fearing the flag
no longer represents me
I start to fly the flag
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so grateful to share
it with you—
this loneliness
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, friendship, loneliness | 2 Comments »
They, too, once had gardens filled
with succulent dark leaves and firm
swollen roots they planted to feed
their family, their community, themselves.
They, too, would walk the rows and tug
at weeds and make small, quirky bouquets
to take to the graves of their loved ones.
I don’t know why their gardens are gone now.
Perhaps covered in ash from wildfire.
Perhaps bombed out and torn up by war.
Perhaps transformed to dust by drought.
Or perhaps they are simply too old now
to pick up the trowel, the shovel,
the hoe. But the women remember
how they marveled at the pea vines climbing
the fence to produce a profusion of sweet
green pods dangling on the wire.
I long to feed them from these beds,
if not the food itself, feed them at least the ongoing
dream of garden, as someday I, too,
will be offered the dream through the hands
and thoughts of another woman who finds herself
standing in the midst of abundance longing
to share it with all the women who can’t
find their way into the garden today.
Not knowing how to bless them, I bless them anyway
as I have been blessed, and I transplant calendula,
deadhead the cosmos, harvest
heads of garlic, brush the loose dirt away.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged abundance, blessing, gardening, women | 2 Comments »
The bright red glow of wildfire flared up
into the night, a terrible, beautiful, changing glow.
We couldn’t not look, students of fire
that we are, and I was suddenly too aware
of the dry and brittle parts of myself, places
parched as these Cimarron mountains.
How easily it can all go up.
We are asked to live this life
that can combust in an instant,
asked to pull the unstoppable into our lungs.
The glow continued to blaze, to leap up.
It burned. I could not stop watching
the tower of flame, the way it charged the night.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged fire, wildfire | 2 Comments »
First, they start close to the floor,
practice walking heel to toe, practice
bouncing and turning and gazing
at a distant object instead of looking
down at their feet. As the stakes
and the rope get higher, they
begin to practice failure. Practice
hanging from the wire for long
periods of time. Practice holding
their own weight. This. Perhaps
this is what we are doing now
with democracy. Practicing
how to hold up our weight.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
View it all as practice. Trust that balance
depends on tension. Trust that
every step matters.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged America, failure, practice, risk, tight rope | 4 Comments »
all those feelings of brokenness
I tried to throw away
now shining in the starlight
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged brokenness, feelings, shining | 4 Comments »
for Sister Roseann and the Monastic Congregation of St. Scholastica
On the left wrist of the nun
with the silver hair and soft eyes
was a bracelet made by a child.
Small white cubes with black all caps
proclaimed, “NEVER GROW UP.”
With an impish shrug of her shoulders
she explained she might have written
“NEVER GIVE UP.” And I thought
how for fifteen hundred years
her order has flourished through
the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire,
The British Empire, the Aztecs,
Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse.
Has grown through the introduction of zero
as a standalone number and paper money,
gunpowder and windmills and the compass.
Has seen the creation of moveable type
and the steam engine, has witnessed
the telegraph and email and bots that answer the phone.
And I felt it inside her, still growing,
the devotion of centuries, the kind of faith
that lives on past plastic bracelets,
cherry Twizzlers and Instagram, a community
grown in the deep, rich soil of humility,
simplicity, hospitality, moderation and prayer.
I felt it in her open smile, in the
kind way she held my hand in hers,
in the way she reframed her work
as faithfulness, I felt her trust
that some things continue to prosper
against all odds, this, the gift of never
growing up, of never giving up,
of ever growing beyond understanding.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Benedictines, community, history, humility, longevity, religion | 6 Comments »
she felt the gift
of her own darkness
how it uplifts
even the smallest light
as treasure
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Sometimes a wound must stay a wound.
—James Crews, “Wound”
Sometimes I remember a wound
must stay a wound. Why then,
this impulse to bring you a vase of blue
larkspur, white lilies and a blessing
instead of sitting with you in the dark
and letting what is dark be dark.
When I am brave enough to see
beyond my longing to soothe,
all I want is to be with you in the dark.
To steep together in the uncomfortable ache.
To quietly meet you in the wounded place
so you know you are not alone.
Perhaps I will always send you lilies,
but let me also trust how necessary it is,
the open ear, this tenderness,
this willingness to be with,
more gift than any flower.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged being with, fixing, friendship, wound | 4 Comments »
I see them everywhere, hearts.
In cumulous clouds and sunflower leaves.
In thinly sliced strawberries
and the dark hollow of a split hickory nut.
I see them in white bird shit splatted on a bench,
these symmetrical kissing curves
designated as an ideograph for love.
And how many hundreds of heart rocks
have I slipped into my pockets to bring home
like sedimentary and igneous proofs
of love manifest in matter.
I don’t know when I stopped collecting
the rocks, finding more joy in picking
them up and displaying them trailside
so others could delight in them, too.
Later, I took pictures of the hearts
where I found them, wanting not to disturb,
perhaps trusting that love shows up
exactly where it is needed most.
Now, when I see them,
I will most likely smile to myself
as I walk by, no longer needing
to stockpile or keep a record.
Still, it surprises me every time,
the joy of loving things just as they are,
the joy of leaving things whole.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged collecting, heartsong, leaving things, letting go, rocks | 2 Comments »
She lets us touch her neck, her back, that beautiful,
old, black mustang. Cautiously, we flank her
and stroke her taut sides, our hands full of praise.
Her large gray eyes droop. She begins to drool.
