It means “connection between two passageways.”
It means “place where two rivers meet.”
It means, “here is where necrotized intestine
can be cut away and a woman can be healed.”
It means, “seam where sepsis might begin
through the tiniest of micro perforations.”
It means, “my mother endured such pain.”
It’s so fine, the line between healing and crisis.
So elusive, the word that means
“I know my own life because it’s connected with hers.”
And I, who never before
had even heard of anastomosis,
I, who even yesterday could not spell
nor pronounce it,
I now know too well the five-syllable word
that means “fallible healer,” “essential danger,”
this word that describes the very place
where a life might be saved,
then nearly lost, then saved again.
Posts Tagged ‘connection’
Anastomosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, healing, hospital, mom on October 17, 2023| 15 Comments »
In Rhythm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amphibrach, connection, daughter, meter, mother, night, path, sundown on September 4, 2023| 10 Comments »
Walking the ridge when the sunset
is almost a memory, my daughter
and I make our way through the dark
and we sing an old tune taking turns
with the words and although we can’t see
the dirt road right beneath us, we trust
the road’s there as we step, step again, step again—
it is like that, this life, we lose sight of the path
but sometimes there’s singing,
and sometimes, a loved one’s beside you,
and how does this happen,
the dark’s no less dark,
and the path’s no less lost,
but your feet stay in synch as you step,
step again, step again.
One Encouragement
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, encouragement, friendship, sailboat, worry on August 30, 2023| 12 Comments »
the day flooded with worry,
I become sailboat—
your words the wind
Holding Your Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, heart, love, touch, tree on August 29, 2023| 7 Comments »
I want to trace the rings of your heart
the way I would trace tree rings—
not to count them
but to honor each season of you.
I want to touch my fingertips
to your scars, want to learn
your heart’s stories, find clues
of how you became who you are.
I want to press my palms
to your heart and praise
how it is we grow,
even in disaster, even in drought,
want to praise the dark center,
the time-thick bark, the record
of the ordinary days. I want
to chart the thin slivers of your wounds
and let my hands speak love,
want to tell you in a language
of quiet touch, I see you.
Inside It All
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged atoms, connection, mask, separation on August 7, 2023| 11 Comments »
Beneath the masks, beneath the names,
beneath ideals, beneath the shoulds
is a thrumming, ecstatic atomic swirl,
unseen and omnipresent, inescapable
and holy—a divine blurring of being,
a realm of charge and energy—
most of it empty space. Sometimes,
I remember this. Perhaps walking
in the woods or standing in the midst
of a city’s whir, perhaps working in the kitchen
or singing in a choir, I remember
who we really are, remember
not with mind but with being,
and I’m lost in it, found in it,
alive in the cloud of it, astonished
with the sacred design of it,
elegant soup of it,
elemental swirl of it all.
How is it I sometimes
see only woman, man,
cottonwood, spider, self, other,
other, other, other?
We walk this journey
of separation together.
Oh being who is lonely,
who is holy, remember?
Beyond Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, heart, hiding, language, mask on August 7, 2023| 17 Comments »
There was a time I believed
we need to tell each other who we are
so you can know me, so I can know you.
Now, I see how words, too,
can be like little masks, little disguises
we can use to hide.
I don’t want to hide anymore.
I want to find the most naked words—
words with no ribbons, no sparkle,
no paint—and speak in the barest
of tongues. I want to speak with you
blood to blood, breath to breath,
grief to grief, fear to fear.
I want to know you and be known
by whatever it is that resonates
inside the words—
a raw and vibrant IS, IS, IS
that pulses between us
like a common heartbeat—
the way two living heart cells
from two different people,
when placed together in a petri dish,
will find a shared rhythm
and sustain it. This is how
I want to meet you—
two silences becoming one silence,
infinite beings, one life.
Sympathetic Resonance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, love, pain, piano, resonance on August 2, 2023| 13 Comments »
All day, I feel the throbbing
of other lives, other pain,
as if I’m a string on the piano
that goes unplayed, and yet
vibrates when the hammer
strikes other strings, and then—
your ache, my ache,
two strings, one song.
At City Market
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, gratefulness, grief, grocery store, loss on July 9, 2023| 6 Comments »
From across the stack of bottled water
the man who lost his beloved wife
and the woman who lost her beloved son
recognized each other and stopped.
Can I hug you? he said. And they met
in the center of the aisle.
They stood there long moments,
heart to heart, while all around them
the carts continued to roll
and the shoppers shopped
and the checkers checked
and the strawberries were ripe and on sale.
And though no one took their picture,
no one noticed them at all,
in that moment their hearts,
already expanded by grief,
expanded even more.
They became their hearts.
Sitting with Rachel in the Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, found, friendship, lost, rachel on June 11, 2023| 7 Comments »
The secret, she says, is to put yourself
in the mindset of the thing that is lost.
