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Posts Tagged ‘ache’

Sharing Our Humanness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 10, 2026| 2 Comments »


    with thanks to James Crews
 
 
My friend James calls it the rough blessing,
the blessing that rubs, that chafes,
that scrapes. Perhaps I wanted blessings
to only feel good, to be gentle. But the word itself
comes from the practice of sprinkling blood
on an altar. Why should I be surprised when
the blood for the rite is my own? I am thinking
of how today when I was hemorrhaging fear,
my friend comforted me when I called her in tears.
I felt so loved when she listened and soothed.
Such luminous intimacy grew from my wound.
Oh, ache of being human. Oh, the blessing.

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After

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 2, 2026| 6 Comments »


 
On this day after
my country bombed
a girls’ school
across the world,
part of me does not
wish to meet the day.
But just after dawn,
I wake to the relentless
honking, honking
of geese returning
from far away
to make a home again
in our yard.
I want to rewrite
yesterday so every girl
who went to school
also came home
to her family,
so every mother and father
woke this morning knowing
their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror—
we killed them—
I don’t know how to rise.
But the great noise
of the geese returning,
that harsh and strangled sound,
pulls me into the world
to meet whatever the day brings.
A goose wanders past my window,
regal with her long black throat,
proof that life goes on.
Even when we can’t imagine how.
Even then.   

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Everywhere

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 14, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
Tenderness pierces the heart
the way a bright stream of sunlight
pierces evening clouds,
the way the green stem of garlic
pierces cold spring soil.
It pierces the heart the way protests
for justice pierce silence.
If anyone asks, where does it hurt,
the truest answer is everywhere.
If anyone asks, where can I find
beauty enough to make me weep,
the answer is the same.

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All This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 11, 2026| 6 Comments »


                  after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
 
 
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.

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With the Stones of Our Stories

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Every day a new atrocity.
Every day, the heart finds
a new way to ache.
Every day, our most scared
selves try to build a stone wall
around the heart, as if
to keep the ache away.
Every day our most sacred
selves dismantle the wall,
and use the same stones
to build bridges so we
might meet another
and hold them as they ache,
so the other might hold us, too.

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Six Weeks After I Break My Foot

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

 
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t  
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.

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How Much Wider?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »


 
 
Tonight the heart
is a vase filled
with thistles
and lilies, burdock
and roses, knapweed
and voluptuous peonies.
It is perhaps not
the bouquet I would choose,
but it is what is here.
But it’s hard to hold it all,
I say to the world.
And it is. It’s too much,
I say. But is it?
And I’m scared
the vase will break.
But it doesn’t.
Instead it widens
to contain what is in it—
stems of puncturevine
and poppies,
leafy spurge and
delicate lisianthus.
And so I hold it,
I hold it all.
And the vase doesn’t break,
but oh, as it widens,
the ache.

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On the River Road

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 13, 2017| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

In the front seat,

I am talking with Ulli

about all the people we know

who are hurting.

 

They are people we love,

and there are no right words to say,

so we say the words we can—

I’m sorry. That’s hard. I hope

 

it will be okay.

We drive past a family of deer

standing on an island

in the center of the Uncompaghre River.

 

We oooh with the pleasure

of seeing them, their bodies, slight,

moving both separately and together.

Just an hour ago, we were singing

 

a whole concert of love songs, and though

not all the notes were right,

the spirit with which we sang

was no less true.

 

It was easy, in those moments

to believe in harmony,

to smile and really mean it.

I urge the car to follow the curves

 

of the river road.

There is a gate we pass

that is crooked. For years, each time

I have passed it I long to make it straight.

 

This time is no different.

I ask myself, Can you fall in love

with the world as it is,

this world in which no words

 

can make things right?

To the west, I spot a hawk

sitting in the empty branches.

I would like to slow down here

 

to watch it sit. The road curves on.

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