Thirty million years ago,
a number I can say but cannot
comprehend, the mountains
where we hiked today
were covered in a deep layer
of volcanic ash which somehow
formed the spire of Lizard Head Peak.
I am constantly stunned by this world
that makes and remakes itself
out of the same matter.
How complicated, yet how simple:
we all belong to each other—
a thought that, for a time,
made me feel like a crumbling mountain
walking among crumbling mountains,
like a dry stream bed walking
along the dry stream bed,
like a clover gone to seed
walking amongst fields
of dry, papery clover petals,
every step a reunion.
Posts Tagged ‘belonging’
Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, Colorado, geology, hiking, Lizard Head, mountains on August 1, 2026| 8 Comments »
When I Feel I Do Not Belong
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, parts of self on April 26, 2026| 7 Comments »
When I feel I do not belong in the world,
when I walk past raspberry brambles
and my attention somehow fails to be snagged
by their clever thorns and the warm,
woody scent of their leaves,
when I curse the wind instead of turning
toward it, arms flung wide as if to fly,
in those moments there’s no poem, no prayer,
no book, no speech beautiful or fierce enough
to remind me I belong to all.
How is it so convincing, that numbness,
that doubt I could ever be worthy?
And how is it this late April morning
I tremble at the smallest beauty,
astonished by the elegant reach
of slender bamboo, the leggy twining
of wild honey suckle, the thready,
rhythmic peeps of the chicks
in my stepdaughter’s yard, the whine
of her dog as she watches the chicks.
In this moment, I can almost not believe
I could ever feel separate from the world,
though I know such moments are true.
So I wrap my arms around that lonely version
of myself, and marvel how the part of me
who believes I could never belong,
that part belongs here, too.
Formative
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, childhood, chosen, games, growing up, popularity on March 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
I would sit in the circle,
gut flopping like a fish
while the fox walked around
to pat us each on the head.
Duck. Duck. Duck.
Bright fizz of adrenaline
frothing in the blood
as the hand came closer.
Duck. Duck.
Please pick me. Don’t pick me.
Half wanting to be chosen,
half wanting not,
because I was the child
who had to stew in the pot
for five more rounds
because I’d get caught.
Duck. Duck.
Not wanting to be chosen
’cause I knew I’d sit alone.
Oh, shame of the center.
Shame of being slow.
Please pick me. Don’t pick me.
Oh. I am not the goose.
Oh, longing to be chosen,
wanting the proof
that I could be a child
other children would choose.
In the Bleak Midwinter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, cold, fire, loneliness, warmth on December 3, 2025| 6 Comments »
In the midst of cold,
past the fringes of darkness,
is this place of fire
where we huddle
at the edge of warmth
to relieve our chill
and regard each other’s faces
in the glow,
where we learn stories
of the shadows
and meet our own
darkness.
Loneliness is, perhaps,
believing there is no room
for us in the circle.
Belonging is knowing
every one of us
is the flame.
Sometimes Grief Looks Like This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, forest, grief on November 19, 2025| 4 Comments »
The woman walks into the woods.
How beautiful, she thinks, though
on closer look, all around her
the woods sprawl in wild disarray.
Fallen logs decompose, wood rots,
decays. Bark peels. Brambles scramble.
Berries darken and shrivel. Moss drops off
in great chunks. Broken sticks hang
from broken branches. And all of it belongs.
She thinks how messy grief can be.
The barbed thorns of anger, vast thickets
of I don’t know. Most times there is
no trail at all. Why did she think
human nature would be any different from
nature itself? Oh this messy humaning.
She tells herself, All belongs. All belongs.
The more she believes it, the more she feels
the forest inside her, witnesses how the more
it stretches, the more it rots, the more it grows.
In a Circle of Mountains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, hiking, mountain on August 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
In a circle of mountains
it’s easier to remember
we belong to the mountains,
belong to high-pitched cheep
of pica, belong to the cliffs,
to the path, to the unpath,
belong to the blue,
blue reach of sky.
We belong as much to each other
as we belong to ourselves,
each of us a poem read by strangers
and beloveds in ways only they can read us,
each of us constantly rewriting
our lines, while in the meantime
we are constantly rewritten
by a great and unnamable
is-ness that rhymes us
each to each other.
We belong to the truth
that all belongs, even when we
are most lonely, even when
we would rather push away
from the world.
In a circle of mountains,
it is easier to practice belonging—
easier to notice this math:
your heart equals my heart,
and all this opening, opening, opening
to what we cannot know,
that equals what a life is for.
You belong to this world with
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bluegrass, fire, music, wildfire on July 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
its early morning thunderstorm
that wakes you with a clap,
this world of early morning rain
and dusty midday paths,
this world with plumes of wildfire
that fill the air by evening,
the valleys thickly choked with smoke,
the mountains disappearing.
You belong to this world of tinder.
Sometimes it hurts to belong.
You belong to the burning world of fear
as much as the world of song.
You most surely belong to music,
to this world of euphoric dancing
And as you dance, you smile,
dance as if it’s your calling.
