
for a beloved, wizened man
we watched kids walk across
the stage at school. Because
foolishness. Because truth.
Because buds swell on willows
and still the garden sits untouched.
Because love. Because fear.
Because my heart is here and
not here. Because there are moments
we feel ourselves balanced
between two sides of the same life.
Because balance lasts only a moment.
Because day. Because night.
What the Self Really Wants
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, infinite self, naked, self, story, what is on March 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
When the story of self
slips off like a mask, the sky
is more sky and an apple
more apple and the self
less self and more
what a wind is. How easy
to love then when I’m naked.
And how is it that always
some new story arrives,
solidifies less like a cast,
more like a strait jacket?
I notice because life
starts to fit too tight.
I notice because
I start to think I’m right.
But it’s no failure when a story
appears. Just an invitation
to notice how it feels
to be dressed in a story.
An invitation to pray
to the mystery, please,
once again undress me.
An invitation to be grateful
for the hands (whose hands?)
that loosen the story
and free me. An invitation
to let the self remember this:
how it longs to be spacious,
to be as infinite as what is.
At the Inner Table
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner argument, inner voices, parts of the self, presence on March 17, 2024| 10 Comments »
We actually transform the world from within our hearts.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Anita Forrer (January 10, 1920)
“But I need to do something to fix this now,”
says the fixer. And the doubter says,
“What can be done from across the world?”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “I don’t know what to do,
but it can’t go on like this.”
And the doubter says, “It’s been like this
as long as humans have lived.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “Humans also heal.
And make peace. And forgive.”
And the doubter says, “What difference
could one person possibly make
when presidents and diplomats have failed?”
And meanwhile, the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the questioner wonders,
is she an olive branch? An open hand?
One more promise? One more fist?
Is she a wall? A rallying cry?
A never-ending debate? A rising tide?
And the fixer says, “I will not just stand by.”
And the doubter says, “It’s hopeless.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And who is the one who, with infinite compassion,
listens to each of the voices?
The fixer can’t let it go. “It’s urgent!” she says.
The doubter throws up her hands and huffs,
“We’ll never learn how to be together.”
And who is the one who, even now,
is making more space at the table of the heart,
a table big as the world?
And the woman who reads the news
feels her heart break even wider.
A tear falls down her cheek.
One Listening to Dvorak
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cello, chamber music, fulfillment, love, music on March 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »
with such fierce tenderness
the bow urges strains from the cello
like that, love, play me
One Alleluia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged reslilience, singing on March 14, 2024| 8 Comments »
in the ruined chapel
of the heart
not a hymnal to be found
the choir
still singing
What Lives On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, mariachi, memory, music on March 13, 2024| 10 Comments »
It didn’t last, but there was that afternoon
when we were walking side by side
down the middle of the street,
all four of us straddling the center line,
different musicians every few blocks.
It was Father’s Day. The alpine sun
was hot but not unbearable, and we stopped
to listen to the bright brass of the mariachi band.
My kids were not embarrassed when I hummed along
to Guantanamera—or at least they did not tell me so.
We laughed about I don’t remember what, but
I remember the laughter and the light,
easy feeling I had, a full-body certainty
everything was going to be okay.
I remember how our shadows
stretched out on the street in front of us
like a future I could not read.
I fell in love with the shape of our shadows,
not knowing how soon there would be only three.
These moments of gladness—
like notes in the summer air, they don’t stay.
But they stitch themselves into our being,
a goodness that lives and lives,
sometimes hidden for years until
it sings back to life with joy so real
I can almost feel the sun on my back,
can almost hear all of our voices
join the chorus for La Bamba.
Even now, alone in my quiet room,
my smile is as real as the tightness
in my chest, as real as those trumpets,
real, that blue, blue sky.
If the Heart Could Dog Ear a Day, There Would Be This Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, grace, memory, photograph, rain, reverence on March 12, 2024| 11 Comments »
The autumn rain was not warm, but soft,
the kind that makes everything shine.
Even the sidewalk. Even a Tuesday.
Likely the air smelled of leaves and cut grass.
Likely the birds were a riotous chorus,
because that’s how it is here in fall.
What I remember so clear is how you
rushed out the front door
in your favorite hand-me-down dress
with brown velvet polka dots
and a pink satin sash—
mighty fancy for a day spent at home—
and began to dance on the driveway,
both arms lifting into the drizzle,
an elegant twist to both small wrists,
one leg stretched straight,
your bare toes pointed to the pavement,
your face raised up to the rain.
It’s your smile that startles me,
then and now, a look of deep contentment,
measureless pleasure in being.
Over ten years later, I still see it in you,
something utterly unfakeable, wildly true,
the capacity for joy beyond the frame.
It vibrates in me like the tone
of a gong struck gentle and long,
until I too am shining
with trembling reverence,
astonished by the grace that’s here.
Even when it’s gray. Grayer. Even when it’s cold.
After the Long Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dante, door, harmony, music, silence on March 11, 2024| 14 Comments »
harmony opens in me
the doors of forgiveness,
just a sliver—
then it dissolves
the idea of a door