They are faded, the pink roses
made of fabric someone left
at your grave, and the leaves,
once green, are faint shades
of yellow, and I love them,
these petals that are so much more
than frayed polyester,
transformed as they are
into remembrance. Someone
else misses you, too.
Why does this move me so?
I, too, am fraying. Fading.
Being unmade. I do not mind
the undoing, the new way of being
less interested in perfection.
It’s what happens,
the price for choosing
to show up in all weather
to honor who we love.
I weep for a while beside
the granite with your name in it.
As always, you’re still with me
when I go.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged artificial flowers, bereaved mother's day, fading, flowers, grave, grief, love | 6 Comments »
Each night before dinner
I slide my hand, palm up,
across the table toward yours,
and always, you rest your hand on mine,
the way a petal might land on a leaf,
the way a leaf might land on grass.
So gentle your hand
that is equally at home in my hand
as it is in the engine of an old Toyota truck
or tightening a valve on the irrigation pump,
wielding a chainsaw or dripping hot wax
onto a ski before scraping it off.
So many ways I don’t know your hands—
how they fidgeted when you were a child,
how they fumbled when you first tied a shoe,
what they clutched when you felt alone.
But now, they are nearly as familiar to me
as my own hands—how your hands
flutter up to press to your lips,
how they cup each other to create
a small cave you breathe into when thinking,
how they pull through my hair
when I lay my head in your lap,
how they help me to know my own shape,
how one hand of yours will rest
against one hand of mine
to tether us even in sleep.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged hands, love, marriage | 12 Comments »
The way grass belongs to the meadow—
how without it, the meadow
would not be meadow—
this is the way you belong in my heart.
Not that I’ve made a space for you here,
more that you’ve helped make my heart what it is,
and without you, my heart is not my heart.
I cradle you here as in a nest of wheat—
soft home, humble home, ever rewoven
to fit the changing shape of you.
It’s not true our hearts are our own—
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Who am I? Who am I?
You, my sun, my grass, my wind.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged belonging, friendship, grass, love, meadow | 6 Comments »
I was beautiful then, I think,
when I look at the picture
that Facebook shows me
from nine years ago.
I was slenderer, my shoulders
well-muscled, my brown hair
not threaded with gray.
But I remember the day
that picture was taken,
and I know full well
the woman smiling did not
believe she was beautiful,
though perhaps she would
have looked at an image
of herself from nine years before
and thought oh, I was beautiful then.
How is it beauty is something
I can’t see in myself in this moment,
only from a decade away?
So today, when I look in the mirror
and see the papier-mâché skin
above my eyes, the deepening lines
that etch my lower lip to my chin,
the thick hips, the thick thighs,
I try to see myself with the eyes
of myself nine years from now
knowing she would look
at the woman in the mirror
and say to me, sweetheart,
I’m not surprised you cannot see
what I see, how the broken world
has opened you, changed you.
And though it has nothing to do
with your eyes, your hair,
my goodness, you are beautiful.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beauty, future self, self talk | 6 Comments »
the first cello note
as the bow touches the strings—
my heart as you open the door
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
I said yes today when Linda asked
if I’d like a nutritious drink to go.
You’ll need the protein, she said, as she slipped
the bottle into a paper bag. I said yes
when she offered to bring me food later.
Said yes when she offered to bring me wine.
And when Steve said, Let’s go outside,
I said yes. Yes as he showed me the best spot
to sit to face east in the morning. Yes
as he showed me the place to face west.
And later when Joan asked if she could hold me—
one palm to my chest, one palm to my back,
her forehead touched to my shoulder—
I said yes. I said yes as she helped me
to carry boxes and bags. Said yes
as she handed me water. I, the queen of no,
said yes. I, who have thought I could do it
alone, I who desperately want to not be a burden,
I who have longed for control,
I who have made a small cell out of no
said yes and felt the doors of reluctance
swing open then fall off their hinges then
dissolve into gratefulness. How long
have I thought I needed to do this alone?
How long have I clung to this island
of separateness? How sweet
it tastes, this yes. Like chocolate,
with thirty grams of protein no less.
Like pure water, offered in a small white cup,
something I need to live. Something I’m made of.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged friends, help, no, yes | 10 Comments »
There is an old woman inside me
with long gray hair and fuzzy green eyes.
She is soft in the way stones are soft
when tumbled by waves for a hundred years.
She is still as I run from room to room
content to listen to my bluster,
to watch the day unfold.
Her smile is gentle as dawn light
as she hums a wordless tune.
And as I make calls and check schedules,
she curls in the lap of my busyness
like an ash-colored cat,
her body warm and relaxed.
I love the old woman inside me,
gnarled as the branches of an old peach tree.
She is no stranger to how the world changes.
Every day I practice to be more like her,
slow as honey, quiet as moonlight,
familiar as the woman in the mirror.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, inner self | 10 Comments »
for Wendy
Into my hand, she pressed
a smooth rock she’d painted copper.
In all capital letters, turquoise and navy,
she’d written the word RESILIENCE.
Beneath it she’d drawn a lopsided helix.
I thought of her own spiraling with death.
Two years later, she volunteers
to teach in schools and dances
before breakfast every morning
with her husband in their living room.
She finds compassion for tough neighbors
and welcomes the wayward into her home.
She knows in every cell
the definition of resilience,
and so when she offered me
resilience on a rock,
I felt it, the full invitation
to be both grounded and vital,
to be both solid and springing,
the chance to be both the anchor
and the hand that reaches as if to say
come on, let’s leap, I’ll show you how.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged connection, friendship, gift, language, resilience, Wendy Videlock, word | 8 Comments »
I woke in the cave of my heart,
a slim shadow nested inside
an unbounded shadow,
and there, after decades of chatter
and prattle, I found you, silence.
Or more truly, after my clanging
and crying, my praising and soothing,
silence found me.
Quiet comforter.
Place of no promises.
Infinite cradle. Infinite womb.
An endless invitation to wake
forever.
I woke in the cave of my heart
being tuned to join a song I knew
but had never been taught,
a song ringing inside every cell.
Whatever I’d thought
was my own voice was one silken thread
in a warp made of silence,
a weft made of song.
I met there all the beauty I could bear.
Is it here even now as I sit in my room
with the low hum of lights
and the long list of things to do?
I close my eyes,
empty my pockets of certainty,
listen for what is real.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cave, dante, paradiso, silence, song, soul | 8 Comments »
“Mom, what’s the title of this song,”
she asks me. I listen to the lyrics
for cues. Luckily, Taylor Swift starts to croon
in her mezzo voice, part velvet, part thorn,
“You’re on Your Own Kid.” And I shout
out the title. Vivian smirks,
knowing I was rescued by the song.
“Album?” she says. “Red?” I guess.
“Wrong,” she says. “Evermore?”
I guess. “Wrong.” “Midnights?” “Yes.”
She nods in mock exasperation
it took me so long.
She loves it when I get it wrong
in her endless quiz of popular songs.
She loves that she can teach me.
I love it, too, that she shares with me
these lyrics that grow her, shape her.
We walk along the river trail,
one white air pod in her ear,
one white air pod in mine
and the river braids by and the next song
begins to play. “Title?” she asks,
and I listen for clues until Taylor
demands in a gravelly rush
“Are You Ready for It?” And I look
at my daughter, just fifteen
and becoming so wholly herself.
As much as I want to stop
in this moment with her hand brushing mine
and the musky scent of river
and sunshine warm on our skin
and I think yeah, I’m ready for it,
though it brings me to tears, yes I am.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, mother, music, play, Taylor Swift, walking | 7 Comments »