If anger is a scarecrow
then let me be a field
that sprawls across the roads
and beyond the hills.
Sure, the scarecrow
is frightening. But it belongs.
And the field, look, it goes
on and on and on.
Posts Tagged ‘anger’
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, field, perspective, scarecrow, widen the lens on July 30, 2025| 10 Comments »
Widening the Vision
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, multitudes, perspective, rabbit, vision on February 10, 2025| 12 Comments »
Almost by accident
I saw through the blaze
of my anger and fear
to the bunny in the yard,
his sweet brown body
so still and attentive
in the short brown grass,
and it’s not that I
became any less angry,
but when I let myself be held
by his steady brown eye,
I was touched by gentleness
and remembered what else
I am capable of. Oh self, this
is how you stay whole hearted—
by keeping your eyes wide open.
Unlikely Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, betrayal, forgiveness, grace, gratefulness on February 5, 2025| 14 Comments »
Hello friends,
So seldom do I feel I need to preface a poem, but … this one. It was so not easy to write and I don’t know that I have said yet what most wishes to be said. I think that happens sometimes … when I have a feeling so big that I’ve felt for so long, I put too much pressure on the poem to tell the whole story when really, something much simpler wants to emerge. All this is to say I am wrestling with questions of love and forgiveness and humility and betrayal and grace … and will likely be wrestled by them as long as I live. You, too?
Unlikely Gratefulness
I will not excuse what he did.
His words, cruel.
His actions, callous.
So deliberate,
the way he turned his back.
Did he not see another path?
Or did he, with spiteful intent,
choose the lowest road?
And after the fact, did it matter?
The dark seed he planted
could not be unsown.
Perhaps my brokenness was a gift,
because if I had been less broken,
I would have mustered the strength
to hate him.
Perhaps because I was so broken,
my eyes could not not remember the way
his face reddens and crumples when he cries.
My throat could not not remember
how often I sang him to sleep.
And my hands still remember
holding him when he was scared.
My ears still hear the raucous ways
we laughed while in the car.
But how it is I still let him in?
How is there room in my heart for his?
I don’t know. I don’t know how to name the gift.
What is this grace that holds me
so I can still hold him?
Scale
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, fear, meadow, spaciousness on January 29, 2023| 12 Comments »
When anger enters your body
and swells in you, expands in you
until you don’t fit inside your skin,
when fear enters me
and grows like a virulent weed,
its new shoots propagating
with alarming speed until
its tendrils escape through my throat,
when our voices escalate
to try to express in volume
how big our feelings have become,
then I want to meet you outside
in the center of the meadow
where we are humbled
by the ponderosa pine that stretches skyward,
dwarfed by the red mesa walls,
held by the crystalline airiness.
I want to remember in my body
this capaciousness, this generosity,
so that when I am not standing in the meadow
but in our kitchen or on a street corner
or watching the news,
I can remember the meadow with my whole being,
can remember the scale of sky and stars
and the vast reaches
of the ever-growing universe.
I want to hold you with that kind of openness,
want to relax into knowing we are held together
by the same forces that hold the constellations.
Imagine us all together now—comets, supernovas,
your anger, my fear, and all those countless suns.
Aftermath
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, beauty, fire on December 16, 2022| 11 Comments »
For years, I have run
from this anger.
Tonight I stopped running,
let the anger catch me,
let it burn in me,
a wild conflagration,
it terrified me,
and then I watched it leave.
For the first time in years,
I am not running.
How still it is.
Whatever has turned to ash
was not essential.
What is left is so raw,
so beautiful.
Meeting Anger
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, bats on September 18, 2022| 10 Comments »
My little brother and I sat on the back porch steps,
huddled into the thin wisps of each other’s bodies,
weeping. Though there is no photo of this,
I see it as if it is framed. It is summer.
The house behind us is yellow.
We are wearing more skin than clothes,
and our arms are slender ribbons binding us.
Inside, our parents are shouting. I am five,
and it is the first time I have heard them fight.
I don’t know what the argument is about,
but their voices escape the walls on black wings
and circle my brother and me like bats.
Once the yellow walls are quiet again,
my mother finds us huddled on the stairs
and wraps her wide arms around us both.
I beg her, Please, don’t get a divorce.
She tells me when people shout
it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
That is the first moment I understand
I do not understand anger.
It will be years before I am frightened to discover
all the black wings that roost inside me—
a cauldron of anger that colonizes in the dark.
It will be years before I learn to be more curious
than fearful. Years before I can hear the dark flutterings
and not shut down. Years before I can say to anger, thank you.
Years before I notice when anger arrives,
it always has something to teach me.
A Tale of Two
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, quiet, trust on June 11, 2020| 4 Comments »
for C
I want
to hear
you, but
when you
shout, I
shut my
heart’s door,
lock my
ears. Now,
after two
loud days
shouting back
in lines
I’m glad
I never
sent, at
last I
find enough
quiet
to hear
you, but
not enough
trust to
give you
the key
Ode to the Letter I Didn’t Write
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, letter, ode, wind on June 8, 2020| 2 Comments »
In the spaces between
the words I didn’t write,
there was a pour of poison.
A wall-full of bricks.
The barbs from a hundred hooks.
