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Posts Tagged ‘attention’

How We Momentarily Become the Moon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 3, 2026| 2 Comments »


 
 
In the dark house
we watch the moon
rise through the window,
watch as its fullness
climbs into the sky.
For everything we see,
so much we miss.
But in this moment,
your hand in mine,
we give the moon
all our attention until
every part of us,
even our wounds, are
shining.

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Right Here

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 30, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Not easy to hear the soft chant of my breath
with the rumble of river nearby.
Even the low water hymn of late autumn
is loud enough to cover the small,
familiar song of inhale and exhale.
Further out is the sharp thwack of hammer
head meeting nail. Another nail. Another.
An elated whoop from the man with the hammer.
And further out, the growl of semi trucks
migrating east on the highway. If I close
my eyes, do I really hear better? Can I hear
into the distant pinion forest, the silence that gathers
there in spiraling trunks? Can I hear
past that into the vaster silence of mesa?
To the vacant sound of sky?
More than the sounds themselves,
something about the reaching stills me,
brings me present until I am more ear
than mind. Not a single thought brays as I follow
soundwaves to the shores of presence.
Such simple practice, attentiveness,
and yet how often I wander away
on paths of should and want. But now,
attuned, I hear it, even with the river,
this small luff of breath, a living metronome
beating here, here, here.  

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Sacred Pause

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 30, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Only when I stop hiking
do I finally see the flowers
of the wild blueberries,
first one, then five, then
they are everywhere—
everywhere! How did I
miss all the tiny pink bells
that will soon become
dark sweet fruit? How often,
in my haste, do I miss
what is right here, the thing
I most long to see? Once
I start seeing the blueberry
flowers, I can’t stop seeing
them. Sometimes it’s like
this with kindness. With peace.
With beauty. With love.
 

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Walking Back from Sanborn Park

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
Four-foot rattlesnake.
Sunning herself.
Right in the middle
of the road. Strange,
how terror can also
breed awe. For long,
silent moments, I offer
her all my attention.
After she slips into swaths
of sweet clover,
the sky, such a startling blue.
The scent of wild roses,
so stirring, so sweet.

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Placing Attention

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 13, 2024| 6 Comments »

 
As the weather is changing
and the light is changing
and the birds at the feeder
in the yard are changing,
as the leaders are changing
and the feelings are changing
and the way that we see
each other is changing,
I notice the invitation to turn
toward the truth
of what does not change—
something so vast, so unnamable,
so unable to be grasped and held,
something so present
there is no life without it,
that knows itself
through you, through me,
through clover and tree and cloud
and goes on and on and on forever.
That. I turn again and again
toward that.

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On the Long Drive

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 18, 2024| 9 Comments »

 
In the cottonwood tree
beside the road
sat the red-tailed hawk
on a barren branch,
utterly still,
and though they are common,
hulking and bulky,
that didn’t stop me
from thrilling
in its whitish breast,
its short, hooked beak,
the branch an altar—
slender and dark,
and though I passed it
in seconds,
seconds are all it takes
for whatever is sacred in me
to be called to
by what’s sacred
in the world.
Hours later,
I still wonder why
the heart leaps up so.
I don’t know, but
that is perhaps itself
the miracle—
that some part of us
knows how to fall in love
with a bird on branch,
its body still,
while all around it
the wind.
 
 

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Rapture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2024| 10 Comments »

 
Beside the river we stop mid-step, stilled
by sharp, shrill notes that hammer the air,
pip-pip-pip-pip-pip-pip.
And though we don’t see the whimbrel,
we train our eyes toward the leaves
from which the sound came, and we listen.
Listen longer. Our bodies still, until,
once again, we hear the call.
It’s not beautiful, no, but insistent.
Like a teacher who smacks a ruler to her palm
to call the class to attention.
Only now do I look back and wonder
if this is a kind of heaven—not the call itself,
but the listening that comes after,
the way we stop, enthralled together,
our senses stripped of self, our bodies
tuning with wonder, thrill lacing
our spellbound silence as we slip
through the narrow gate of amazement
and more wholly into the world.

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Stitching It Together

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 19, 2022| 8 Comments »



In our imperfect world/ we are meant to repair/ and stitch together/ what beauty there is
            —Stuart Kestenbaum, “Holding the Light”
 
 
Today I gather the morning light
as it angles gold across the lawn.
I gather the scent of fennel fronds
in the garden and the surprising sweetness
of the one-bite strawberries
and the softness of the shawl
I thought was lost, but today I found.
 
I gather the weight of my daughter
as she leans into me on the couch
and the smooth burn of rye whiskey
and the purr of the cat as she naps
deeper into my lap, and I stitch
them together with the thread
of my attention.
 
Long ago, I learned what I focus on
creates me. Not that I ignore the bindweed,
the news, the drought, the young raccoon
dead beside the road. I do not turn away
from the stories that make me weep.
I am willing to be ferocious—
to stand up for what I know is true.
 
But I study what is beautiful,
what is generous. I offer it my devotion.
Even in this moment writing this poem,
I stitch in the pauses and the stumblings—
these, too, are beautiful because they are true.
I stitch in the pure potential that steeps
in uncertainty. I stitch in silence. I stitch in hope.
 

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One Redirection

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

surrounded by the most

lovely silence

the crow

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And What Happens Next

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

Slicing the tomato

as if the world depends

on how well the tomato

is sliced—tell me

that it doesn’t taste

sweeter, sharper,

more red.

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