Wading into the ocean of grief,
I feel how the tides tug
at the story of how I arrived here—
the waves don’t tear my story away,
no, but float its fabric around me
till I wear it more loosely
and meet the raw self inside the story.
How many of us are here
in these waters learning
new ways to swim?
Already we’re deeper, deeper in.
Though it is a terrible gift to be here,
I fall in love with us all,
with our common humanity.
How sweet it is to meet each other
with our vulnerability glittering on our skin,
our bodies more buoyant
than we ever dreamed.
Posts Tagged ‘compassion’
Having Lost Sight Now of the Shore
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, grief, humanity, ocean on November 13, 2021| 7 Comments »
One Cultivating Compassion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, renaming, shame on December 11, 2020| 1 Comment »
One Scratched Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, goldfinch, heart, heartache, poem, poetry, thorns on May 15, 2019| Leave a Comment »
goldfinch stealing
into the thorn bush—
oh heart, bless you
for being willing, please
don’t follow him in
As the Pressure Drops
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blizzard, bomb cyclone, compassion, forgiveness, poem, poetry, snow, weather on January 7, 2018| 12 Comments »
Across the country, blizzards—blizzards
so big that folks speak of bombogenesis
while standing in line in the coffee shop.
And the snow begins to fall, snow
blocks out the sun, snow fills the roads,
the drives, the sills until people begin to forget
who they are when there isn’t a storm.
Imagine the storm goes on.
Imagine that it isn’t snow falling,
but forgiveness. Imagine all those people
rising morning after morning to find
themselves buried in compassion.
Piles of it. Heaps of it. Giant white drifts of it.
It must be dealt with before anything else
can happen. Before people can even
walk out the door, they must lift it
and move it and feel its surprising weight.
Who knew there was so much of it? Who knew
just how completely it could shut things down
if not engaged with properly? It takes some time,
perhaps, before the people see
how beautiful it is, how every single thing
it touches is softened, turned to sparkle,
turned to shine. A disruption, to be sure,
but sometimes it takes a blizzard
to find the calm. Sometimes
we must be stopped
before we learn how to go on.
And the colder it gets, the more
we must work to be warm.
Traveling the Same Road
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, driving, poem, poetry, road rage on August 30, 2017| 7 Comments »
You idiot, is what you say
to the driver five cars ahead of you
on the two-lane road that winds
through the river canyon.
There is no passing lane,
and you feel the crush
of the minutes as they rub against each other
while the white SUV five cars ahead
does not pull over
in the wide spot on the road
where all conscientious slow drivers know
to pull over to let the other drivers pass.
Idiot, you grumble, and miss
any beauty outside the window—
red rock cliffs and diamonding streams—
focused as you are on the speedometer,
the brake. Once it was you,
a girl of fifteen, who drove so cautiously
the windy roads to church
on a Sunday morning, that first day
with your driver’s permit.
And who was it in the long line
behind you who called the police
to report a drunk driver?
When the police pulled you over,
not one but two squad cars
with blaring red and blue lights,
you didn’t cry when the officers laughed—
there was warmth in their relief
to find that you were not drunk, but young.
No, you cried after they walked away,
cried all the way to mass.
Bless them, the irate ones,
the ones who fume in the back,
the ones who think furious thoughts.
That’s right. Bless yourself,
you, the livid one who even now
is hurling names at the other travelers
on the same paved path.
Settle in. Sixteen miles under the speed limit
will give you time to think about
how we’re all traveling
the same winding road
no matter which route we take—
all of us pilgrims journeying toward
a generous, elusive grace.
Midsummer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, hummingbird, poem, poetry on June 25, 2016| 3 Comments »
I pour the hot water
into the sugar that waits
inside the mason jar.
Here I am in the kitchen
longing to be
of use in the world.
Outside the window,
the broad tailed hummingbirds
swarm the near-empty feeder.
They will find, I know,
some other sweetness
if I do not make the nectar.
I long to believe
one small act of devotion
might ripple out
and affect the world
as profoundly as an act
of hate, but I do not believe it.
Still, I stir. The contents
of the jar change
from solid to cloudy to clear.
Outside, the blur
of hunger, the whirring
of dark green wings.
In All Cases
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, news, poem, poetry on June 15, 2016| 3 Comments »
Original Sin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, poem, poetry, relationship, unlearning on February 16, 2016| 2 Comments »
Tonight I will give you yourself.
All those pretty words you spun
into negligee, all those promises
you strung like pearls and then
tightened around my neck, all
those lovely leashes you made
out of praise, I give them back.
I have always loved being naked.
I think this is what you loved
most about me, too. Once. No one
is at fault for this strange game
of dress up we’ve been playing.
Perhaps it is what we were taught to do.
I unlearn this game. I want to give
you you. I give you your
own nakedness. Any robes
of hope I put on you, I untie
them. See them slip into soft piles
on the floor. Look at you now.
I see I never saw you before.
Out the window, winter is melting.
Everything loses its sheen.
I tried to hate you for the ways
you bound me, though the bounds
were beautiful. Now, all I can feel
is the thrill of this body so bare,
so new. I stare at my feet, my hands
and marvel at how they move.
Is this me? I never knew her.
I know her so intimately.
It is almost sweet now, so innocent,
how we tried to dress each other in dreams.
We didn’t know then that even
the softest words become chains.
I give you yourself, your longing
to be loved in the ways you thought
you needed. I give me myself,
I don’t know what that means,
already I am shedding.
Why I Didn’t Grow a Single Pea this Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, garden, killing, mole, owl, poem, poetry on October 18, 2015| 6 Comments »
This is the year I learned to hate the moles,
the whole blind-tunneling, garden-raiding,
carrot-devouring, pea-sprout-munching,
rapidly reproducing, miserable movement of moles.
Not for a lifetime, but for an hour or two,
I would like to be an owl so I might
swoop down on their company in the dark
with my enormous silent wings and my sharp
and merciless beak. I would pluck their bodies
from the rows of beans with relentless precision
and I’d pull them apart, the young ones, too,
no, not for the joy of the massacre,
but because that is what I am born to do.
How free it must be to kill with no conscience,
to take their furry, soft-skinned lives
without tripping on compassion.
How much easier not to muse
about how a rodent’s got to eat something, too,
and why wouldn’t she want an organic carrot,
all crunchy and sweet, or a pea sprout or one hundred,
so tender, so green.