I almost forgot how in the writing
some of that poison would
slip into me, how I despise
a wall, how each hook
demands a bit of my blood.
I spent hours not writing it,
used up reams of thoughts.
It was a relief when the wind
blew away all the words
except these: I understand.
Those, it let me read again
before they, too, blew away
and I didn’t chase after them.
Oh This Anger
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, lilac, meeting the moment on June 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On the hill,
the lilacs bloom each spring,
a fleeting purple offering.
Why do I walk to them
with a question
about anger?
Their perfume pulls me closer,
bids me step in, bids me
breathe more deeply,
and I do. For a while,
I forget my seething, forget everything
except the many flowered blooms.
For a while, all that matters
is that I am one who stands beside lilacs,
steeped in the lilac world.
It becomes who I am,
though I know it won’t last.
There, says the lilac.
There is your answer.
One Slow and Steady
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, breathing, mindfulness, poem, poetry on February 3, 2018| 5 Comments »
I’m Not Saying We Shouldn’t Be Angry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, forgiveness, Inuit, poem, poetry, walking on September 12, 2017| 89 Comments »
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry.
Anger seems reasonable. But perhaps
we will do what I’ve heard the Inuit do—
spend the emotion on walking, walk a line
until all the anger has left our bodies.
The moment the Inuit notice the anger is gone,
replaced, perhaps, by sadness or fear,
compassion or just a quietness,
they mark that spot with an object
to show the extent of their anger.
And perhaps, if we’re lucky, when we walk
this way, it will be a long enough walk
that we arrive at each other’s doors,
object in hand, and when the object
leaves our grip, we’ll be able to use our hands
to greet each other, touch each other’s faces,
point to the horizon to all the other places
we might choose to walk now together.
One Thing to Do With a Fist
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, fist, flowers, poem, poetry on September 1, 2017| 2 Comments »
wrap it around
a bouquet of gold and orange calendula,
now offer it to someone else—
how easily their smile
opens your hand
Despite Birdsong
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, poem, poetry on April 17, 2017| 4 Comments »
In a cupboard
he opens often
he keeps a box
of resentment.
Something about
knowing it is there
makes him feel alive.
He touches the box
again and again,
lets the anger fill
whatever inside him
feels empty.
Hear it? Thumping
in him, pretending
it is a heart. It’s easy
to mistake.
One Message from the Body
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, poem, poetry on March 16, 2017| 1 Comment »
That Dry Feeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, depression, poem, poetry, tea on February 28, 2017| Leave a Comment »
In his heads, he swirls
the dark loose leaves
of his thoughts,
lets them boil
and steep too long,
then offers the tea
to others to drink,
but it spills before
the tea reaches the cup,
and he fumes,
throws in more leaves.
How It Transforms
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, parenting, poem, poetry on January 8, 2017| 1 Comment »
a pinch of cumin,
a pinch of salt, the scent
of lemon and ginger—
tell me, what else I should have done
with my anger
The Neighbor’s Kid
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, claws, gentleness, poem, poetry on December 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Sidetracked, I Remember Something
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, getting lost, poem, poetry, release on June 20, 2015| 3 Comments »
Looking for reasons to justify
my anger with you, I found instead
a silver handle without
a pitcher, the scent of peonies,
a bush of ripened berries and a hum.
Is it any wonder my hands forgot
how to fight? That missing
pitcher filled with spring water,
that is what my silence wants
to say to your silence. And
that ripeness, that is what
my hands long to bring to yours.
If Someone Hits You, What Are You Going to Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, human, poem, poetry on June 6, 2015| 1 Comment »
title on a line by Yasmin Ramirez
I wanted to believe I could turn myself into a lilac tree
so your blow would move through without harming me,
all of my petals still intact.
I wanted to believe I could turn myself into a river,
could pull you in and away from the angry shore.
I wanted to believe I could stop you with my eyes,
could turn your fist into a song or a wing or a clear night.
There are days we learn how human we are. How sometimes
flesh is only flesh and a fist is a fist and a hatred
is a bridge that will never carry weight again
and a life is made of both blood and bruise,
the hour of the lung, the hour of the gut, the hour
of the bone and the lip.
I wanted to believe I could be more than a woman,
not just the sum of breakable parts, that I could be
the drive toward blossom, the radical acceptance
and thrust of the current.
I wanted to believe in tenderness. And transformation.
And something larger than the self that wears the wounds.
There are days we learn what we will do when someone hits us.
It doesn’t matter what we thought we knew we would do.
I turned into a lilac tree.
I would like to get lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, connection, isolation, poem, poetry on June 24, 2014| 1 Comment »
in the tall grass, the way
a small purple ball might be lost.
It would take a long, long
time to be found,
maybe never.
But the Truth Is
We all long to be found.
Even when we shout
at the other person,
Go away! There
is an equally
powerful voice,
one that we squash,
and it says,
I need you. How
we hate for that
to be true. Easier
to believe that we
don’t need anyone.
Easier to say to oneself,
in a voice loud enough
to drown out any other voice,
I would like
to get lost in the tall,
tall grass, the way
a small purple ball
might be lost.
(with a nod to Art Goodtimes, who sent me a poem of his own with the title in the middle the other day … what a great new way to play with titles!)