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Posts Tagged ‘dark’

Too Late?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 28, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
 
By the time we arrive at the cliffside
to watch the sunset, the darkness
has already come. But because
of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands
of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.
And moonlight on the water makes
the blackened surface shine. How often
do I think I’m too late, only to find I have
arrived at just the right moment,
the moment in which there is a beauty
beyond the one I knew to wish for.
Like how, when I thought it was too late
to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its
soft and generous hands. Like how when
I thought I was too late to love, love
bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,
and stayed, the way sunsets never do.
Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,
I came to learn how exquisite, how
lavish, how astonishing, the dark.

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Just When I Ache with How Much Humans Can Hate

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2025| 8 Comments »




Nina takes me by the hand
and runs with me through the garden,
earthen angel in a pale green skirt,
her long silver hair flies behind her,
and I laugh as she tugs me
past snap peas, arugula, broccoli,
and red lettuce leaves. We duck
beneath the rose-covered bower and
emerge into the open lawn, pass deep,
deep purple clematis, to enter another
garden where the evening primrose
flowers that bloom for only one night
are blooming, eight bright
yellow blooms! For each of them,
this is the night. It’s so fleeting,
this beauty. So fleeting, this life.
Long after I leave the garden, I think
of Nina tending these primroses—
so much work for such brief joy.
Or is the secret to know the work
itself is the lasting spark—putting
ourselves in service to something
that blooms in the dark.

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The Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
 
I feel it before dawn—
the longing not only for light
but for the vast embrace
of the dark,
the way it links me
to the farthest reachings
of the universe,
the way it holds
each dull planet,
each luminous star,
holds me with no question,
no reservation,
holds all I love
and all I have yet
to learn to love.
With each breath
I bring it into my body,
small sips of dark,
great gulps of dark.
Inside me it swirls
with my love of light,
and this is how the certainties
of the heart are erased—
when I love and ache
in two directions at once—
and what’s left
is so raw, so open,
so alive.
 

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One Driving to the Airport at 4 a.m.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 9, 2024| 2 Comments »



the empty highway
stretches through the dark—
a music staff with one long note

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Spell of the Christmas Cactus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 14, 2023| 10 Comments »

Something magic
about knowing
it’s the darkest days
that bring on the buds,
the extravagant bloom,
because oh, friend,
how dark it is.

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Meditation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 30, 2023| 9 Comments »

On clear moonless nights
in the darkest places,
light from the milky way
casts shadows here on earth.
I think of how light itself
is the obstacle for seeing
other breathtaking kinds of light,
much as I, too,
am my own obstacle,
my longing to shine
sometimes interfering
with that humble, soul-stirring light
I need to close my eyes to see.

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How to Transform What is Dense and Dark?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

I hope you enjoy a new cine poem from my new spoken word album DARK PRAISE–this one honoring how we might meet the dense and dark world and make it more porous–featuring the amazing Steve Law on guitar and the art of the wonderful Marisa S. White. This poem, and the whole album, is available for free download anywhere you listen to music (spotify, apple music, etc) or you can support the project by purchasing the album on bandcamp. 

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One Way to See One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 21, 2023| 4 Comments »


 
 
The rental car headlights shine
on parallel white and yellow lines
as they curve and hairpin
and scale and wind
through moonless forests
and unlit glades. Beyond them,
I feel what I cannot see—
abysses that yawn beyond vision—
and I climb, and I climb,
I cling to my lines. I attend
the soft hymns of my daughter’s breath,
my husband’s breath.
Somewhere out there, a great
granite dome. Somewhere
out there, a meadow
with bubbling soda springs.
Somewhere, a valley
with hundreds of thousands of gallons
of clear water pluming and pouring,
a glorious roaring.
For hours, we twist through
invisible cliffs, my eyes trained
to the pavement before us.
Sometimes, a pinecone.
Sometimes, a branch. Sometimes,
a white flash of headlights.
I follow the lines as they turn,
as they swerve. We arrive
at a small room across the pass
with only the beauty we are.


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Walking into Winter Solstice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2022| 9 Comments »




Because it is dark
I walk in the dark,
walk with no moon,
walk with the chill
of the measureless dark.
There is peace that comes
from letting the self
be with the world
as it is, and tonight,
it’s a dark world,
a world where I cannot see
far ahead, a world
of silhouette and suggestion,
a world that seems
to cherish whispers
and relish mystery,
a world where
the invitation is
to walk in the dark
without wishing it away,
without championing its opposite,
the invitation is
to be one who learns
how to live with the dark.

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Dark Praise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 4, 2022| 16 Comments »




In each of us thrives an inner world
that does not love the light.
An inner world of womb and breath,
the most essential dark
where blood moves and lungs expand,
where neurons fire and cells divide,
where the heart pulses and muscles build,
where all words form, where all thoughts nest,
the secret world of humanness—
the dark we are, the dark we need,
this secret dark we cannot see.
For all its wounds, its rest,
its miraculous repair,
I praise this living dark
we carry everywhere.

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