They sing of constant sorrow.
You dance. The ash keeps falling.
The One Great Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being held, belonging, holding on January 13, 2025| 7 Comments »
There are so many ways to hold and be held.
—James Crews, “The World Loves You Back”
Assume belonging.
—Augusta Kantra
There are so many ways to hold and be held.
Like the way the white and black cat holds my lap
even as I hold her small weight.
Like the way a woman holds a canyon in her heart—
its red rock cliffs and snow-thick spruce—
even as the canyon holds her.
And when I hold silence and offer it my whole attention,
I feel how silence holds me,
cradles me with such profound nothing
it becomes everything.
What if we assume we belong?
Then we might find we are held
by strands of birdsong, by the even beat
of eagle’s wings, by the blue moonlight
that reflects off the snow.
I spent so much time worrying
about how to fit in, changing
how I dressed, how I spoke, what I did.
I somehow didn’t learn until recently
real belonging asks nothing of me
except I offer myself exactly as I am.
I become more myself when I trust I am held
as much by shadow as by light,
held by the one shared breath, by the one
infinite song, held by soil, held by sky,
held even by the human longing to be held,
held by the one great story
from which our lives cannot be unwritten.
How We Are Held
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, broken, connection, held, holding, love on January 12, 2025| 7 Comments »
When my arms were the most empty,
when my hands were unable to hold anything
and I was most unselved,
that was when I felt the most gathered up
by love. An immeasurable and wildly precise love.
Even when I wanted to push love away.
Even when I felt too broken to be found.
I felt love gather all my pieces.
Not to fix them.
Not to put them back together.
Love simply held every shattered thought
and every ruined dream and cradled me
just as I was. Not because I deserved it.
Just because that is what love does.
I am learning to trust this feeling of belonging
to the world, broken as it is, broken as I am,
learning to trust I need not do a thing to belong.
I do not know how it all works
or why I was able to receive it.
But I can’t unknow this unfathomable truth:
how love holds us when we cannot
hold anything, gentle as silence,
fierce as a flood, true as the breaking itself.
The way the ocean forever holds every wave.
The way the shore forever changes to hold the ocean.
For When We Greet Each Other
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, greeting, respect, ritual on November 10, 2024| 28 Comments »
I want a new ritual for when we meet each other—
strangers or beloveds, friends or rivals, elders or children.
It begins by holding each other’s eyes
the way we behold sunrises or the first cherry blooms,
which is to say we assume we’ll find beauty there.
And perhaps some display of open hands—
a gesture with palms up—that suggests both
I offer myself to you and I receive you.
There should be a quiet moment in which
we hear each other breathe—
knowing it’s the sound of the ocean inside us.
If there are words at all, let them be formed
mostly of vowels so they’re heard more as song
than as spitting, more like river current and less
like throwing stones, words that mean something like
I do not know what you carry, but in this moment
I will help you carry it. Or something like,
Everything depends on us treating each other well.
And if we said it enough, perhaps we’d believe it,
and if we believed it enough, perhaps we’d live it,
treating every other human like someone
who holds our very existence in their hands,
like someone whose life has been given us to serve,
even if it’s only to walk together safely down the street,
hold a door, pass the salt, share a sunset,
offer a smile, and say with our actions you belong.
Inviting Spaciousness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, breathing, connection, self-compassion on November 4, 2024| 22 Comments »
Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,
I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings
in a desperate attempt to unravel it.
I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.
Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it
with my hands like something precious,
something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.
I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.
I imagine all the other frightened hearts
and imagine them all being held in love.
And I breathe. I breathe and feel
how the breathing invites a spaciousness.
I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing
as I open and soften. Open and soften.
And nothing changes. And everything changes.
The heart, still a knot, remembers
it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.
Bowing at the Feet of the Ordinary
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, blessing, car, daughter, love, mother, self blessing on August 25, 2024| 9 Comments »
Bowing at the Feet of the Ordinary
May I remember this day
with its two-hundred twenty two
miles of pavement and my
daughter beside me and both
of us singing her favorite songs.
Remember this day not because
it was special but because
it was the way it always is,
with us laughing and talking
and sitting in easy silence.
With a stop at the car wash
and her grumbling about vacuuming,
then doing it anyway. With
a stop at the coffee shop
and me grumbling about
cake pops, then buying one
anyway. With the sweetness
of ripe Cresthaven peaches
we bought at the roadside stand—
how the juice dripped down our chins.
With the rich green of late summer
a blur out the window. The day
so infused with commonplace
love I never once doubted
I belonged with my girl, in that car,
in the world, in the universe,
the days getting shorter
but still so luminous, so warm.
Where We’re From
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, Colorado, home, landscape, natural world, wisconsin on July 16, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though I love this high desert,
I am a lake walking amidst
the cactus and the pinyon pine.
I am sunsets on flat water
and waves in the spring.
I bring my white trillium soul
to the arroyo and let dry sand
run through my fingers.
