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Posts Tagged ‘actions’

Small Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 24, 2026| 2 Comments »


 
 
When Sheldon, driving the car, 
turned to me as he parked and said, 
I will open the door for you,
he must have sensed the no
rising in me because then he said, 
Please. So I sat there, wrestling
my resistance to receiving help,
and once again I felt inside me 
the stubborn two-year-old girl 
who told her mom, Do it self.
But by the time the door opened,
the smile on this fifty-six-year-old 
woman’s face was real, lit up from within
like a green light on a busy strip, 
radiant with an honest relief
that in this often cruel and careless world,
someone said through action, 
it’s my pleasure to be kind to you. 
Hours later, I still feel it, the glow. 
 

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I Don’t Remember How It Began

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 1, 2018| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

I like to write poems on rocks. River rocks. Smooth ones. Black Sharpie works best.

 

Luckily, rocks are easy to find. By a river, of course, or, if you’re in the city, in parking lots where landscapers have used rounded gray rocks instead of planting gardens.

 

Sometimes, just one word is enough to make a poem. “Resilience,” for instance. Or “unfurling.” Or “yes.” But usually, I write three lines—they fit well on a rock the size of my palm.

 

They don’t have to be good poems, I tell myself, but they do have to be true. Sometimes I make several dozen at once, then gather them in a canvas bag. It gets heavy when I use big rocks, but there’s something marvelous about the weight of a poem. Then I leave them around town. On fenceposts. Sidewalks. Windowsills. On public benches and in stairwells, in shopping carts and on restroom sinks. I feel like the Easter Bunny.

 

I never put my name on them. They were never mine. And always, within a day, someone has taken them. I like to think they keep the poems. I like to think they give them away. I like to think the poems travel places I’ll never see. The thrill of them disappearing is always new. I like to think it matters, what we do.

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