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.
Posts Tagged ‘attention’
How We Momentarily Become the Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, becoming, connection, moon on January 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
Sacred Pause
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, fruit, hiking, noticing, pause, wildflowers 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.
Walking Back from Sanborn Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, awe, fear, paradox, snake, terror 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.
Placing Attention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, change, what is 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.
On the Long Drive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, miracle, red-tailed hawk, sacred 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.
Stitching It Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, beauty 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.
One Redirection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, bird, crow, noise, poem, poetry, silence, sound on January 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And What Happens Next
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, intention, poem, poetry, quality, tomato 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.
You Know How Frost Goes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, cold, frost, neglect, poem, poetry, relationships on September 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I return to find the basil dead,
wilted and browned, dull limp flags.
And the cosmos, bent and spent
and dead. And the beans, dead.
And the marigolds, still brilliant,
but the forked tongues of their leaves
say they are dead. What a difference
one night of cold can make, how
no matter how warm the season has been,
it irrevocably changes things.
It doesn’t matter I knew it would happen
eventually. The petunias fall all over themselves
in profuse bloom as if to say, it’s okay,
not all is lost, but it’s enough to make a woman
decide to pay attention, to be warm
in every garden she enters.
Some blooms defy the seasons.
There’s so much beauty at stake.
In the Darkness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, light, poem, poetry on January 20, 2017| 4 Comments »
rubbing ideas
together like sticks—
lucky to get a spark
but sometimes,
just noticing
the world as it is,
our attention
builds entire bridges
made of light
How Many Hawks Have I Missed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, hawk, poem, poetry on September 9, 2016| 3 Comments »
But not this one,
its pale under wings
flapping and gliding, soaring
on the updraft,
the rise of it, oh,
the surprise of its shape.
How easily the world
rewards our attention,
how easily I
lose track.
Obeying the Impulse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, gratitude, poem, poetry, spring on May 31, 2014| 4 Comments »
The world exists just fine without
our appreciation. It is not for us
that the dandelions bloom in tides of yellow
across the valley floor. It is not for us
that the elk stream in a slow brown current
before they disappear into the Englemann spruce.
And then there are the tiny empires
of grasshoppers, ants and bees—
and the underground realms of prairie dogs
and worms and rhizomes and moles—
so much of the world we never see.
And still, this drive toward gratitude.
Still this tug to pull over the car and step out,
this impulse to offer the world my attention.
As if being very still were as vital to
the moment as the scurry and swerve,
scamper and stride. As perhaps it is.
Four Gifts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, gifts, haiku, love, opening, poem, silence on October 4, 2012| 3 Comments »
clouded sky
I never doubt
the stars
*
yellow dotted line
one foot on either side
walking with the crow
*
clenched, clutched, still
the only thing that makes sense
open the heart again
*
listening
inside the wailing
silence
Love Becomes Her
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, love, moon, poem on September 30, 2012| 4 Comments »
When we use our attention to touch and open the deeper truth in a person, we not only catalyze the experience of love, we become love. The source of love is revealed to be within us; we no longer have to go looking for it somewhere outside.
—Nicole Daedone, “Love Becomes Her,” Tricycle Magazine
It is not too late for love.
Tonight the moon rose,
as it always does, but it
was not the same. It rose
as if close enough to touch,
right there, but I could not touch it.
I gave it my whole attention, then,
listened only to the sound
of it turning while we, too,
were turning, though the sage,
the rocks, the dry arroyo
did not attest to our turning.
The desert had other sounds, too,
but I had, for that moment,
ears only for the moon,
and felt, how strange, my own rising,
felt it so fully I nearly cheered
as the whole vacant shine of it
crested the mesa, cheered though
it was further away then,
or so it seemed, further away, or so,
I see, it only seemed.
Six Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, circling, freedom, losing the self, poem, poetry, sound on June 29, 2012| 5 Comments »
So busy watching my feet
move over the small stones,
dried leaves, paths of ants,
it is a long time before
I see the birds.
*
What is it I am circling?
What is this longing
to name it?
*
The slats of shadow
and light only look
like prisons.
We slide through the bars
like song.
*
The bell does not ring
when we call it bell. It rings
with the playing of it.
*
And what is playing me,
this too-solid bell of a
flesh called woman,
Hollow me, I am
diligently practicing
my one note
in the symphony.
*
All these obstacles,
and still
the unspiraling line.
three haiku: limitations
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, flowers, haiku, knitting, limitations, opening, relearning, snowflake on February 7, 2012| 3 Comments »
no matter how open
the heart, the eyes can only
follow one snowflake
*
tonight a whole hat
is stitched out of the promise
just two more minutes
*
all these flowers
I’ve learned by proper name
let’s relearn by scent
four haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, bald eagle, dream, haiku, poem, singing, story, what lingers on January 22, 2012| 3 Comments »
That bald eagle
flies this canyon every day
today I saw him
*
all day I try
to scrape it off my skin
that bad dream
*
long after you leave
the chairs remain hushed so to
better hear you sing
*
every story
I’ve ever had
the end
Ode to the Willows at the Bottom of the Hill
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, out of control, poem, skiing on November 17, 2011| 4 Comments »
Let’s say the skier
is out of control
as she careens down the hill
and let’s say that she sees
the tall red willows
from a distance
and thinks to herself
I am not going to hit
those willows.
Tilted and lurching
she is too loudly laughing,
afraid of the speed
and equally thrilled with it,
gripped with conviction
that she is not is not
is not going to hit
those willows, those red willows,
those tall red willows
those willows the only
thing that she sees
as she skis right into
the tallest of the tall red willows
at the base of the hill
those willows
she gave
all her attention.