In the morning,
I light the candles.
With each light,
I say the names.
Each name represents
a blessing that became
a wound that became again
a blessing. This is how
the heart makes of its losses
a salve, touching again
and again the dark
with its own dark, then
adding the smallest of lights
until light is what a heart
does.
Posts Tagged ‘dark’
Homeopathy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle ritual, dark, grief, healing, light on June 22, 2026| 8 Comments »
Standing in the Dark on Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, everything, nothing, solstice, three-word lines on December 21, 2025| 2 Comments »
The dark rushes
into my lungs.
With each breath,
I imagine I
become more nothing.
The longer I’m
still, the more
I rhyme with
the vast dark
and know myself
as the mystery
that holds everything.
Too Late?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, sunset, time, timing 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.
Just When I Ache with How Much Humans Can Hate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, dark, flower, garden, primrose, service 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.
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, night, opening, opposition 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.
One Driving to the Airport at 4 a.m.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, driving, highway, music, travel on October 9, 2024| 2 Comments »
the empty highway
stretches through the dark—
a music staff with one long note
Spell of the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blooming, dark, magic, resilience 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.
Meditation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, meditation, milky way, shining 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.
How to Transform What is Dense and Dark?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, dark praise, earthworm on November 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
One Way to See One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dark, driving, vacation, yosemite 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.
Dark Praise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, dark, praise 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.
Leonids
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, death, grief, happiness, meteor, shooting star, walk on November 30, 2022| 4 Comments »
Since you died, every shooting star is you.
Not a sign, exactly, more like a reminder
you came into my life brilliant and brief.
More like a reminder to say your name out loud.
As if I don’t already say your name out loud
at least a dozen times a day.
Tonight while walking in the cold
I saw two shooting stars,
and it reminded me of a warmer night
when you and your sister and I
stretched our bodies side by side
on the cool pavement and stared up at the sky
hoping for meteors.
Did we see any? I don’t recall.
I only remember how happy I was then.
A small bit of that happiness
reaches through the loss.
It takes me by the hand,
walks with me through the dark.
Lumbricus terrestris
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, density, patience, porosity, spaciousness, worm on November 13, 2022| 15 Comments »
On a day when the world is weighty,
dark and dense with need,
I want to be the earthworm
that gives itself over to tunneling,
its every movement an act
of bringing spaciousness.
And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,
I want to meet the world wormlike,
which is to say grounded,
consistent, even slow.
No matter how desperate the situation,
the worm does not tunnel faster
nor burrow more.
It knows it can take decades
to build fine soil.
To whatever is compacted,
the worm offers its good worm work,
quietly bringing porosity
to what is trodden,compressed.
So often, in my rush to repair,
I end up exhausted.
Let my gift to the world be
my constancy, a devotion to openness,
my willingness to be with what is.
Let my gift to myself be patience
as I tend what is dense and dark.
Soundtrack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, friendship, light, music on November 12, 2022| 2 Comments »
Sometimes another person knows our heart
so well they offer us a song that becomes,
at least for a moment, our anthem.
In that moment, listening to lyric and melody,
the entire body re-attunes to life,
each cell turning not only toward the music
but also toward the giver,
and we are led deeper into that strange
and beautiful grotto of our heart
with its mosses and echoes,
a place at once strange and familiar,
and the song becomes a shining remover
of darkness, its light bouncing on our inner walls
until we relearn who we are—
the light of a million suns.
Bringing Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, friendship, generosity, light, Sherry Richert Belul on October 29, 2022| 3 Comments »
for Sherry
All it takes is one moonless night
to realize how grateful I am
for those who bring light to the world—
I am thinking of my friend
who travels with lanterns
and hangs them from doorways
wherever she stays.
How she brings long strands of fairy lights
powered by tiny batteries
and then passes them out like party favors
so people might wrap themselves in the glow
and know themselves as carriers of light.
How today she mailed me a photo
of me and a friend doubled over laughing
with a bright pink stickie note flashing “favorite!”
so that even the mail luminesces.
How, even in the darkest of hours,
she brings her gift for seeing good in others,
and she beacons, she candles, she moons, she stars.
For a Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, firefly, light, proof on September 21, 2022| 16 Comments »
It’s the kind of night I wish for a firefly.
The fact that they don’t live here
doesn’t stop me from wishing.
Is it so wrong to want some small proof
of light in the darkness?
What I really want? Proof of miracles.
Proof of life beyond life.
Oh world, you’ve given me proof.
And I want more.
Perhaps it would be more poetic
if I could find my own bioluminescence—
even a metaphoric inner light.
Instead, I find my own wanting.
Hello wanting.
Hello wishing for something that isn’t here.
Because there are no fireflies,
I conjure the memory of fireflies.
Because there are no fireflies,
I sit in the darkness—how vast it is.
How full of dignity. How humbling.
I sit in the darkness until the darkness
scrubs me of me, until the darkness
feels like a proof for miracles,
until infinite space rushes in,
until for a moment
I forget how to wish for anything but what is.
September Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, daughter, light, night, trust on September 5, 2022| 12 Comments »
The mountain air forgets to be cold,
and my daughter and I walk in the dark
beside the river. I almost can’t see,
yet thanks to starlight,
we step over roots, over rocks.
There are moments,
even whole chapters of our lives,
when we understand how the smallest
bit of light makes a difference.
Tonight, we are laughing,
singing as we go.
Trust, too, is a kind of light.
In this dark moment, it is all I see.
Mycelial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, grief, growth, mushroom on August 19, 2022| 4 Comments »
Now I understand how grief
is like a mushroom—
how it thrives in dark conditions.
How it springs directly
from what is dead.
Such a curious blossoming thing,
how it rises and unfurls
in spontaneous bourgeoning,
a kingdom all its own.
Like a mushroom,
most of grief is never seen.
It grows and expands beneath everything.
Sometimes it stays dormant for years.
Grief, like a mushroom,
can be almost unbearably beautiful,
even exotic, delicate, veiled,
can arrive in any shape and hue.
It pulls me closer in.
Like a mushroom, grief
asks me to travel to regions
of shadow and dim.
I’m astonished by what I find—
mystery, abundance, insight.
Like a mushroom, grief
can be wildly generative.
Not all growth takes place
in the light.
This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22
To Face the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, erasure, willingness on August 5, 2022| 8 Comments »
To face the dark,
one does not need a light.
Nor does one need a watch,
a feather, a melody, a sword, a pen.
One doesn’t even need a friend.
To face the dark,
one needs only to face the dark.
There is something easier then
about the facing, when we know
we need no preparation.
Nothing is asked of us except
the willingness to face the dark,
the willingness to pause
in that moment when we
cannot see, cannot know,
cannot float on the sea of habit,
cannot fly on the feathers of routine.
But already, I’ve taken this too far.
It’s so simple, the invitation,
that it’s easy to miss what is asked.
Not a journey. Not even a step.
Just the chance to face the dark,
to meet yourself in that facing—
and to notice what being erased
and what’s doing the erasing.