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Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

Head Down

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 4, 2026| 2 Comments »


 
 
so focused 
on writing
about beauty
I almost
didn’t notice
the round
green scent
of aliveness
flourishing wildly
all around me

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Everywhere

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 14, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
Tenderness pierces the heart
the way a bright stream of sunlight
pierces evening clouds,
the way the green stem of garlic
pierces cold spring soil.
It pierces the heart the way protests
for justice pierce silence.
If anyone asks, where does it hurt,
the truest answer is everywhere.
If anyone asks, where can I find
beauty enough to make me weep,
the answer is the same.

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In Broad Daylight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2026| 7 Comments »


 
 
I take my rage to the river.
A heron flies into the wind.
I let myself be opened
by the great gray wings
and the great gray sky
and the great gray largeness of water,
not to rid myself of rage
but to become a clearer channel
to meet the chest-scouring,
scab-clawing, cell-screaming,
throat-burning fury of rage
and remind my heart I can
know all this rage, can be
feral with rage and still
keep on loving the world.

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Looking Up at the Sky at Sunset

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 17, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
So much radiance
above the horizon—
glowing pink, deeper pink—
I wanted to gather
it all and keep it,
hold it forever,
but where to
store something
that large? I
gathered all that beauty
in my heart,
my heart, a mockery
of a pocket. Of course
it spilled out. I put
the pink glow back
in the sky. It lit
the whole world.

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At the End of the Year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2026| 10 Comments »

Just after midnight
we stand beside the stove
holding each other,
your thumb slowly relearning
the portal of my spine.
Satie’s first Gymopédie
slips stepwise through the room,
the tune like starlight emerging
after a storm blew down all the trees.
We are almost, but not quite, still.
How little movement it takes,
plus an opening in the mind,
to know the body as dancing.
How little beauty it takes
to know a sad moment  
as a moment both sad and beautiful.
And what of a year? What of a life?
How much beauty can we bring
with the days we are given?
How would the years change
if we believed we were not
just moving through them,
but dancing?

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At Her Last Dance Recital

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 14, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
It was not all for this one moment
when she stood alone on stage,
poised on her toe shoes, both arms
raised, her hands and wrists pulsing
in delicate waves—all the pink tights
and hair nets, blisters and tears
and long rehearsals for fourteen years—
it was not all for this winged moment
when Saint-Saëns played and she leapt
and pirouetted and pas de bouréed—
but this was the moment when I knew
with certainty that in a world of ache
and cruelty, we can change the world
and be changed by beauty.

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Ginkgo in Downtown New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 24, 2025| 10 Comments »


 
 
They live a thousand years.
This, alone, is enough to
invite admiration. Robust.
Unfussy. They survive drought,
disease, pollution, pests.
They thrive in the midst of sirens
and car fumes, gridlocks and
garbage cans, concrete and horns.
 
And all across the city today,
a golden fluttering, a radiant trembling
on even the darkest streets. As if
to endure is not enough. As if we are
also here to burn bright, to shine, to offer
to the world every scrap of beauty we can.

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The Mirror

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 17, 2025| 12 Comments »

Overnight, every red leaf on the maple tree
has fallen to the ground and formed
an imperfect pool of red around
the solemn trunk, the dark bare limbs.
This is how it was the day you died.
In an instant, the tree of me went
from radiance to nakedness.
Impossible to hide.
Years later, I see what I couldn’t
see then—how beautiful to be that bare
when all that is lost is still so close,
when the limbs of the body
still remember the exact texture
and weight of what they once held.
How sacred that nakedness,
that opens us to the world.
I have grown so many new leaves.
That sacredness has never left.

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The Change

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 5, 2025| 14 Comments »

Overnight, the frost
took every pink zinnia
every creamy dahlia,
fading their colors to brown.
The nasturtiums have slumped
into dense wilted tangle.
The marigolds hold themselves tall
in a blackened and upright
surrender. For now,
the bright, fresh bouquets
I made yesterday are still
bright and fresh in their vases.
This beauty, we know, won’t stay.
The message is simple:
All that rises passes away.
I see it in these hands
that planted and watered
and weeded and picked—
my skin now wrinkled and thin
as frost-withered petals.
Here: the chance to witness
my own rising and passing.
How natural to age, to die.
The flowers in the vase will wilt.
With every day, so do I.
Such strange gift. First
the joy of putting the self
in service to making something
beautiful. Then, beyond joy,
the grace in learning to let it all go.

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A Scrap in Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2025| 5 Comments »


 
 
Something about the relentless beauty
of the dahlias this year makes me forget
lists and calls and news and aches as
I stand beside them in a splendor stupor,
watching them bloom in real time, not
wanting to miss a moment of the long stems
rising, the red color deepening then fading
from the petals as they age. I imagine a time lapse
begins, and the world’s winter white, then greening
again, and now a hundred years pass,
now five hundred, a thousand, and the garden
bed is gone and the fence is gone and
the trees and the ditch and the home
are gone, and there’s no way to know
this was once a place where dahlias grew.
Is it any wonder, then, I call to you, ask you
to come stand here with me to watch
the dahlias open themselves to the sun,
each petal a hymn to the present,
a history soon to be forgotten, a shimmer in time
we might put in a vase and marvel as
all around it the whole world spins.

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