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Posts Tagged ‘allowing’

That’s the Kind of Summer It Is

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 6, 2015| 1 Comment »

tall and clear

wholly illumined by sun

slowly I learn to see

the vase as lovely

even without the sunflowers

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Such Bright Yellow Petals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

“Come on,” I say, “come on,

this is your only chance.”

Every day for a month

I have walked into the garden

to speak to the sunflowers.

I try not to sound too urgent.

I don’t want to scare them,

but it is September and they

are still tall green stalks

with small tight buds.

“Come on,” I say. “There is still

warmth enough for you to bloom.

It’s what you are here to do.”

Just yesterday there was an inch

of hail on the divide. Every day,

it seems less likely that there will

be sunflowers this year. I notice

how much I want them to bloom,

how they have become more to me

than sunflowers in the garden.

What is it in us that wants

to see things flourish, especially

seeds sown by our own hands?

The sunflowers will bloom or they

will not. The moment I relax into this—

saying yes to the world just as it is—

inside me, I feel acres and acres

of golden heads all nodding.

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While Driving Across the Divide, It Occurred to Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 25, 2015| 7 Comments »

Perhaps when we finally see
there is no point to making things
look any better than they are,

then whatever friction
we’ve found in the world
is met with rose oil

and the great heavy gears
cease to grind
and spin with silent ease.

The only sustainable plots
are the ones no one has planted—
ones in which flowers, grasses and trees

rise up on their own.
They know when to sprout,
when to bloom, when to seed.

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Only in Retrospect Can I See What I Did

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 8, 2015| 5 Comments »

This blank page of a day.
Last night, I had already crumpled
up the paper and thrown it in the trash.
With twin fists, I made it so small,
told myself there were no stories
I was interested in knowing.
This morning, picking it up again,
I watched the paper unrumple itself,
and unfold and unfold until
it was a million million times larger
than any page I could imagine,
big enough to have any story
fit on it, any story at all, even
happily ever after.

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On a Day When I Ache for the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

inspired by The Nest by Teddy Macker

Teach me, world, to weave
a nest with whatever scraps I find—
sticks, dry grass, old thread,
twine, barbed wire, plastic bags,
the sad headlines of war. Teach
me to make a haven out of mud
and shit and thistle down, a cozy
space, just room enough, no more.
And then, though I’ll grow comfortable,
teach me to fly away from whatever
comfort I’ve made—not because
I think I’m going somewhere better,
but because there is a rising
in the blood that says go. Teach
me to take nothing but my song
and the silence inside each note.

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It’s Only When You Ignore them that they Start to Gain Control

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 28, 2014| 2 Comments »

If you must know, I was scared,
running above tree line in a snowstorm,
unable to see more than twenty feet in front
of my slipping feet. And no one else around.

So why did I keep running? Was it courage?
Determination? Stubborn foolishness?
When the story ends happily ever after,
it is easy to forget there was another possible ending,

but sometimes these alternate worlds
invite themselves into our thoughts,
strange tides of what if? and what then?
Though they are unpleasant, I welcome them.

Why not? I am safe, and they are like
the mean girls, the ones who say the cruelest things,
but because there is no truth in what they say,
it’s not so hard to just nod my head and smile.

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Not Really a Poem About Parsley

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2014| 2 Comments »

Seldom does anyone praise the parsley.
But there is dignity in the way
it returned to the garden this year
without needing to be planted.
Dignity in the way it pushed its dark
curls through the late snows of spring.
Already summer is goldening,
and only once have I used
the parsley, snipped it into
a bowl of barley with lemon
and garlic and oil. How perfect
it tasted then, and how grateful I was
for parsley to be so precisely parsley,
so vibrant and green to the tongue.
Since then I have passed it by.
There is so much in the world
to appreciate, each thing appearing
as itself. How easy it is to prefer.
But oh, the parsley. It does not need
my approval to flourish. It finds its worth
in the fact that it is here, thriving
in full sun, its yellow umbels
bowing over the earth.

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I Thought So Much Depended On It But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 16, 2014| 1 Comment »

After begging the stone
after asking the stone
after wishing the stone
after entreating the stone
after bribing the stone
after wanting the stone
after beseeching the stone
to become a butterfly
I sit with the stone
and notice how quiet
it is in my head when
a stone is a stone.

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Can You Hear Them?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 9, 2014| 1 Comment »

The snow begins
then stops to fall.
In the alley, brown
tracks run against the white.

The gray folds through the air
and unfolds. Nothing
about this day seems
capable of settling in.

It is a like a woman
thinking about what
she wants. The blossoms
of her thoughts open

like roses in fast forward.
They wilt and dry in similar
fashion. They are out of season.
This does not stop them.

Sometimes we like to think
we are waiting. Waiting
for something marvelous to happen,
or waiting for an ache to disappear,

or waiting for gray to be
something other than gray.
And sometimes we see what
a gift it is, this indecisive day,

this watching imaginary blooms
that seem so real you can almost
smell the red perfume, almost.
Outside the window,

it is snowing again. No,
not snowing. But the gray
it has settled in and now
the dirty tracks look

like empty staves and anyone
listening might hear through the glass
how the birds don’t wait
to fill in the space with song.

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When I Drop the Stubbornness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 25, 2013| 1 Comment »

When I Drop the Stubbornness

All day I practice
noticing the space

between us, feeling
the subtle tugs, the

repulsions, the charge,
the release. Sometimes

I forget to let it happen,
try to force a nearness or

a solitude. That is when
I can feel it, how real

the space is, almost as if
you are one and I am another

and the space between us
is a third. I have noticed

that when you and I,
at the same time, allow

ourselves to lean—
is that the right word?—

perhaps it is more that we
open to that space,

then I notice how easy it is
to be for each other

as the water is for the moon,
holding entirely without

holding at all, not changing
and utterly transformed.

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