Just when I believed
autumn would last forever
it didn’t.
Not that I really thought
the gold leaves would stay.
Not that I really believed
the warm days were endless—
but part of me wanted them to be.
And so this cold morning,
driving on ice
when I feel the slip of the wheels
as they lose traction,
the heart resonates
with the skid.
Oh, this lesson
in losing control.
Oh, this remembering
how quickly it all slides by—
the light, the warmth,
the deepening gold,
even this fleeting understanding
of how quickly
it all slides by.
Posts Tagged ‘belief’
After the First Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, belief, control, snow, understanding on October 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
Short List of Wonders
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, death, faith, miracle, mother, wonder on October 8, 2021| 13 Comments »
Years from now,
I want to remember
the way tears
became white doves
and flew away,
the way stepping stones
appeared to help me
cross an impossible
river, the way
a crumpled letter arrived
from the dead
to proclaim
I am surrounded with joy.
Oh woman who lives
in my skin years from now,
don’t try to pretend
it didn’t happen.
It did. A rainbow
blossomed above
your shoulder.
Your head opened up
to receive golden light.
Life wrapped its strong hands
around your heart.
And when you asked
your son, Are you close,
you felt against your ribs
a knocking
from the inside.
Believing Things that Seem Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, Corona Virus, impossible, love on April 8, 2020| 9 Comments »
Like the giant rock, balancing in the desert
on a slender pillar of sand. Like the way
the full moon seems so much larger
when it first rises. Like how the bluebird,
smaller than my open hand, migrates
up to two-thousand miles in the spring.
Every day, the world bewilders me,
as if daring me to believe in other
impossible things. Like how closeness
to death makes us more alive.
Like people all over the world
choosing kindness over chaos.
Like love, that against all odds,
continues to grow.
Dear Moment That Wasn’t What I Thought It Was,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, psychology, reality, truth on February 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Thank you for blessing me with reality,
for showing me when I’m guilty
of what my friend calls cognitive slippage.
It’s like stuffing a big scoop of wasabi into my mouth,
thinking it’s guacamole. The mind believes
what it wants to believe until it’s shown otherwise.
Thank you for demonstrating how sometimes
I disconnect from the facts—especially when
emotions are involved. Like when I think
I’m a pool of warm soothing water
another could enter, but really, I’m a woman
made of bone and corpuscles. Little can I hold.
I always thought imagination was a gift,
but not, perhaps, when it puts me at odds with what’s true.
Dear moment, I want to be attentive. When you pull out the rug
from beneath my thoughts, I want to be the rug.
And when you poke my theories full of holes, I want
to be the hand that pokes, the fresh air that rushes in.
The Berry Bush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, berries, healing, poem, poetry, poison on March 22, 2019| 2 Comments »
I knew that they were poisonous, the berries.
Still, I used them to make soup. They were
the most beautiful shades of yellow, green
and orange, and they popped when you squeezed them
and spilled their sticky juice, their tiny seeds.
I’d stir them into puddle water with handfuls
of ripped green grass, small stones, broken sticks.
Then I’d stir. Stir and chant into the old silver pot,
chant words I imagined had been sung long before.
It was a soup, I knew, that could heal.
A magical soup that could nourish the world
just in the making of it.
Years later I consider what I knew then—
how belief is the most important ingredient.
How all healing begins with a bit of poison.
Some People Choose to Believe, Some Don’t
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, hope, lie, parenting, poem, poetry, Santa on February 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The hope that is left after all your hopes are gone—that is pure hope, rooted in the heart.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast
And so tonight when my daughter says to me,
Mom, are you Santa Claus? I ask her if it
would make a difference, and she says, Yes.
I don’t want him to just be a hoax for making
kids be good. And I say, I’ve never thought of Santa
that way. I think of him as generous. And magic.
And she says, But magic’s not real, and I say,
Some magic is. And she says, Well, it would
make sense. You always know what we want
because you’re the mom. And I tell her,
It is my great privilege to work for Santa,
and she says, What do you mean? And I say,
Well, you know, buying presents. And she says,
Why do you think he didn’t bring us a big present
this year, like he did last year? And I hear
in her voice, against all fact, hope,
the hope that lingers when hope is gone,
a pure hope, the hope that goodness is real,
that there is generosity beyond comprehension,
that some magic is real. She rolls over in the dark.
I keep hope rooted in my heart.
One Persistence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, Christmas, poem, poetry, Santa on December 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Though I Don’t Really Believe in Fairies, Still …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, magic, poem, poetry, wonder on July 12, 2014| 2 Comments »
Will it work? says the girl,
when I hand her the magic dust
to sprinkle on the fairy house we’re building
out of sticks and stems and rocks.
Why wouldn’t it work? I say, dropping
more of the tiny red weed seeds
into her open hand. She doesn’t argue with me then,
only keeps her hand extended so I will sprinkle
more magic dust into her palm.
I can tell she doesn’t totally believe me.
I can tell that I wish she did. Oh the sad advent
of being purely practical. I am open
to believing improbable things.
I am tired of math and the same problem
never adding up. I could use a little magic.
I don’t mind if I need to make it up myself.