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Posts Tagged ‘daily’

Manual

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 18, 2026| 5 Comments »



 
The hands are churches that worship the world.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Daily”
 
 
To pour water over the aloe, 
the cyclamen, the jade plant, the cactus,
this, too, is prayer. Prayer in touching 
my own dry lips, marveling at the fullness
beneath fingertips. Worship in hefting
the tea pot by its thick black handle. 
Worship in squeezing the sudsy warm sponge.
Just yesterday, while we were driving,
Art said to me, “Why not open to the marvelous?” 
I equated marvelous with the grand, the inexplicable, 
even the strange. It didn’t occur to me then 
that gripping the smooth, leather arc of steering wheel 
is marvelous, cradling the white paper cup full of coffee 
is marvelous, fingering the waffle pattern on the dishcloth
as I fold it is marvelous. Marvelous, flipping through 
skin-thin pages of notebooks. Marvelous
and sacred, my palm resting on my husband’s thigh.
Marvelous, these knobby knuckles, how they 
curl around the hair brush. Sacred, 
the pillowed pads of these fingers, how they 
trace the lines of my husband’s face,
how they twist and tug wool around the knitting
needles, how they tap at the keyboard to fashion
language out of feeling, how they rest above my heart
and translate into praise that beat, faithful and familiar.

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The Holding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 17, 2025| 6 Comments »

for Vivian
 
Just today, you asked me
to hold the front door open,
your own hands too full
with a peach smoothie,
a cup of tea, your backpack
and dance bag and lunch box.
It gave me such joy,
this small act of service,
though now I also see it
as practice in letting you go.
I followed you out the door
into the frost-limned world,
yellow leaves falling before
the sun had yet risen.
It would be easy to forget
this moment with you.
We didn’t even pause
to enjoy it, just inhaled
the chill morning air,
both of us mumbling
how glorious it was
before you walked to the car
and I walked back inside.
Now, I see they’re everything,
these slim moments we share,
for a day is slim and a
year is slim, and soon your whole
childhood will also seem
slim. I hold them to me
like treasure, these slender
chapters, charged as they are
with beauty, hold them to me
even as I practice letting you go.

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A Humble Aliveness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2024| 10 Comments »

Someday I will miss a morning like this,
when I rise in the dark to slice apples
and scrape ice from the windshield
so I can drive my daughter to school.
My husband in the kitchen making toast.
My tea warm. Raisins sweet.
The backyard geese a riotous racket
and a black-haired cat who wants nothing
more than to nudge my chin with her chin.
A morning so ordinary it would never dream
of flaunting its gold—no, it just spends it
on the light that streams in through the window
to land on my shoulder as if tapping me
to say, this is it. This. This.

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One Everyday Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »


 
this errand, too
a quest for transcendence—
taking my girl for a haircut

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