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Posts Tagged ‘certainty’




Sometimes, too certain I know what love is,
I miss love.
It’s like thinking water is waves,
not seeing water is also the depths of ocean,
the muscle of river, the body, the air,
ice, snow, fog, clouds, mist.
Sometimes, longing to hear certain words,
I neglect to hear the words that are spoken.
Or craving a certain touch, I disregard
all other touch, and my skin believes it is starving.
There is beauty beyond beauty, love beyond love,
opening beyond opening, an apple inside apple.
Let my prayer be I don’t know.
Let me find the door inside the door,
the glimmer inside the glimmer,
the human inside this woman.
The god inside of god.

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Certainty is a frigatebird,
able to soar on the wind for weeks,
its nest a distant thing.
Is it wrong to say I admire it,
sleek and raven feathered,
how it dives from the sky
with exquisite precision,
how it steals what it wants
with no regard for what’s fair.
I have wanted to be that certain,
wanted to take, wanted to believe
my hunger is all that matters.
Is it wrong to notice these thoughts,
to give voice to their midnight wings?
I say I trust what I don’t know.
Meanwhile, I flirt with certainty.
It whispers to me,
I’m the other truest thing.

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All summer it’s been twisting and winding,

twining around sunflowers,

stretching across pathways,

climbing the pea vines and the tall wire fence.

If there is a fairy godmother of flowers,

she must have said to the bindweed,

“I bless you with tenacity.” And forever since,

it has lived up to her generosity.

Why do I curse it for its persistence,

when I, myself, have made a life out of stubbornness?

Oh foolish woman who longs for beauty,

but pulls the bindweed before it is beautiful,

before its pale pink flowers open to morning

delicate as certainty.

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Off the Path

 

 

On the path, I am the one

who forgets to look up—

 

the one who doesn’t see the mountain

because I am focused on the path.

 

I am the one who fears the dead end,

who worries and obsesses about it,

 

only to discover it wasn’t an end at all,

just a sharp turn, and the path goes on.

 

I am the one who fears she’s not good enough

for this path, who wonders if there’s another path

 

somewhere that I am supposed to be on.

Everyone else seems to know where they’re going.

 

I can’t even seem to spot the signs.

Confused, I stop, which allows me

 

to notice the weeds gone to seed,

notice their tiny white globes, notice

 

how good it feels to stop

and notice them. I am the one who

 

cares so much about the path and still

fails at staying on it. In fact,

 

the more I pay attention, the more

I am the one who forgets there is a path.

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Today yet another chance to notice

how often I am wrong. How easily

 

my voice puts on its business suit

and power pumps and exudes confidence—

 

how sure I am that I am right! And then,

when confronted with the real truth, what to do

 

but laugh at the self who just moments ago

was strutting and certain and bold.

 

What a relief to kick off the shoes

and let the self run barefoot through the afternoon,

 

ditching her dress, letting the world

laugh at her, holes in her stockings,

 

holes in her conviction, shoulders

bare and exposed. Feel how the breeze

 

rushes in through the open door,

carries with it the song of red-wing blackbirds,

 

touches everything like relief, like

a song about journeys, like forgiveness.

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As summer leans into the fall,

as sunflowers that lose all

their petals—though it takes

some time. As rhyme

 

that slips toward normal speech.

As evening drifting toward the night.

And when you’re really sure

you’re right, let go as snow evaporates,

 

as puddles dry, as clouds

disperse, as waves unwave,

as light rehearses shadow.

And if you’re still sold

 

you are right, then practice

quietude. Like dirt. Like

bark. Like pearl. Like grass.

Like the moon, so dark, so new.

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So much to learn from the fallen leaves,

the barren trees, the still green moss,

the skittish deer, the unturned stone,

the smooth gray limbs of loss,

fog hung like garland in the woods,

a secret spring, the brittle grass,

the yet unfurling truth in us,

the path that forgets it’s a path.

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One Authority

 

 

 

even knowing what comes next

I choose to turn the page—

delight in being wrong

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Odd joy in the pink eraser rubbings,

joy in the silence just after the timer says start,

joy in the turning of the inner cogs

and the way that the numbers

sprint across the page,

joy in the scratch of the pencil, the stumble

of confidence, in the scrapping of the route

so that a new route can emerge,

joy in arriving at an answer,

an answer so certain you can label it

with units and circle it and know

that tomorrow it would turn out

the same way again, not like any

other part of your life.

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Almost

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
and no. No advice that sticks.
The snow comes down

like an afterthought. A flake
on the street. A flake on the nose.
Sometimes I live this way. Perhapsishly

and maybeing. Sixty-five shades
of gray. No rule I can believe in
enough to write it down. Life

itself the exception. Every day
the proof, and then this snow.
I used to think I knew what

gravity was. And love. True,
the snow comes down. But
the heart? How to explain

this rising, this infinite
falling apart, the tangled
astonishing mess. This snow

falling from nowhere. No. No. No.
No. No. No. I say. And yes.

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