beside the floodplain
acre after acre of pale blue
thousands of wild iris—
just thinking of sharing them
they become (is it possible?)
yes, more beautiful
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, connection, flowers, poem, poetry, wild iris | Leave a Comment »
cross-state road trip—
traveling with my daughter
three miles per song
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, road trip, singing | 2 Comments »
The world doesn’t want to be saved. It wants to be loved. That’s how you save it.
—Richard Brendan
And isn’t that the way it is—
the truth that opened me yesterday
now puts me in shackles. Whatever
I knew about saving the world
must be lost. Today, the only truth
is the invitation to fall in love
with the world as it is.
Fall in love with the thorn, the sting, the loss,
the ringing in the ears after the shot.
Fall in love with all I’d rather not.
Easier when it’s metaphor. Harder
when it’s wound. Hate. Anger.
Dark snarl of contempt hurled in the face.
Harder when love feels far away.
There’s only one way then to save
the world. How we stand in the middle
of it all, lost. How we love anyway.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged love, poem, poetry, saving the world | 3 Comments »
like a book
that always falls open
to my favorite lines—
this memory of your crooked smile,
your open hand
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged memory, poem, poetry | Leave a Comment »
And after the lying and cheating
and scratching and beating
and lusting and raging,
deceiving and craving,
after almost three hours
we finally know
that no one, no one
is a hero.
And we walk
through the rain
on this imperfect night
to the stain of our cars
and our imperfect lives.
And it rains.
In the great cast list,
my name will be
listed as the woman
who always played me—
the one who never
quite got the role right,
but damn,
she showed up
with her lines
every night.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged hero, poem, poetry, showing up, Taming of the Shrew, theater | Leave a Comment »
The way day doesn’t fight
the dim before night. The way
shore does not resist the river’s rise.
The way air does not refuse
the beat of wing—that’s the way
I want to let tears come.
Why do I try to force
them from falling?
Not that it works anyway.
Still, this defiance, this struggle
to appear unmoved. And why?
When there are children who laugh
and a sky that blues and stories
that break us and laughter that
seizes us? Why try to pretend
we are not changed by the way
a child loves her mother or
a friend perseveres through cancer
or the way a math teacher reminds us we have
86,400 seconds a day to spend
and if we don’t spend them,
they are gone. It is logical to weep
when met with beauty, it is practical
to let the tears release instead
of all this stupid pretending that
we are too cool or too smart or too
sophisticated to be stirred.
No, better to notice when our toes
are dipped in the grand stream
that unites us all and let that water
move right through our eyes—
better not to try to explain it.
Better to wade in the course of tears
and refuse any boat that would keep us
from touching the water. After all,
we know how to swim. After all,
there are so many reasons
to give in to who we are.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, poem, poetry, tears | Leave a Comment »
Pulling ten thousand
yellow-petalled weeds—
how many more millions
left to pull? How soon
will they be back?
Still, marveling
for a moment
at this small bit of
weedless dirt.
In me, how many
thousands of weeds?
And beneath them,
how many gardens
just waiting to be revealed?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged garden, poem, poetry, potential, weed | Leave a Comment »
Beside the dirt road
we find a whole bouquet’s worth
of purple penstemon,
pink wild roses, orange
globe mallow, and countless
yellow weeds. My daughter
picks them, a bride to joy,
and though there is thunder
it doesn’t rain, except for petals,
yellow sweet clover, that
she sprinkles along the dirt
to leave a trail behind us,
just in case we get lost, Mom.
she says. Sometimes love
seems to rise right out of the dirt
and damned if somehow
on that one-way road
I didn’t get wholly, beautifully,
heart breakingly lost.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, flowers, lost, mother, poem, poetry, road | Leave a Comment »
In almost every garden bed,
the sunflowers seedlings volunteer—
and every year I dig them up
and find them a home along the fence
where they can grow extravagantly.
Oh exuberance, of course
I love the sunflowers, their crazy willingness
to grow amongst the beets, amongst
the greens, amongst the chard
and kale and peas. I love their insistence
on making beauty and reaching for light.
I love their great golden heads,
playground of bees, nodding until
all their petals are gone. I know
they don’t mean to shade everything else,
don’t mean to block out the light.
They’re just doing what they were
designed to do. Grow tall.
Be stunning. Gather light. Make more.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged garden, land, poem, poetry, politics, sunflower | Leave a Comment »
choosing at last
to jump over the edge
only to land on another cliff
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cliff, decision, poem, poetry | 3 Comments »
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