Alone, I am too small to meet
the great weight of your pain.
Loving, I want to turn toward you.
Aching, I want to turn away.
But yesterday I rested for a time
on a wide gray rock in an alpine cirque.
In my stillness I felt how surely
I was cradled by the world so much
vaster than I. There, surrounded
by greatness, I invited your pain
into my heart and held you there in me.
I breathed in your ache, my ache,
and felt us both surrounded
by vast fields of wildflowers,
by the deep green shoulders
of sheer gray cliffs. I envisioned
I was breathing out love, but more truly,
I was being breathed by the mountain,
or perhaps by life itself.
The weight of the pain was no less,
but I knew it as a blessing,
a gravitational force magnetizing you and me.
What a gift to hold the weight together,
to know in my whole being
how miraculously we are held.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged breathing, friendship, holding, mountain, tonglen | 2 Comments »
after Jane Hirshfield
Oh look, I say to the cat
You have a soup belly.
I jiggle and wiggle her soft, floppy middle.
She does not love it.
I get it, I say to her. Sometimes
I don’t want to be touched either.
More truly, I do want to be touched,
but only in the way I want to be touched.
The cat holds her paws midair, frozen there,
as if not yet sure if to attack or relax.
She chooses relax. I choose
to massage between her ears.
She nuzzles her small skull into my palm.
I know, I say to the cat. I miss her, too.
We both know she’d rather be with my daughter.
We both feel the absence here.
We sit a long time like this, the cat nuzzling,
me dragging my fingertips forward and back,
forward and back.
With her body, she shows me
just where and how much to touch her.
When I move to rise, she lashes out with a claw
to keep me in place beside her.
In this way, I study my life.
How to hold. How to let go.
Loneliness wears a haunting perfume,
resinous, sweet, full of laughter
and silence. What a gift, I say to the cat,
to miss her together.
I cross the room. The cat follows to where I sit next.
Later, she leads me to her bowl. I follow.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cat, connection, daughter, loneliness, pet, touch | 4 Comments »
Starting here, I want to remember
the spaciousness that emerges in me
when my heart knows itself as an expression
of the one great heart. In those moments,
when the I slips away and the we is all,
when love is unbound from the walls
of my chest and expands across mountains
and deserts and oceans and returns
with the peaks and tide in each breath,
then the rightest parts of my being unclench
themselves, as if all the bars of the inner prison
dissolve and what’s left is freedom
to love beyond judgment, beyond should
and should not, beyond how my one small heart
is capable of loving. I remember the first time
I felt love carry me through a moment
I knew I could not meet alone. Since that time,
I am learning to trust that the heart of all hearts
can rise up in any moment to illumine the path
I do not yet see is possible. Since that time,
I am still surprised but not surprised when
the spaciousness opens me again
to loving what feels impossible to love.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged loss of the separate self, love, spaciousness, surrender | Leave a Comment »
Already the river is lighter in color,
less brown, less turbid, more
translucent. Just yesterday
the currents were thick with mud
and logs, needles and sticks
and bits of once-living debris.
Now that the furious flood has lost
its force, the gravel and sand
have begun their settling.
Whatever was floating now rests
on the banks and all that is left
suspended in the water
is what is most fine.
Soon, even that will sink
and the water will be clear again.
I, too, have felt the gift of slowing,
how it invites a sedimentation
of all I try to carry—the silt of my stories,
the muck of the world.
Like a river, the more calm I am,
the more clear I can become.
No magic, just a matter of physics.
How natural it is, the clearing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged clearing, river, slowness | 6 Comments »
after “Stone” by Charles Simic
I cannot make them out,
these strange writings
on my inner walls.
Each time I feel closer
to deciphering the marks,
it’s as if they rearrange
themselves into new
more mysterious lines.
Some part of me deeply
wants to read them,
to know their secrets.
She takes out her eraser,
her pencil, and begins
the translations again.
Some part of me sits
easily in the midst of all
I do not understand.
She watches the swallows
trace shapes in the air
with the dark inky tips
of their wings.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged language, soul, swallow, translation, unknowing | Leave a Comment »
My favorite alpine skinny dipping hole
a dry rock bed, an inverted monument
to drought—
as if I needed one more reminder
of how fragile it is, this world,
how parched our hearts
can become.
On the long hike home
I swim in the seriousness
of what is not here,
remember how it felt to slip
into the snowmelt,
how my whole being shivered in elation,
how the earth itself was so alive.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged eco-grief, grief, hiking, mountains | 4 Comments »
same fingertips pattering on the grand timpani?
erratic rain on the roof, the red steady pulse inside me
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged humanity, pulse, rain, rhythm | Leave a Comment »
It scared me and thrilled me, the quick spider,
a gentle light gray, like midnight midsummer
in Finland. It was unusually large
for this part of the world where spiders
tend to be smaller than a dime. But this
spider had long, elegant legs,
I carefully gathered it in tissue.
