How are you?
she asks walking by
as I sit on my bumper
and unlace my ski boots.
And I say, The track is amazing today,
and it’s true, the snow is hard and fast
and my lungs are still burning
from pushing myself
in the cold winter air.
What I mean is, I miss
my son every minute,
and my heart feels like
a skinned rabbit still alive.
She says, What length are your skis?
I know what she means is,
Oh friend, I have felt that way, too.
And I tell her one ninety,
and we talk about how much
has changed over the years—
like ski lengths, like skins versus scales.
What I mean:
Like the way a person is here
and then they are not.
Like the way I once
could hold him.
Like the way he could once hold me.
Posts Tagged ‘conversation’
Not Overheard in the Parking Lot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, grief on January 19, 2022| 4 Comments »
Mid-Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, friendship, self, silence on June 17, 2021| 4 Comments »
Sometimes
in the silence
between
the small talk
a whole life
is lived—
a life
in which
you are
exactly
yourself
only more so,
a self without
name, a self
of no
where, a
self unselved,
which
is to say
that sometimes
in the silence
of a minute
you find
some vision
so vast
so true
that you weep
before saying,
And how are you?
One Connection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, family, walking, winter on December 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
walking in chill air
beside the frozen creek
warm words
Who’s Missing at the Table?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged braided way, conversation, politics, writing on January 31, 2020| 4 Comments »
I’m so grateful to Braided Way for sharing this poem today …
In a time of national crisis, what our country really needs is a good poem.
—Herbert Hoover
This is the time when we must say to the stranger,
the other, sit here. Notice how difficult it can be
to even come to the same table, how hard
to look the other in the eye. Something in us screams,
“Right, I am right.” And it is hard to hear the voice
beneath that scream, a whisper of a gospel that says
nothing at all.
This is the time when we must say to ourselves,
I am also the stranger, when we must look
in the mirror and not know who it is we see—
someone capable of being more courageous,
more compassionate, more devoted, more
astonishingly vulnerable and connected
than we ever knew ourselves to be. Who
is that stranger in the mirror, we must ask,
and vow to never let her down.
This is the time when we must write the poems
our country needs, the poem that builds the bridge
from truth to truth and never touches the river
of lies. The poem that allows our country
to fall in love with itself again, the poem
with enough places set at its table
that everyone knows they have a place to sit
and the rest of us know when that person is missing
because their chair is empty.
This is the time for the beauty that passes
all understanding, a testament of goodness
that cannot be contained, a congress of delight.
This is the time to pick up your pen
and with your most tender, most beautiful,
most ferocious self,
fight.
One Sideways Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, parenting, poem, poetry on December 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, friendship, poem, poetry on December 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
What the Heart Really Wants
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, love, poem, poetry, relationships on November 25, 2019| 2 Comments »
Because we are traveling,
I say, We’re on the plane.
I say, Just landed. I say, See you soon.
As always, my heart leans beyond
the transactional. Longs to say,
Tell me about the pain. Longs
to say, I feel lonely. Longs to ask,
What do I most need to know?
But it’s not easy to hear. And
there isn’t much time. Is that
just the same old excuse?
And so I say, I love you,
because it is true. Say,
Can’t wait to see you.
Say, Gotta go. All through
the flight, the heart keeps leaning,
rehearses the five
most important words:
tell me all about it.
After Midnight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, night, parenting, poem, poetry on April 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
some flowers bloom
only at night,
so it is with certain conversations,
that open in the dark,
the whole room
blessed with sweetness
Another Lesson in Impermanence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, death, friendship, impermanence, poem, poetry on March 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
A metal table in the sun. Beyond it, winter.
Two women sit, brought here by rambling.
One woman weeps, tears of mortality.
The other woman rhymes with her.
Everything rhymes eventually, though
neither of them know it yet. The grass.
The snow. The dirt. The way the two women lean
into shadows. It’s not that time makes demands,
it’s just that the women still see themselves
as separate. They grasp at the present,
thinking this makes them a part of it.
Meanwhile, the birds. Meanwhile,
the trees. Meanwhile, the cells, changing.
Meanwhile the sun slides down the sky.