She doesn’t want to wear short sleeves, she says,
because they will show her “old woman arms.”
Sometimes worry is just another word
for wanting to be loved just as we are.
I want to remind her how her arms
have been cradles and rocking chairs.
They’ve been cranes that lifted children
and grandchildren high. Her arms
have been levers and ladders and lifeboats.
They’ve been flagpoles and bridge makers
and chapels. Her arms kneaded the dough of my life
and still hold me when I am tired, broken,
scared, depressed. I hope she wears a sleeveless
dress for no other reason than to show
the whole world how her arms are still
in service to love, and damn, how they can flex.
Posts Tagged ‘body image’
Dressing for the Wedding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arms, body image, dress, mother, strength on July 29, 2025| 21 Comments »
Curvaceous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, change, self love, transition on June 10, 2024| 8 Comments »
Once, I was a twig of a thing,
a scrawny, scrappy slender being.
A sapling. A stalk. A vine.
My body rhymed with the y-axis,
with flagpole and street lamp and pine.
Perhaps I thought it would never change,
confusing my self for my form.
Perhaps I was afraid it would change,
my ideas of loving myself so small.
And now, look at me, a tree-ripened pear.
A cumulous cloud. A peony.
My body rhymes with river bends
and nautilus, helix, anemone.
And I am more me than I’ve
ever been—as lush on the inside
as I am to the eye, rounded
and softened and carved.
How sweet these hours when
I love what is here—
which is to say when I love
the change itself,
these hours when I wade
into the mystery, not clinging
to the way things used to be,
these amorous hours
when I revel in my curves
with eyes as forward as a new lover’s hands,
astonished by my own becoming.
A Woman Addresses Her Body
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, woman on May 24, 2019| 7 Comments »
And though I curse you
and drive you and push you,
body, you hold me,
you carry the soul,
you transform the plum
and the leaf into laughter,
you make tears out of water
and wine. You leap
and you slump, you
sing and you hunger,
you skip and run and crawl.
You let me be part of the miracle
when you made a new body within—
building spine and brain and chin
and toe out of broccoli and coffee and toast.
And when I am clumsy,
you wear the scars to remind me
where we have been. You
change, you soften, you rearrange.
You heal, you insist, you rest.
How, after all these years,
do I still find ways to ignore you?
You who have carried me across finish lines,
you who have held the weeping child?
Why, when I look in the mirror,
do I do anything but marvel
at your skill? Imagine, you breathe
without my command. You regenerate cells.
You tell the blood where to go and when.
Oh body, I’m sorry. I have hurt you. And you,
you hold me like the child that I am,
and you breathe me, you teach me,
you let me try again.
Yes, That’s When
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, nature, poem, poetry, walking on May 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
I like when I evergreen, current and berry.
I like when I mushroom, avalanche, cliff.
And everything is yes then, and everything
new: wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew.
this poem can be found in Hush (Middle Creek Press, 2020)
And So It Has Come to This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, betty rocker, body image, exercise, poem, poetry, self acceptance on May 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
for Betty Rocker
I roll out the yoga mat in the living room
and find the You Tube channel
on which the twenty-something girl
with an armful of tattoos and a perky smile
tells me in her perky voice all about how great it is
I am going to take care of myself for just
fifteen minutes a day. She says that
five times, as if to both belittle it—
you spend more time than that
on social media, she suggests—
and at the same time elevate it—
you can do so much good in just fifteen minutes!
Some part of me wants to hate her,
but she is clearly so happy about what
we’re about to do together in our living rooms.
She claps to punctuate each thought,
and does a little skip in place as if to say
I am ready before I am ready.
I have been ready before. I remember
what it’s like to be ready. I remember
multiple decades when I was so ready
I just never stopped. I remember feeling
somewhat sorry for people who, as I do now,
rely on someone else to tell them to kick
and how high.
But I don’t hate the perky young woman.
In fact, I can’t help but fall in love
with her exuberance, the way she enthuses
through the burpees and turns the wide plank
into a star, whee! she squeals. And in fact,
as I do crescent kicks, like a ninja, she says,
I can’t help but laugh and smile because
she is right—it’s fun. And I feel goofy
and great and so glad to be the woman
I said I would never be. Somewhere,
a young woman is feeling sorry for me.
Somewhere, another woman is doing
lunges and squats in her living room.
Tomorrow we’ll do it again.
A Woman Addresses Her Body
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body image, gratitude, poem, poetry, woman on January 23, 2015| 8 Comments »
Oh body, I’ve tried to silence you.
I have told you not to hunger
when you were starved.
I told you to run and ski and swim
when you were tired.
I tugged you long into the dark corridors of night
when you wanted to sleep.
I draped you in dresses two times too big
to hide your angled bones.
And you, you have lured me to the waterfall
to stand beneath the startling shock.
You have lain me down in tall grass
to lose myself staring up at sky.
You have curled into the softness of men
and held the fear of children.
Inside panic, you have found breath.
You have opened to let the new life pass through,
and given milk and song and hum.
And when the tears want to come,
you let them come.
Body, my vessel, my carriage, my curse,
my blessings, my bane, my teacher,
I am still learning how to be a woman.
Your Presence Is Requested
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, body image, poem, poetry, self love on March 2, 2014| 2 Comments »
Again the invitation
to love the body
this very moment.
Not the way it was once,
all limber and lean,
all smooth and able.
Not the way it might
be someday in the future
if only, if only. The invitation
to love it now. No
exceptions. No rain date.
No directions how to get there.
No box for maybe.
The invitation arrives
as it always does,
without an envelope.
Without a return address.
No RSVP. No name on it
but your own. No trumpets.
No angels singing about
how all flesh is holy. No
clowns telling jokes.
No balloons.
It arrives so quiet,
but so sincere, right beside
the impulse to crumple
it up. Now what to do.
The rising urge to run.
The rising urge to bow.