You belong out here, I said, as I walked it to the lawn.
Slow as you please, it let out a length of dragline silk
to dangle from my hand like a pendulum.
Two nights ago, I held in my arms a newborn girl,
eyelashes barely visible, little bubbles forming
between slightly parted lips, her eyes moving
in sleep. What could be in the dreams of a three-
day-old child? I cradled her head in one hand,
her whole body in the other, astonished by how
much preciousness fits in a being so small.
All around us, so many kinds of beautiful lives.
And inside us, so many invisible strands of astonishing
elasticity and tensile strength that weave us together
through the chaos, beauty to beauty to bittersweet beauty
to innocent beauty to unlikely beauty to beauty.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, life, spider | 2 Comments »
for Vivian on her 18th birthday
like six thousand five hundred seventy notes
springing out of the steps of the scales
into new surprising arrangements
she is becoming
her own ecstatic soundtrack
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged birthday, daughter, growing up, mother, parenting | 2 Comments »
I love your big green yard,
love walking in your low cut grass
in the early morning when it’s
dew-lush and cool. Love
seeing my sister crows across the lawn.
Of course, I call out to them.
That’s what we crows do.
That’s what you do, too, honey,
when you walk down the street,
say hello, even to strangers,
because that’s what intelligent,
social beings do.
And those big juicy worms
you grow here? Five out of five stars.
Would recommend.
Of course, I want all my friends
to know where to find them.
To sing is to survive, sweetheart.
And the sun’s up. Time to live loud.
Come walk barefoot in the cool, wet grass.
Feels so good, doesn’t it, the earth so moist,
the dawn light so soft.
Doesn’t it just make you want to sing?
Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
after Muriel Rukeyser
Because two years ago,
another chipmunk ate all our birdseed;
because that same chipmunk
ate all sixty of my sunflower sprouts—
munched the entire row to the ground;
because that same chipmunk
devoured every bright-faced pansy;
because some part of me believes
that what I have planted should grow
for my pleasure and not for yours;
for this, I have decided to despise you,
little chipmunk that took up residency
last week beneath my porch.
I see you dart across the boards,
cheeks full of something,
then empty-cheeked running the other way.
You leap up onto my window sash to watch me
in my rooms. You scurry into the shadows.
Scowling, I point you out to my daughter.
She says, Oh, how cute! I think, Cute?
What? Little vermin isn’t cute.
Except you are. Except your soft, pocket-sized body
and small rounded ears are the actual definition
of cute. Except when I watch you stand straight-spined
on your back legs, front paws held at your chest
as if in prayer, little St. Chipmunk, I soften.
Except when I see your cheeks bulging
five times their normal size stuffed with seeds,
I laugh out loud. In my eagerness to revile you,
I had let myself not see you. I wasn’t interested
in your survival, your story. I wanted only to erase,
to other. To see you beyond what I expect to see
is the sort of transformation that could not have happened
if I were alone. Generosity is how we save each other.
How long would I have gone on in my clenching?
The taste of conceit is bitter.
I had filled my cheeks with it. How sweet it is now,
added to the mix, the taste of curiosity.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged chipmunk, curiosity, descrimination, frustration, judgment, new lens | 13 Comments »
The sky is already past deep rose
verging on bruised plum by the time
we enter the cemetery gates
and walk up the hill to the grave
where the ashes of the boy I love are buried.
I’ve never been here so late.
Didn’t know the flag pole was lit
from below so it looks like a candle,
a tall slender flame, flaring up at the end
of a long, dark canyon. Didn’t know
how the night itself makes a quiet cocoon
for meeting the dead past the limits
of light, a shadow so generous it makes
equal room for sorrow and love to move in.
It’s not a voice, but it is, that says,
You can never lose me.
It’s not a touch, but it is, the invisible hand
that leads me back toward home.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cemetery, grief, love, mother, night, Telluride | 3 Comments »
long ago the door came down,
still I stand at the threshold
of spaciousness, hand raised,
wondering how to knock
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged faith, quatrain, spaciousness, threshold | 1 Comment »
We wandered through green gentians higher than
our heads. Vast fields of larkspur, monkshood, paintbrush.
Sour scent of hemlock, earthy scent
of osha. Stones upturned by bears in search
of grubs. A hundred times we gasped, enraptured
by the aspen’s greens. And every step,
a blessing. Every step a chance to praise.
Some days we can’t remember what it is
we wish we could forget, rare days when ache
can’t find us, days when we wade deeper in
to splendor, oh the largess of such days
when we know well the frailty of life
but feeling held, forget our helplessness.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged being held, blessing, mountains, nature | 1 Comment »
The language of grief is silence.
—Maggie Anderson, “What Grief Does”
No one can translate the language of grief.
No verbs properly express how it collapses
past, present and future into a single tense
in which all becomes unswimmable wave
and at the same time immovable stone.
