for Vivian Rose
Sometimes it happens like this:
it’s the kind of warm evening
when one feels lucky knowing
it could be cold, but instead
the skin feels at home in the air
and the dry scent of autumn leaves
is everywhere and the low glow
of starlight reaches down through
the night with just enough luster
to make out the shape of the person
you love emerging from darkness
and they are alive and running toward you,
and with no effort, the world
is fused with a wild gratefulness, and life
feels as easy as floating on your back
in a warm glassy sea. Sure tomorrow
there will be news of heists and tragic deaths
and outright lies and petty jabs, but
for a moment, the body knows nothing
but the gift of being carried by grace,
and these moments, they are everything
when all we can say is
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Posts Tagged ‘connection’
Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, love, mother, reunion on October 30, 2026| 2 Comments »
Sometimes When We Read a Poem Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, connection, garden, perfume, poetry, reading on October 24, 2026| 3 Comments »
I feel how the poem moves through us, less like a needle and thread that pierces and binds us, though that, too, but it’s more that the poem moves through us the way a wind swirls through a garden and carries the scent of each flower, charging the air with a perfume created by the whole, an ephemeral, alchemical sweetness that honors the essence of everyone there, how they bring to the moment the full spectrum of their own unique experience, and knowing it will never ever again be like this, I trust, too, that it will always and forever be like this, trust we will gather and listen and feel and become that ineffable, inevitable fragrance, will become the honest scent of shared aliveness, trust that in every moment, every single bloom in the garden matters. |
Come What May
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, connection, control, trust, worry on October 4, 2026| 4 Comments »
There she is, sitting at my inner desk,
surrounded by spreadsheets and pink
eraser rubbings. She’s scrubbing at her
temples, running the numbers, planning,
preparing, making projections. I just
want to know things are going to be okay,
she says. She is worried. She is always worried.
I do not try to stop her. Her heart is golden,
and her longing to help is born out of love
that has twisted into fear. Instead, I sit
beside her. I do not hum a soothing song.
I don’t tell her a story that ends happily ever
after. Nor do I chastise her. I don’t tell her
she’s doing it wrong or that there is a way
to do life more right. I don’t tell her she’s
supposed to be grateful for whatever she gets.
I simply show up and breathe beside her
and feel how much she belongs. My love
for her does not make her stop worrying.
There is plenty to worry about. We go
on that way, for a day, for a life. The wind always
messing her hair. The chair never right.
The world too fast, too broken, too painful.
She doesn’t have to face it alone.
One Reason Why We’re Not Doomed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, connection, hope, light, miracle on October 1, 2026| 8 Comments »
this candle in my room
lit by the candle in your room
across the world
For Every Secret Agent of Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, kindness, love, secret agents of change on September 10, 2026| 2 Comments »
Listen,
if this is it,
this smiling
at strangers,
this dreaming
with others
of new ways
to be kind
in a world that
relentlessly
reminds us
how cruel
the world can be,
if this is it,
this story
of a woman
who found a circle
of petals surrounding
her car,
if this is it,
then let the head
learn to trust what
the heart knows—
that love is a door
we can choose
to walk through
at any moment.
Here, take my hand.
Let’s move through
that door together.
One Probably Biased
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, biased, connection, daughter, mother on September 8, 2026| 3 Comments »
so full of light, this girl
walking through the airport
that watching her I see how one person
makes everything around them brighter,
even, when I am with her, me.
For Four Days at the Film Festival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, film, strangers on September 7, 2026| 2 Comments »
saying hello to the woman
in line for the same movie—
the chance to become more
than an extra in each other’s lives
Community of Poets
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, connection, nest, red thread, zoom on August 29, 2026| 8 Comments »
The way a robin or oriole
might weave string or yarn
into its nest to create integrity
or an anchor, that is the way
I weave an imaginary red ribbon
through each square
on the zoom screen.
My friend has just invoked
a Japanese legend
about how we are all connected
by a red thread, and though
I have not heard this legend before,
I can imagine a deep crimson stitching
moving even now through all
of our backgrounds,
making of this gathering
a most wondrous nest,
a sturdy place made of wet poems
and fresh music, song and mess,
a durable creation in which we might
all rest, a sturdy, safe place
to find spaciousness.
One in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, lightning, storm on August 24, 2026| 5 Comments »
In the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, connection, death on August 11, 2026| 10 Comments »
Quiet as a rabbit
nibbling on grass,
obvious as a flicker
knocking on a tree,
surprising as a white feather
landing on my tights,
again and again,
you appear, or more truly,
again and again,
I see what has
always been here—
you in everything,
your absence
throbbing with life.
A Gathering of Strangers in the High San Juans
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, connection, landscape, mountains, surface, transformation on August 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
When we met,
we had no idea
how we all, like
this land, carry
inside us
the memory
of volcano
and glacier.
How easily we
can be fooled
by the present
landscape,
calm and serene.
Just because
there are spruce
here now and
gentle streams
doesn’t mean
there wasn’t once
a violent explosion
of fire and ash,
a long and cold
scraping of ice.
Here in the aftermath
of upheaval,
in this ongoing story
of transformation,
I see how our hearts
have been carved wide
as this high alpine
basin, and even
in the places where
nothing yet grows,
my god, it’s
so beautiful.