They never leave me,
these Wisconsin summers,
even though I left them when
I was a barefoot girl,
even though I’ve made a home
amongst red rock cliffs and empty
river beds where the gray trunks
of juniper twist in deep curves
and red-tailed hawks spiral
making visible the wind.
How surprising it is to discover now
in my silvering years some new
insight into what it means to belong:
how sometimes we choose,
how sometimes we are chosen.
You Belong
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, friendship, grass, love, meadow on May 8, 2024| 6 Comments »
The way grass belongs to the meadow—
how without it, the meadow
would not be meadow—
this is the way you belong in my heart.
Not that I’ve made a space for you here,
more that you’ve helped make my heart what it is,
and without you, my heart is not my heart.
I cradle you here as in a nest of wheat—
soft home, humble home, ever rewoven
to fit the changing shape of you.
It’s not true our hearts are our own—
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Who am I? Who am I?
You, my sun, my grass, my wind.
Afraid My Actions Would Hurt Someone Else,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, belonging, burr, resistance on April 28, 2024| 7 Comments »
my chest filled with anxiety,
as if burrs grew in my bloodstream,
sharp barbs catching on my skin from inside.
I wanted the feeling to go away.
Wanted to know I could make everything okay.
And the burdock dug deeper in,
clinging to my heart as it would
to a sock or a sleeve or a dog.
Inside the burr was a seed of fear:
I can’t protect others from harm.
And my teacher said, her voice warm,
Let the fear of repercussions be here.
But the longing to control kept
digging into me with spines sharp and long.
Include it as part of the whole, she said.
And I thought of wild burdock
with its big soft leaves,
how naturally it grows in a field.
How it’s evolved, a product of life itself.
How the root is used to heal.
And I was stunned by the fact
that burdock belongs to the field
as much as wheatgrass,
dandelion, wild iris, wild rose—
the burr one part of the whole.
And I knew myself as field.
I imagined inside me
the grass, the sunflower, the vetch, the trees,
and the uncomfortable burr of anxiety,
which, though painful, belongs.
I focused on whatever it is
that holds it all. Inside me,
acceptance opened like a song.
*with thanks to Joi Sharp for her words (in italics)
Self-Portrait While Sleeping Alone in Alison’s Room
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, friendship, gratefulness on October 14, 2022| 8 Comments »
Of course, there are books everywhere—
shelves and stacks and bags of books.
Though I would not have guessed
there would be small wooden ladders
with many rungs for the mind to climb.
And the colors on the walls are warm
and the breeze through the open window
is cool. Through one window, some neighbor
is playing their radio loud,
though it’s after one a.m.
And out the back window, I can see
in the moonlight a persimmon tree
laden with hundreds of pale orange fruits.
And though Alison isn’t here,
she is so thoroughly here,
and I feel so very not all alone
as I fall asleep by myself in Alison’s room,
aware of my exact shape and grateful
that for this moment, I know myself
as something else that belongs here,
something chosen, something defined in part
by its presence here, something integral
as the tennis ball, the blue flashlight,
the tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall.
May Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bird, morning, red-winged blackbird on May 18, 2022| 12 Comments »
Just after sunrise,
I hear it, the bright airy trill
of the red-winged blackbird—
and before my eyes
are even open,
I feel a wild resonance
with the waking world,
the certainty I belong
to this day with its rising sun
and scent of green grass,
its breeze reaching in
through the screens;
I belong to this day
with my creature heart
that already this morning
longs to hold what it cannot,
longs to comfort others,
even knowing how
sorrow must be felt.
I belong to the song
of the red-winged blackbird
as it calls out again,
belong to the silence
as he waits for an answer.
And waits. And waits.
I belong to the spring
every bit as much
as I belong to winter.
This is perhaps
the conundrum of love,
no matter how strong the ache,
we still belong
to the world of beauty,
this world that calls to us
even in our sleep,
wakes us with a promise
strung like audible garland
across the dawn—
you belong, you belong.
Somewhere You Feel Free
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aster, belonging, hiking, mountains, widlflowers on July 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
You belong among the wildflowers.
—Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”
Standing alone
in a high and steep meadow
surrounded by a million million
pale purple asters,
a person might be,
at least for a moment,
a many petaled thing,
might know the blue sky
in a new blue way;
might want to visit the self
as curious as a bee
stepping into the golden center
of things. What luck
to climb into beauty,
to stumble into
the self greater than the self,
to forget for a moment that worry,
that burden, that loss,
and simply purple, to wildly
purple, to purple with abandon,
to purple without thought,
to humbly purple,
to purple.
At the Houston Zoo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bird, home, nest, pigeon, zoo on July 13, 2021| 2 Comments »
Not the chuckwalla
nor the cheetah nor the capybara,
it was the pigeon
I couldn’t stop watching
as it sat on its nest
in the tall sturdy grass
beside the glassed-in walls
of the chimpanzees
with its fluffy grey chicks
tucked against its grey breast.
She looked as if she belonged
exactly where she was—oh
how I cherish that feeling.