No way to explain how in my grief lexicon
the word cello can only be spoken in sob.
How the single word shadow is somehow
an entire prayer, equal parts praise and lament.
How there are as many translations for loss
as there are losses, and each phrase mutates
into infinite local dialects spoken fluently only
by the individual who grieves. So perhaps
it is true, the language of grief is silence—
a mother tongue we are all gifted from birth.
Though sometimes the language of grief is wail.
Sometimes sniffle. Howl. Murmur. Hum.
So different, this language, for everyone.
And every moment, a new nuance unfolds.
It’s a wonder we understand each other at all.
Except we do. We share it, this language
we can’t possibly translate and yet we know its
expressions by heart. For this, we offer each other
our ears, knowing full well we can never
wholly understand, knowing full well it matters
that we listen anyway to gurgle, moan, silence, cry.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, grief, language, silence | 4 Comments »
The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Wednesday, July 8, 5-7 p.m. mountain time
On Zoom, recorded, hosted by Evermore
For anyone meeting a loss or grief, no writing experience necessary. Please note that your confirmation email with your link for the workshop will come from Zoom. To register, visit https://secure.everyaction.com/jlxVP8TH2EOWc8nVxvuJuw2
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July 16
Curiouser and Curiouser: A poetic invitation to write into wonderment
Hosted by ONE ART, Zoom, 4-6 mountain time
$30 (sliding scale)
A generative workshop based in play. For more info or to register, visit HERE.
*
July 18 & 19
Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do
10 a.m-4:30 p.m. mountain time, both days, zoom
Join beloved eco-dharma teacher Susie Harrington and poet Rosemerry for two days of possibility and reality. Sliding Scale $80 – $250 Suggested Donation To register or for more information, visit here: https://desertdharma.org/retreats/retreats/poetryretreat.html
*
The Alchemy of Soul Making: Writing with Jung and the Poets
July 22, 29, August 5, 12
11 a.m. – 1 p.m. mountain time
Zoom, recorded
Join cultural historian Kayleen Asbo and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for four weeks of exploring the alchemical stages of inner life through the works of Jung, artists and poets from across the centuries. $100-$200, for more info visit here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wordwoman/2269936
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
At the edge of forest
and field, a dappled fawn
wobbles through tall
grass, each step halting,
delicate. Around her,
the sweet clover blooms
in a yellow haze. Ash
sifts, from the nearby wildfire.
Scent of burning, scent
of change. Lyric variations
of the song sparrow
thread the air as if he is
stitching together all
that is here. Not pictured,
but no less present:
You. The sparrow. The flame.
The fawn steps into the open
to walk inside me, weaves
through a sea of shifting greens.
Long after she disappears,
she does not leave.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blessing, connectedness, fawn, nature | 1 Comment »
Sometimes, certain she has botched it all,
certain she has made of the gift of her life
a desert, something desolate and harsh,
when surely she was meant to create
something lush and verdant, something fecund,
fertile and teeming with wonder, in that moment
of self-inflicted despair, fueled by comparison,
a woman might stand in the midst of that desert
and hold in her hands her own tender heart,
hold it the way she might hold any spiky thing—
lightly, as if it might float—and marvel at the wisdom
of prickly things, how each spine provides a small
measure of shade in a place with no other shelter,
how together those spines reflect the sun to protect
what is inside from burning, how even the prickliest
things are encoded to flower when given more light,
when offered the barest encouragement of rain.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cactus, desert, failure, self-compassion, self-defeating behavior | 3 Comments »
Dad would lie on his back
in the middle of the living room.
I would step into his open palms
on either side of his shoulders
and slowly, he’d lift me into the air.
I loved the wavering, the bobble
before the balance, the moments
of freedom when I floated above him.
Today, when the concert ended
with “What a Wonderful World,”
it was only in the last verse I realized
they’d played Dad’s favorite song
on this day, his birthday, almost
five years after his death, and
I felt it again, that sense of being
elevated by a power greater than my own.
Tears falling even as I started
to laugh. Laughter rising even
as I started to cry. The gift of it all
swirling in me as ecstatic as the violins,
primal and playful as the drum beat,
unexpected as the riffs on the piano,
familiar as my dad’s hands wrapped
around my soles pressing me higher,
oh wonderful world, higher.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged birthday, childhood, dad, daughter, father, memory, music, remembrance, what a wonderful world | 2 Comments »
After the kazoos and champagne and hula hoops,
after the blueberry pie, after the napkins folded
and unfolded and crumpled, after the impromptu
parade on the drive, after the house full of laughter
and music, after the glow sticks, the glittering headbands,
the mountain of dishes washed and dried and put away
there was that moment when we sat on the couch,
just the two of us. You held my hand. We said nothing.
Like two swallows, done swooping for the day
who finally enter the nest they have built together,
snuggling at last on the rim.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged family, fourth of july, partne, silence, swallows | 3 Comments »