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Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

One Glorious

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 7, 2025| 1 Comment »


 
 
no use sipping this sunset—
I guzzle and immediately
I’m tipsy on pink

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All at Once

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 18, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Walking alone into the dark,
my fear comes with me.
I feel it small and hard
in my belly like a tiny grenade
the mind has conjured
in case I need protection.
Meanwhile, all around me
the night is peaceful.
The dark spills its generous ink
into every open space.
Crickets rub their legs in bright music.
The misty rain makes no sound.
But the mind is not convinced
the night is safe. It clenches tighter
around its fear. It does no good
to tell the mind not to worry.
Hello, tiny grenade.
I carry it with me as I walk
through a field of fireflies—
and I’m laid bare by the beauty
I find there—thousands of glittering sparks.
Isn’t it a marvel how a person
can be both clenching and opening
at the very same time
while moving alone through the dark?

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Wandering in Upstate New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 15, 2025| 6 Comments »

It’s like being made love to
by beauty—as if the slate
gray lake and the deep green leaves
and the scent of wild roses
and the sound of unseen birds
all lean in to kiss the eyelids,
the tip of the nose, the sensitive
curl of the ear. And the way
to kiss the beauty back—
be here.  

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Letter to Myself at Twenty-One

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 5, 2025| 18 Comments »


What is it that shines through all this withering?
—Kim Rosen, “Grand Finale”
 
 
You would be embarrassed of my body.
You would never believe contentment
is possible with a belly this soft
and legs this thick, but sweetheart,
I promise you I love being alive
in this time-ripened body that still
carries me into the garden to plant
snap peas, this body that cradles
my grown girls, that explores
the familiar terrain of my husband,
that walks through spruce forests and thrills
at the scent of evergreen and rain.
It is so much easier now to be gentle
with myself, even easy to be gentle with you.
Easy to forgive you for thinking you needed
to starve these bones. The irony is
you never felt beautiful, did you, and now,
when I am so far from your ideal,
I’ve never felt more lovely—
which is to say there is something
inside, a radiance, that beacons through
the crumbling walls of the body,
and the real beauty is being in service
to that shine, becoming less and less
a vessel and more and more that light.

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How Do I Ever Forget It?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »


That moment that opens
when the evening light
makes the whole field glow
so everything is luminous,
every blade, every leaf, every stone,
even the weeds, even the carcasses,
even the ones who are watching—
not to forget we can also be cruel,
can kill, can lie, can betray,
but oh, we can also be as receptive
as a field in the golden hour,
letting light pour through us until
we, too, are that radiant, that generous,
that willing to be in service to beauty.

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By What Strange Truth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 24, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
Walking in the field
or touching your cheek,
eating a thin slice of pear
or listening to you breathe,
I understand now
how everything, everything
is stitched through by grief
and somehow that makes
the weave of this quiet moment
beside you even more
unbearably beautiful.

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How

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


 
 
The pond ice gone a single day,
and already the wild geese
have returned, filling the open water
with riotous honking. Even
the backyard feels like a teaching
of how every emptiness invites
something to fill it, if not feather
then feeling. I think of how
in my most lonely moments,
some strange beauty has wandered
into my vision or woven its singular
song into my ears and I can’t help
but feel infused by life, the way
a trickle of water slowly—
almost imperceptibly—
will eventually fill a vast basin
till its water spills out the gulleys.
Perhaps you’ve felt it, too,
when you’re barren. Void of hope.
Then. A pink cloud.
An unruly clamoring of geese.
Still that barren, hopeless feeling,
but also, there it is, a single green tip
of garlic planted five months ago
that finds its way up to the sun.

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Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 16, 2025| 9 Comments »


for Erin
 
 
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
she has never been more beautiful to me than when
I brought my great nephews to the loft of her barn
and she picked up a red ping pong paddle and let
the small, fretful boy across the old green table make up
the rules for the game. And every time he’d change the rules—
assigning points for hitting the ball over the exposed beams
of the barn or points for hitting the ball into narrow window frames—
no matter the rules he contrived, she would shrug and say yes
and laugh and let the ball be forever in play. There was sunshine
in her voice when she praised him, pure radiance
in the way she squealed as the ball ricocheted
in the rafters, honest incandescence in her smile.
This is how generosity and goodness survive—
they’re passed on one brief interaction at a time.
When the boys and I left that dusty, sacred space,
fully covered in dust and hay, I swear we, too, were luminous.

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After All This Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 19, 2025| 4 Comments »



 
 
my heart still leaps up
for red rock cliffs
that rise from the river,
still thrills at the way
spruce trees grow
(how do they do it?)
out of near vertical walls,
their evergreen branches
bearing the silver
weight of snow.
The older I get,
the greater my wonder.
The older I get,
the more grateful I am
to rise into morning.
The older I get,
the more I want
to offer my breath
in praise of what is beautiful,
resilient and strong.
The turmoil is all around us,
and yet there is so much
that finds a way
not just to survive,
but to shine.
 

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One Expanding Awe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »


                  for Vivian
 
 
when she can’t stop
falling in love with the blush of sky
I can’t stop falling in love with her

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