Kinship
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, connection, daughter, loneliness, pet, touch on July 21, 2026| 4 Comments »
after Jane Hirshfield
Oh look, I say to the cat
You have a soup belly.
I jiggle and wiggle her soft, floppy middle.
She does not love it.
I get it, I say to her. Sometimes
I don’t want to be touched either.
More truly, I do want to be touched,
but only in the way I want to be touched.
The cat holds her paws midair, frozen there,
as if not yet sure if to attack or relax.
She chooses relax. I choose
to massage between her ears.
She nuzzles her small skull into my palm.
I know, I say to the cat. I miss her, too.
We both know she’d rather be with my daughter.
We both feel the absence here.
We sit a long time like this, the cat nuzzling,
me dragging my fingertips forward and back,
forward and back.
With her body, she shows me
just where and how much to touch her.
When I move to rise, she lashes out with a claw
to keep me in place beside her.
In this way, I study my life.
How to hold. How to let go.
Loneliness wears a haunting perfume,
resinous, sweet, full of laughter
and silence. What a gift, I say to the cat,
to miss her together.
I cross the room. The cat follows to where I sit next.
Later, she leads me to her bowl. I follow.
Untranslatable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, language, silence on July 8, 2026| 4 Comments »
The language of grief is silence.
—Maggie Anderson, “What Grief Does”
No one can translate the language of grief.
No verbs properly express how it collapses
past, present and future into a single tense
in which all becomes unswimmable wave
and at the same time immovable stone.
No way to explain how in my grief lexicon
the word cello can only be spoken in sob.
How the single word shadow is somehow
an entire prayer, equal parts praise and lament.
How there are as many translations for loss
as there are losses, and each phrase mutates
into infinite local dialects spoken fluently only
by the individual who grieves. So perhaps
it is true, the language of grief is silence—
a mother tongue we are all gifted from birth.
Though sometimes the language of grief is wail.
Sometimes sniffle. Howl. Murmur. Hum.
So different, this language, for everyone.
And every moment, a new nuance unfolds.
It’s a wonder we understand each other at all.
Except we do. We share it, this language
we can’t possibly translate and yet we know its
expressions by heart. For this, we offer each other
our ears, knowing full well we can never
wholly understand, knowing full well it matters
that we listen anyway to gurgle, moan, silence, cry.
One Strange Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, loneliness on July 2, 2026| 2 Comments »
so grateful to share
it with you—
this loneliness
Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, clover, connection, moment, movement, paradox, stillness on June 17, 2026| 7 Comments »
The woman sits on the bench
in the field of clover and watches
the bumblebees clamber
from flower to flower. What goes on
goes on all around her. Something
inside her is infinitely still.
It invites her to enter.
In this moment,
everything is door.
She is both clover and bee,
both air and wings.
She is what is still
and all that is moving.
Is one who is sung
and one who sings.
While Sitting in 7F
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airplane, connection, joy, story, strangers, travel on June 13, 2026| 4 Comments »
The woman in 7D reads me an essay
she wrote for her husband in 7E
about how they first met at a party
when his hair was dark and thick.
He is bald now. She is gray, as am I,
but in those moments before take off
we three thrum with the thrill of that first
uncertain glimpse, and I enter the Hollywood
party with them, him in yellow suspenders,
her riding high on recent success.
They were strangers twenty minutes ago,
but now I am cheering for them—
for the people they were almost forty years ago
as they went out for coffee, then talked
through the night. Cheering, too, for who
they are now, no longer strangers, but Ellen and Bruce,
a writer and retired architect, who will likely
never remember meeting the woman in 7F,
but for tonight, something unspeakably lovely
happens as we fly over Chicago and Detroit
and we are woven into each other’s lives
for a few hours, a momentary plot full of laughter,
tenderness, and a spontaneous, shimmering joy,
while all around us the world goes dark.
Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, ineffable, language, paradox, silence on June 1, 2026| 8 Comments »
It’s because to try to describe this feeling is
to render it instantly dull, flat.
It’s like when you see a rock on the bottom
of the river—all shimmering and bright—
but the moment you bring it to the air
to share it, what seemed precious
becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,
the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot.
And so you learn to be quiet, to let your syllables
float away like dry leaves. What is heaviest
stays. Does not wash away. Is polished by friction, years.
Sometimes you meet others in the river. What shines
shines. Together you stare, stunned by the damn beauty.
Maybe you hold hands. Watch the light as it plays.
Over Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, connection, flower, garden, growth, lily on May 18, 2026| 2 Comments »
The way my grandmother tended
to her daylilies, that is the way
I want to attune to your words—
knowing how each utterance blooms
only briefly, but when cared for,
the plant itself is hardy, long lasting,
abundant, able to survive both
heat and chill, both loam and clay.
Come love, whisper to me.
I cherish every petal. And when
there is no bloom, I have learned
water and fertilize anyway, to honor
the place where the bloom will be.
At the Table of Loss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, loss on May 13, 2026| 2 Comments »
As many chairs
as humans.
No way to refuse
what we are served.
We choke on
the courses.
How is it they
nourish us?
Beneath the table,
we hold hands.
When Times Are Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, eye contact, porcupine, self-protection on April 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Trust is a porcupine
sitting on the highway
in the middle of the night
not bothering to raise
even one of his
thirty-thousand quills,
choosing instead to look
right into the oncoming
traffic, the shine
of a direct gaze
more effective
communication
than any sharpness,
any barb.