Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, ars poetica, blank, question, truth on August 11, 2020| 6 Comments »
All these years of wandering,
toward what? On a blank page,
where are the secrets hidden?
How many mysterious paths?
If there is a truth, perhaps it, too, is blank.
If there is way, perhaps it, too, is wandering.
Sometimes I just want the answer.
Always it comes back to this:
An orbit. A spiral. A mobius trip.
A boundary curve where the question
is its own topology, where the question
is its own astonishing arrival.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, friendship, peace, poem, poetry, question, solution on November 18, 2019| 4 Comments »
Part of me wants to give you
the book of answers, the solution key,
to help you know which decision, A, B, C or D,
will bring the most healing, the most happiness.
I no longer believe in such a book, such a key.
Instead I wish for you the peace
that comes only with surrender—
a word that sounds beyond reason
until it becomes beacon, becomes
north star, becomes map.
May you know for certain
that in every case, you are beloved.
May you know beyond doubt
that no matter what happens,
you always become more essential, more you.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, heart, poem, poetry, question on May 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I make in my heart a nest for the questions,
ask them to stay, and at the same time
post a sign that says
answers only—
no wonder they fly away.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, poem, poetry, question on October 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, approach, poem, poetry on August 11, 2016| 1 Comment »
What, she said, are you going to do?
I thought of the Tarahumara
who run over a hundred miles
in their huaraches—
take many small steps,
I said, and let a smile
find my face.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, blank verse, dare, poem, poetry, question on August 15, 2014| 4 Comments »
a D-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
I dare you on an early springtime morn
to ask the daffodil what it remembers
of December. Ask the dragonfly
what it was like to live before the age
of dinosaurs. Go ask the dandelion
how it feels to be despised, and what
it’s like to lose your seeds like wishes—every
single one. Then ask the deer about
the reasons it wore spots when it was young.
The dogwood, ask its blossoms about frost.
The donut, ask it what it knows of holes.
The drum, invite it in for tea to tell
you of the skin it wears and other lives
it’s breathed. Then ask the duck if it recalls
the time the young swan came to live amongst
the ducklings. There is always something more
to every story than we see, yes, something
more than this and that, a hidden door
through which truths pass as silently as lies—
though sometimes truths bounce back like echoes. Ask
the dolphins how that works, how if you sing
the world sings back to you. I dare you, sing
your questions to the world. Perhaps you’ll hear
whatever answers you had wanted, but
more likely you’ll hear answers that will make
your heart break open wider than before—
those are the answers I am hoping for.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, magic eight ball, poem, poetry, questions on May 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
I have never had an eight ball do me right.
—Rob Wasserman
I ask it,
Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Ask Later.
I ask later. Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Don’t Ask.
Oh, I say. Should I just go away?
It says,
Looks Good.
What is that supposed to mean? I say.
It says,
Try again.
Oh. Okay. Will it be easier tomorrow?
Can’t Tell, says the eight ball.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see, I say.
In the small blue window, it says,
I Say Yes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, dead, knowing, living, poem, question, unknowing on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »
Dusting the heads
of dead animals,
I think of how much
my father cherishes
this antelope, this duck,
this winged thing I cannot name,
and I understand that it is not
the thing itself that still
thrills him and makes
him want to keep it on the wall,
but the memory of the thing,
how alive it was, how alive
he was in the killing of it.
*
Over tempura, Pam tells me
of the time that she went
to a man’s home, and there
on the couch was his rich wife,
stuffed, her hand stretched out
in eternal greeting. It had been
in her will, the taxidermic clause
stating that he would lose everything
if he buried her. I sip my sake
and laugh, perhaps because
it is funny, perhaps because
I do not know what to say.
*
Though it is snowing
the room is filled with slant sunshine
and the light does what light does,
it seeks out the darkness.
I feel how what I think I know
has become something dead,
though once it greeted me
with open hands. Though once
I was ripe with it.
*
If we’re made of dust
what is doing the breathing?
*
Not that I want
an answer to that.
Only to be a vehicle
for asking.
*
In the parking lot,
the sound of geese.
No one could say
it is beautiful,
the strangled song
slicing the cold, clear air.
But they’re singing,
my god, they are singing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, certainty, falling, path, poem, question, silence, uncertainty, unlearning on February 1, 2012| 9 Comments »
I curl the question mark of my body
into the silence around us. There is silence
inside of us, too, a pure silence that pools
and spills and overflows making it easier now to not know,
to not even guess what comes next,
and after years of wanting answers and trying
to make the world fit into an equation or an outline
or a calendar square or a rhyme scheme, I am
more easy now with falling into silence, with falling and
not even believing in wings, falling past
the hands reaching out to rescue me as if
falling is a terrible thing. But even falling
is a form of knowing, just a new metaphor,
a new word for path. And even a question mark
knows where it curves, where it is line, where it
breaks, where it becomes a point, one small point
amongst many small points. I am learning,
unlearning, to be less than that.