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Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 5, 2021| 5 Comments »



Nudged by hope
the heart rises
from exhaustion.

It’s like the great blue heron
I saw this morning
flying up from a wasteland

on broad gray wings
with strong, slow beats
for a moment charged

with grace
before—did you
see this, heart?—

it chose to land again,
bringing all its beauty
to the desolate place.

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Thanking the Christmas Cactus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 29, 2020| 7 Comments »




Tonight, for a moment,
my world shrinks to the size
of the Christmas cactus,
which, despite the storm
that even now blusters outside,
has opened dozens of voluptuous
red blooms, as if to say,
Here I am, blooming midwinter,
and you can do it, too.
There are days when
the news makes me doubt
the value of blooming—
when the headlines alone
twist hope into a crumpled,
unrecognizable heap.
But then some snippet
of beauty finds me—
a scarlet flower,
a handwritten letter—
and breaks any scale
I would use to interpret
the world. It’s not that the terror
goes away, no. But for a few
moments, I am blessed
with the certainty
that even the smallest beauty matters
and that it is my job
to meet life however it appears—
petal, bomb, sweetness, pain—
grateful for my humanness,
vulnerable and tenuous
though it is.

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Concurrent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

On a morning

when the snow

falls and drapes

everything in shine,

it is not that I don’t

feel the wounds—

raw and throbbing—

it’s just that it’s

so beautiful,

this tender world,

that I want

to praise it

forever.

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Watching My Response to Barry Lopez

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2020| 9 Comments »

“Sometimes it is what is beautiful that carries you,” said Weasel weakly from his bed. “Yes, it can carry you to the end. It is your relationship to what is beautiful, not the beautiful thing itself, that carries you,” said Grizzly Bear.

—Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

           

And so, after years of wanting to be river

and calendula, cottonwood and aspen,

larkspur and evergreen, at last the poet

longs to be herself—longs not to be

what is many petalled nor golden leafed,

not to be what merges with ocean,

what thrives in cold. Rather, she longs

to be the one who might uncover beauty

in the garbage dump, find splendor in the mess.

It is no small thing to want to be yourself.

Look, there she sits in the prison of her thoughts.

See her smile as the bars begin to bend,

watch her marvel as what she thought was a cage

becomes wings.

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Attuned

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2020| 6 Comments »

I want to meet the world

the way these calendula blossoms

meet the cold.

While everything around them

has wilted or browned,

they lift up their gold and orange faces

like bright earthbound suns—

not with some agenda

to make the world a better place,

but because they are doing

what they are made to do—

to be soft yet resilient,

beautiful and tough,

to carry inside themselves

the seeds for more beauty,

and, when the time comes,

spill them everywhere.

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Why I Smile at Strangers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 27, 2020| 6 Comments »

In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.

          

–Blaise Pascal

And so today, I walk the streets

with vermillion maple leaves inside me,

and the deep purple of late-blooming larkspur

and the lilting praise of meadowlark.

I carry with me thin creeks with clear water

and the three-quarters moon

and the spice-warm scent of nasturtiums.

And honey in the sunlight.

And words from Neruda and

slow melodies by Erik Satie.

It is easy sometimes to believe

that everything is wrong.

That people are cruel and the world

destroyed and the end of it all

imminent. But there is yet goodness

beyond imagining—the creamy

white flesh of ripe pears

and the velvety purr of a cat in my lap

and the white smear of milky way—

I carry these things in my heart,

more certain than ever that one way

to counteract evil is to ceaselessly honor what’s good

and share it, share it until

we break the choke hold of fear

and at least for a few linked moments,  

we believe completely in beauty,

growing beauty, yes, beauty.

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Between

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 31, 2020| 4 Comments »

with thanks to Rebecca Mullen for showing me the doors

And if a door closes

before another opens,

well, sometimes in the hall

between those doors

I find the precarious beauty

that can only be met

when I am not quite safe,

not quite certain, not quite

a self, and wholly here.

I’m talking tiny dust mote

in the deep field beauty—

beauty that refuses

to be named.

This is what it’s like

to learn to trust—

to live with one arm forward,

one arm back and feel

marvelously stretched,

perilously opened,

like a flute, like a kite,

like a wing.

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One Survival

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »

devouring the crumb trail

from beauty to beauty—

no going back

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One Small Act

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 9, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

washing the counter

making it more beautiful

this nook in the universe

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Castilleja angustifolia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

 

IMG_6042

It’s not that they are hiding—

it’s more that they know

the power of a red dress.

Between slabs of red sandstone,

the tiny yellow green flowers

of the desert paintbrush

decorate themselves

with bright red bracts,

colorful flame-like spears

that attract butterflies,

hummingbirds and bees.

 

It’s what we do to survive,

those of us born plain,

those of us otherwise ignored.

I think of the homely girl I was

who wanted to wear

gold combs in her hair

to the middle school dance,

as if something shiny and bright

might attract the honey boys.

 

I want to go back to that gym

with its streamers and balloons

and take the gold combs

out of her mousy brown hair

and tell her the brightest parts of her

are inside. I want to tell her

that being a small green

and yellow flower

will serve her.

 

I want her to know

that a day will come

when she’ll walk in the desert

and feel so at one

with the cliffs and the scrub brush,

the lichen and the Mormon tea,

and that in that moment

when she loses her sense of herself

and merges with slickrock

and paintbrush and sky

it is then she will be most beautiful.

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