She wanted a little room for thinking.
With no room available,
she settled for a chair.
She sat there.
To anyone else, it might have looked
as if nothing was happening.
Inside her, whole foundations
were crumbling. Maps were
unmapping. Paths
were unpathing. A tornado
of doubt did its perfect work.
Somewhere there was light.
No one else could see the rubble
rising all around her.
Also in that wreckage,
her belief in fixing.
God, she was raw.
Now, now
there was room.
Posts Tagged ‘change’
The Shift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, inner landscape, shift, spaciousness on March 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
Currents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, flood, love, river on January 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I walk to the river and see how the banks
have changed since even two days ago.
Now water flows through the bright red willows
instead of staying in the main channel.
I remember how it used to run right here
where I am standing until a mighty flash
flood altered its course and there was not
a damn thing anyone could have done to stop it.
There is, even now, a rising flood of love.
It will move anything that tries to impede it.
When I can’t hear the flood of love,
that’s when I know it is up to me to share love
so someone else hears the currents I’m listening for.
Together we make unstoppable waves—how they roar.
Ever Changing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, peace, transformation on October 24, 2025| 9 Comments »
In my urgency to clutch it,
I made peace a thing
to be protected,
like a jewel, like a token,
instead of a force
that transforms.
What if I let peace sweep
through me as branches
are cleared by wind?
What if I let peace flood me,
scouring what I thought
I knew? What if, no matter
how hard I tried to
capture it, peace slipped
through my grasp like mist,
like rain, like time?
If I trusted an ever present
peace as much as I trust
ever present chaos,
who would I be then?
The Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, beauty, change, death, flowers, frost, garden on October 5, 2025| 14 Comments »
Overnight, the frost
took every pink zinnia
every creamy dahlia,
fading their colors to brown.
The nasturtiums have slumped
into dense wilted tangle.
The marigolds hold themselves tall
in a blackened and upright
surrender. For now,
the bright, fresh bouquets
I made yesterday are still
bright and fresh in their vases.
This beauty, we know, won’t stay.
The message is simple:
All that rises passes away.
I see it in these hands
that planted and watered
and weeded and picked—
my skin now wrinkled and thin
as frost-withered petals.
Here: the chance to witness
my own rising and passing.
How natural to age, to die.
The flowers in the vase will wilt.
With every day, so do I.
Such strange gift. First
the joy of putting the self
in service to making something
beautiful. Then, beyond joy,
the grace in learning to let it all go.
Getting In the Car to Drive to Cortez
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, Colorado, drive, meeting the world, paradox on September 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
I bring with me the face of the mother I saw on the news,
the one whose shoulders shuddered as a friend
led her from the scene. I bring the ugliness
of the words I read on Facebook, black letters
on a red screen preaching rage and retaliation.
I bring the hollow cheeked boy wearing blue
greasy clothes and the smudged white body bag,
and together we drive through the canyon
where the river is swollen from last night’s rain
and the tops of cottonwoods are just beginning
to turn golden. We don’t say anything as we rise
into the valley to see mountain peaks sleeved in white.
A small bear stands on the side of the road
on his back legs, dragging acorns into his mouth
with both upper paws. A slate blue cloud
smudges the distant sky and every branch, every
rock, every bumper, every porch sparkles
in morning sun. How do we metabolize it all?
Oh body, great receptor, portal for wonder and pain.
Who am I when I step out of the car? Changed.
Changling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, impermanence on September 4, 2025| 6 Comments »
one more thing that doesn’t last—
this wanting things
to stay the same
Alteration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, change, mind, thoughts, transformation on August 22, 2025| 8 Comments »
Though you’ve tried
to fit into
a thousand
small boxes,
perhaps comes
the day when
you’re opened
by grief or by
love, and your
thoughts unstitch
from what you knew,
and your mind
begins to rhyme
with sky, becomes
spacious enough
whole flocks
of bluebirds
can fly right
through, and
for a time you
stop trying
to make sense
of things, you
simply yield
to being
a home for
the ecstasy
of wings.
One Not Without Fear
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, courage, porosity, transformation on February 27, 2025| 6 Comments »
said the ice to the flame
teach me again
to be cloud
Poem in Which You Are Storm, I Am Meadow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, meadow, snow, time, transformation on February 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
By noon
the snow
that changed
the world
from brown
to white
in just
a day
seems gone—
the meadow
however, remembers
the gift.
Come spring,
there will
be green.
Love Poem to the Things I Never Dreamt I Could Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, opening on February 15, 2025| 4 Comments »
Here’s to the eggplant that once made me retch.
I would never have believed I would crave you.
And here’s to skiing. I remember the concussion,
the night train, and now, in my blood, the elation.
Here’s to ranch dressing, which for years I called goop.
And here’s to black licorice, which I now I call bliss.
And here’s the to the night, which once frightened me.
Here’s to fiction. Coffee. Country music.
It feels good tonight to remind myself
how completely things can change.
Like how a woman who thought she could never
wear patterns now wears striped socks
and polka dot gloves. Sometimes what we love
changes so completely we can’t imagine our minds
and hearts were once so small. Tonight I dream
of what else might change. For me. For you. For us all.
