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Posts Tagged ‘curiosity’

Unlikely Saint

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 12, 2026| 13 Comments »


                  after Muriel Rukeyser
 
 
Because two years ago, 
another chipmunk ate all our birdseed;
because that same chipmunk 
ate all sixty of my sunflower sprouts—
munched the entire row to the ground;
because that same chipmunk
devoured every bright-faced pansy;
because some part of me believes
that what I have planted should grow
for my pleasure and not for yours;
for this, I have decided to despise you, 
little chipmunk that took up residency
last week beneath my porch. 
I see you dart across the boards,
cheeks full of something, 
then empty-cheeked running the other way. 
You leap up onto my window sash to watch me
in my rooms. You scurry into the shadows.
Scowling, I point you out to my daughter. 
She says, Oh, how cute! I think, Cute?
What? Little vermin isn’t cute. 
Except you are. Except your soft, pocket-sized body
and small rounded ears are the actual definition 
of cute. Except when I watch you stand straight-spined
on your back legs, front paws held at your chest 
as if in prayer, little St. Chipmunk, I soften. 
Except when I see your cheeks bulging 
five times their normal size stuffed with seeds, 
I laugh out loud. In my eagerness to revile you,
I had let myself not see you. I wasn’t interested
in your survival, your story. I wanted only to erase, 
to other. To see you beyond what I expect to see 
is the sort of transformation that could not have happened 
if I were alone. Generosity is how we save each other. 
How long would I have gone on in my clenching? 
The taste of conceit is bitter. 
I had filled my cheeks with it. How sweet it is now, 
added to the mix, the taste of curiosity. 

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A Closer Look

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 18, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
I recall how dad gave me glass vials
and encouraged me to go to the lake, take samples,
then bring them back to the house
where he’d taught me to use a glass dropper
to put a small bead between slide and slip,
then focus the microscope
to spy on all the life pulsing there—
thin oblong shapes and zooming dots,
spinning green circles and segmented strands—
it was like eavesdropping on adult conversation,
like being given the key to enter life itself,
and I, an eager traveler into invisible realms,
spent hours staring into that intricate world.
Memory is, sometimes, a chance to meet
a drop of the past, then wonder about the world
beyond what we first see. I thought this
was a memory about lake water, glass slides,
a microscope. I look closer. I see trust.
Pulsing love. A father teaching curiosity.

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When She Was Afraid She Wasn’t Good Enough

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 26, 2023| 16 Comments »




When fear scuttled through her thoughts
with its eight slender legs; when she recognized
the shiny black body, the bulbous abdomen;
when fear found all her corners and began
to weave inside her mind a home of steel-strong silk;
she did not try to befriend the fear.
Nor did she try to squash it,
though she had a sturdy book.

Not that she wasn’t afraid. In fact,
fear seemed reasonable, if she threatened the fear first.
Instead, as if she were her own sweet child,
she took herself by the hand
and walked right up to the web to explore—
noted the upper structural threads,
the tangle threads in the middle,
the vertical threads in the bottom designed to trap.

Every day she walked back to the web
and stared wide-eyed at the fear hanging upside down,
and then she’d leave and wander
in other rooms where there was low-angled light
the way Renoir might have painted it,
or rooms of flowers, or rooms of song,
rooms of laughter, rooms of starlight,
warm rooms with nothing in them at all.

Eventually she could predict where the fear would be.
Could walk right to its brand new web.

We couldn’t say she liked the fear there.
We couldn’t say she didn’t miss it when it left.

We could say she found a way not to feed it.
We could say that while it lived in her,
she found a way to meet it.

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Almost Wet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 23, 2019| 2 Comments »

after The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai

 

In this sea, the great rogue wave is always

about to crash, and the fishermen

in their long thin boats

slip themselves forever in its path—

and though it hangs above them

with hundreds of frothing claws,

and though they cower atop their boats,

they’ve yet to be cast off into the sea—

and the moment is forever charged

with an anticipation larger than

the highest mountain, caught in curiosity—

how will it be to be devoured?

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Curiosity Like a Baby’s Skeleton

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 12, 2019| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

We start with more.

But then, as we age,

there’s a lessening.

Where there once

were 300 bones,

there are now 206.

Where there once was cartilage,

now it’s fused and stiff.

What used to be flexible,

now refuses to be rebirthed.

What once allowed for rapid growth

now considers itself mature.

And how do we get it back,

that willingness to grow?

And how do we unstiffen?

And how do we unknow?

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One Curiosity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

so unwillingly

the cat jumps out

of the Christmas tree

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A Little Night Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

He sings in the corner,

the invisible cricket,

and each time I look for him,

he stops—

 

I don’t wish

to frighten the cricket,

I only want

to watch.

 

What is it in us

that wants to know details,

wants to analyze

how it is done?

 

And what is it in us

that says, close your eyes

and let the song

go on.

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Six Invitations

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 10, 2014| 4 Comments »

walk into the wall
walk into the wall, walk in
to the wall, walk into
the wall, walk into the oh,
there’s a door

*

key after key
after three-hundred-sixty-
six keys that do not
fit the keyhole I find
the door’s unlocked

*

stepping through the door
to find
another door

*

who built
all these doorways
anyway?

*

something about
a doorway—it seems to want
to be walked through

*

or is it the walker
who does the wanting,
already I feel
it rising me
curiosity

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