Joe laughs, saying she is so at ease
she is about to fall asleep.
I am thinking of how every morning I take
calcium, B-vitamins, drink water with lemon,
believing small daily habits make a big difference
over time. Perhaps it is the same with awe—
spending even a few moments a day touching
something greater than we are will eventually
change who we are inside. I believe that tonight,
moved as I am by the surprising softness of her hips,
the trust she conveys with her stillness, my palm
moving slowly against her side. Her ease becomes
my ease as I watch my daughter rest her forehead
on the mustang’s withers. The great being’s trust
becomes my trust as the sunset turns
the whole world to amber, to gold.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged awe, Grace Reins, horse, mustang, self-care, trust | 4 Comments »
In the morning,
I light the candles.
With each light,
I say the names.
Each name represents
a blessing that became
a wound that became again
a blessing. This is how
the heart makes of its losses
a salve, touching again
and again the dark
with its own dark, then
adding the smallest of lights
until light is what a heart
does.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged candle ritual, dark, grief, healing, light | 8 Comments »
It used to annoy me,
the way my husband
cleans every trail
he walks on, slowing
down to kick off the
smaller rocks,
stopping to pick up
and toss the larger ones.
Every. Single. Rock.
Perhaps it still annoys
the part of me that loves
a heart pumping pace,
but now I honor how
he has chosen this one
small act as one way
he can serve the world.
But if he could, on our daughter’s
paths, pick up all the obstacles,
I don’t think he would.
Such a gift for a father to give:
An open hand and heart that says
I will pick you up if you fall.
An open hand and heart that says
I trust you enough
to let you stumble at all.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged allowing, father, Father's Day, hiking, poem, poetry | 4 Comments »
moment so honest
I put down the pen
and let myself be written.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged authenticity, humility | 1 Comment »
You may not believe me, but
the building was floating.
Well above its foundation.
Right there in the middle
of the Hudson Valley woods,
surrounded by oak and locust,
squirrels leaping from tree to tree.
You may not believe me, but that building
not only lifted from the ground
and hovered in the air like a hummingbird
might hover above a Hosta or honeysuckle,
it glowed. The building glowed. A soft, golden
hue that radiated through the gray
cocoon of the day, as a lighthouse beacons
through fog.
And if you had been there in the building,
you might have felt it, too, the fluttering truth
of what happens to a body when,
layer by layer it opens and opens,
resists and opens, meets shame and opens,
meets fear and opens, meets ache and disgust
and exhaustion and opens and opens until
all that is left of a person is the opening itself.
You may not believe that we,
who were in that floating building
became the glow, but I know.
In my cells, still glowing hours later,
I know. I know.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cello, Noah Hoffeld, Omega, opening, retreat, sharing, vulnerability | 6 Comments »
The woman sits on the bench
in the field of clover and watches
the bumblebees clamber
from flower to flower. What goes on
goes on all around her. Something
inside her is infinitely still.
It invites her to enter.
In this moment,
everything is door.
She is both clover and bee,
both air and wings.
She is what is still
and all that is moving.
Is one who is sung
and one who sings.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bee, clover, connection, moment, movement, paradox, stillness | 7 Comments »
Delighted, I plunged my face deep into the bush,
laden as it was with slender trumpeted white flowers
and I pulled the generous scent into my being.
“Honeysuckle,” James confirmed, stepping
closer to inhale and for a moment we lingered,
infused with the lavish perfume of June,
and when we pulled away, he said, “You know,
the ticks love hanging out in the honeysuckle.”
We stared at each other then in emerging realization
and began to brush our hands across our bare arms,
our bare cheeks, our bare necks. Is it true
every joy has, lurking inside it, an insidious fear?
I know how beauty calls across the spectrum to its opposite,
how they chime together like meditation bells
inviting us into the all that is. What surprised me
was the laughter that spilled forward then,
the way I flopped over at the waist like a rag doll,
giggling, disgust and mirth mingling, conspiring
to open me. Long after we walked away, I could still
smell it, the glory of the flowers, how it hung in the air.
Could still feel it, the fear, how it crawled on my skin
with its eight quick legs. Could still taste it, the laughter
of friends, how it lingered sweet on my lips, like sugared
maple, like the juice of ripe berries, like honey.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged friendship, honesuckle, james crews, scent, tick | Leave a Comment »
“The airport smells like ammonia,” says Karen
as we sit and wait for our plane. It does. Sharp.
Stinging. She’s off to Minnesota, I’m off to New York,
and as we catch up about children and jobs,
I take a limbic trip to my childhood home, and I’m nine
and my hair is wrapped tight around thin,
pink plastic curlers. We’re in the upstairs
bathroom with little flowers in the wallpaper,
and my grandmother is squirting
something stinky and cold on my scalp,
dousing me in the terrible smell.
She tops me off with a white shower cap and
admonishes me to be patient. Though perhaps
I was still, I was not patient. Staring at myself
in the bathroom mirror, I wanted to be beautiful.
I wanted to be treated like a grown up. I wanted
to please my grandmother. After processing,
after neutralizing, after the curlers came out,
and after the final wash, I did not feel beautiful.
Or grown up. But I did feel, at least for that moment,
cared for by a woman who was seldom warm.
Almost fifty years later, I recognize the perm
for what it was, a four-hour hug. And there,
next to gate 3A, I smell it so strong, her love.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 70s, affection, granddaughter, grandmother, hair, perm, scent, smell | 2 Comments »