And so it is she finds her lover’s shoes,
her misplaced keys, the coin I thought
was missing. It’s her superpower,
she says. I just think to myself,
if I were a key, where would I be?
For years, I have felt this—
how she imagines her way inside me,
enters me like sunshine inside water,
shining until, I, too, feel found.
One Missing You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, love, missing on June 6, 2023| 2 Comments »
in the chamber of the heart
lighting a golden candle
offering you a chair
Surprise Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship on May 2, 2023| 3 Comments »
In a crowded room
on a mid-spring night
there was a moment
when, sweet providence,
we found ourselves
alone and able to weep
and hold each other
as if there weren’t
conversations all around us,
as if it hadn’t been years
since we’d last fallen
into each other’s arms,
as if it were the most normal
and natural thing
to hug too long,
to weep because,
to forget the rest of the world
and know, in that moment,
what a gift it is
to trust.
One Path Toward Intimacy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, connection, intimacy, puzzle on April 29, 2023| 4 Comments »
Sometimes
a piece
from another
who is broken
finds its way
into my frame,
and our shattered
bits fit
with each other.
Perfectly.
And I am
forever changed.
When Everything Is Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, Earth Day, field, love, nature on April 24, 2023| 13 Comments »
Again I fall in love with the field
as if for the first time—the first time
I ever saw a pair of geese land there
then waddle through tall dry grass;
the first time I ever watched it transform
from drab ocher to brilliant green;
the first time I ever felt its spaciousness—
how it becomes a basin for light.
Every day I fall in love again with the field,
many times a day. Every day, I marvel
there are new ways to fall in love.
Once, I didn’t know how intimate it was,
this relationship to the land.
Now I know it as the truest thing.
Inevitable, this love affair with color,
texture, change, scent, the sound
of grass moving against grass.
Inevitable, the love that rises
out of dew, out of frost, out of vastness,
out of wholeness, out of loss,
and reteaches me what it is to love, to be loved.
From Six Hours Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, silence on March 30, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Joan Shearer
From six hours away,
she holds my hand.
Tonight when my ship
has no anchor, she meets
me in the waves and
floats with me there.
Not because I told her
I needed her. It’s more
that her soul is ever ready
to bob in the swells.
We drift. We say nothing,
but I don’t feel alone.
We’re alive in the silence
that weaves through all sound,
connected by the invisible
currents that govern whatever
is real. What is real: letting
another person feel what they feel.
And being there with them,
saying “I love being with you like this,”
sharing the fullness so present
even from six hours away.
When the Man I Don’t Yet Know Writes to Say He is Holding Me in the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, light on March 7, 2023| 10 Comments »
for R.S.
I feel it. I feel in my fingers
something of starlight.
I feel in my breath something
like dawn. I feel in my inner caverns
something akin to the radiance
of glow worms. As if just knowing
that someone is holding me in light
has made the moment brighter.
It occurs to me I can do this, too,
and I begin to imagine others
gathered by sunset, carried
by candlelight, infused
with the soft warmth
of a low campfire.
I picture the light
as it spreads across the world,
as it seeks out hearts
and lives I will never know.
What must it look like from space
as it spreads, as it grows,
as it blooms through this darkness
where we all live together.
Sitting in the Driveway with My Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, mother, music, paradox on February 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
You share with me the song
that makes you cry.
Oh strange alchemy
of connection—
as I tune my heart to yours
what at first seemed dark
and moonless
begins to reveal
its tender light.
To Everyone Who Beamed Me Love, But Felt Apologetic for Not Writing or Calling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, love, silence, spaciousness, support on January 30, 2023| 22 Comments »
Now I know there is a sacred cathedral
made of unspoken love,
a most beautiful cathedral
built of generous silence,
a healing sanctuary created
by open hearts that reach out wordlessly.
I have been living in this cathedral
that your love built, and I am changed.
Now I trust loving silence
is a generous response
to another person’s pain.
When I am alone, I am not alone.
When you, in your own home,
open your hands as if in prayer,
I feel your hands holding me.
Your compassion touches me
the way light slips in through stained glass
to touch a face.
The pure hush of your hope
arrives in my heart like plainsong—
more breath than voice, as holy as any syllable.
Thank you for the ways your thoughtful silence
has lit in me thousands of candles
as I meet the darkest hours.
Now, I can’t unknow this: I trust love,
how it flourishes in the vast spaces
across miles, across time.
Such sweet, intense healing perfume—
like lilies on an altar—
the scent of your loving silence
as it opens me.
After Peeling the Beets
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, beets, connection, love, mess, stain, touch, vegetable on January 22, 2023| 6 Comments »
I resist peeling beets,
hate wearing their red tint
on my hands,
but today, the thought
of sweet roasted beets
was enough to make me
overcome my reticence.
Later, I notice it is impossible
to feel separate and alone
when my hands wear the evidence
of what they have touched.
I find myself wishing
everyone could see on my skin
how my life has been marked by you,
how everywhere we touched
I wear the stain of love.