Even in a Time of Intolerance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, change, intolerance, kindness, love, responsibility on February 13, 2025| 17 Comments »
“We all have a part in shifting the story.”
—Joy Harjo, 23rd US Poet Laureate
There is, in an overfull classroom,
a woman teaching not only history,
but compassion. There’s a barista
making hearts in the foam
of every cappuccino she serves.
There’s man helping another man
on crutches as he struggles to cross
the icy street. There’s a library room full of women
chanting about praying for their enemy.
There are students raising money
to help those with breast cancer and AIDS.
Two girls are laughing for the joy of laughing
’til their faces are tear-streaked
and their ribs and bellies are sore.
There’s a poet who pours courage and music
into every word she shares with the world.
And another woman hears those words
and thinks, “Me. That poet is talking to me.”
This is how we change the world one kind act,
one true word, one long laugh at a time. Because
now, that woman is ablaze with wondering:
What is my part in shifting the story?
Doors Where I Have Knocked
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, door, loss, opportunity on February 6, 2025| 2 Comments »
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Door of tenderness that opens with breath.
Thick door of safety. Wide door of rest.
Windowless door to the future. Hingeless
door of hope. Door of patience. Door of no.
Door that requires I take off my name
before it will let me in. Door of prayer.
Trapdoor of sin. Door of courage.
Door of less. Door where the password
is always love. Trick door that appears
when I’m too weak to move. Door of
the heart where someone knocks back,
where I listen as if I might understand.
But it was the unwanted door of loss—the door
where I didn’t chose to knock, forged
from despair and gnarled wood—
that was the door that changed me for good.
Placing Attention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, change, what is on November 13, 2024| 6 Comments »
As the weather is changing
and the light is changing
and the birds at the feeder
in the yard are changing,
as the leaders are changing
and the feelings are changing
and the way that we see
each other is changing,
I notice the invitation to turn
toward the truth
of what does not change—
something so vast, so unnamable,
so unable to be grasped and held,
something so present
there is no life without it,
that knows itself
through you, through me,
through clover and tree and cloud
and goes on and on and on forever.
That. I turn again and again
toward that.
Thinking about Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, kite, possibility, Puerto Rico, war on November 12, 2024| 7 Comments »
remembering a visit to El Morro in Old San Juan
Above the vast green field
at least a hundred colorful kites
dive and soar, weave and swirl
as hundreds of families
gather with blankets and picnics—
and what would they think,
all those soldiers and troops
who for hundreds of years
fought and defended and
readied this place for battle,
would they dream it possible
the sounds they’d hear here now,
not artillery fire, not cannons,
not hoarse and desperate commands,
but for this Sunday afternoon
horn-happy music, wind-giddy whooping,
bright laughter of children rolling in grass,
and in the air no smoke, no shelling, no screams,
only the rustle and fluttery hum of kites
as they swoop and dance in the breeze.
New Eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, change, perspective, temple on October 27, 2024| 4 Comments »
If the body is a temple,
then I want to remind myself
the grotto, too, is a temple,
a holy chamber carved
by nature and time,
a sanctuary
where song echoes and rises
in a place that’s been scoured,
ravaged, worn.
The meadow, too, is a temple,
with a giant blue dome of sky
made more holy by its expansiveness.
Let my prayer be not to change my body
but to change the way I see it.
Let me look in the mirror and see there
a grotto, a meadow, a temple,
a being who is learning new prayers
as she’s shaped and reshaped
by the world.
Once grief was bonfire
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, fire, grief, transformation on September 4, 2024| 7 Comments »
consuming everything I touched.
Every surface. Every person.
Every minute, every thought.
Nothing went unlicked by flame.
Everything charred. Seared.
Scarred. Ash.
It scared and unmade me.
I’d never before
been so nothing.
Had never before lost
every wall, every line,
every idea, every mask.
Such a merciless,
astonishing teacher.
Tonight, grief is more a candle.
Sometimes, I feel the heat on my skin,
smell the acrid singe of my hair.
But for now, familiar with
its gentle light, I’m more attuned
to shadow, more at home in dark.
Now, this small flame of sorrow
reminds me who I am,
who I’ve loved, and
how I would not give up
a half Planck length of love.
Not that loss is easier, no,
but god help me, I’ve learned
it’s a gift to burn.
How Things Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, doubt, hummingbirds, self, summer, transformation, winter on July 25, 2024| 10 Comments »
Between when the hummingbirds come
and when too soon they leave,
we sit in the warm dusk and watch
as broadtails and black chins dart
and dive, defend and chase—
the feeder a loud, competitive zone
where small feathered bodies block
and jostle, crowd and race—
almost impossible to imagine
five months back when this deck
was a still, chilly silent place.
That’s how it is with transformation.
The first thing that must go is the self
who doesn’t believe it can happen.
The Changing View
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, husband, love, marriage, river on July 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
He walks along the river’s edge,
boots up to his knees, pitchfork
balanced on his shoulder,
his handwoven bucket hat
balanced on his head. And
I fall in love again. Not with
the man I married, but with
the man he’s become—
the man who has pruned
the coyote willows for days,
for years, so we can see
the river as it changes from clear
to bright red from the storms.
Watch as it runs clear again.