for Lara and the Dark
Some conversations prefer the dark,
so, long after sundown we walk
in the nearby field
where a wide path’s been cut
through tall grass gone to seed
and there’s just enough starlight
to make out the twin dirt ruts
where we can walk side by side.
I love conversing this way,
when the dark is less a setting
and more a partner in conversation—
as if nothing we say
could ever make it stop holding us,
as if it will listen for as long as we speak,
as if it will fill in any gaps
with its own simple syntax
of infinite ink. And so we walk,
you, me, and the gentle dark.
When we finally return to the light-warm home,
a little midnight comes in with us
and joins us for sleepytime tea.
It seems to know not even a whisper is needed,
just the certainty that we are being heard,
truly heard, the way
only an old best friend can listen,
and there’s nothing we can’t say.
Posts Tagged ‘dark’
Night Walk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, dark, friendship, night on July 30, 2022| 12 Comments »
On the Longest Day of the Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, patience, solstice on June 22, 2022| 8 Comments »
There is comfort in knowing
that every year
since the earth was made
there has been
a longest day of the year—
a day when half of all life
wakes to an abundance of light
and then in that moment
of greatness leans again
toward the dark.
There is comfort in knowing
the light comes, the light leaves,
the light comes, the light leaves,
comfort in knowing
all the light that is
reaches toward us,
whether we can see it or not.
It is simply a matter
of staying out of our own way,
and if we can’t do that,
well, that is what patience is for.
Bioluminescence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, bioluminescence, dark, light, science, shine, unity on January 18, 2022| 9 Comments »
Sometimes, when I fear
the small light I bring
isn’t big enough or bright
enough, I think of that night
on the beach years ago
when every step I took
in the cool wet sand turned
a glowing, iridescent blue—
and the waves themselves
were a flashing greenish hue—
imagine we could do
what 7.9 billion
one-celled plankton can do—
can shine when it’s dark,
can shine when agitated,
can shine with our own
inner light and trust when we all
bring the tiny light we have,
it’s enough to illumine the next step
in the long stretch of night.
Watching My Daughter in The Nutcracker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ballet, dance, dark, daughter, light, smile on December 19, 2021| 10 Comments »
Tonight I fall in love with the mirliton
in the blue and white tutu—the way
she leaps, the way she angles her arm.
Not that I didn’t love her before
when she was a soldier, when she
was a snowflake, when she was a bon bon
or an angel in frothy white fluff. But tonight,
more than anything, it is her smile
that makes me weep in row H.
Because it is real, her joy in the chassé,
the grande jeté, the pas de bourrée.
Because her joy is my joy. Because
I know what she’s danced through
to get to this stage where that smile
spreads across her face like the sunrise
the first morning after winter solstice—
an essential, growing light aware of the dark,
just learning what it can do.
When the Mother of Another Lost Son Hugs Me Tonight, I Realize
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, grief, light on December 11, 2021| 8 Comments »
Don’t even try to be strong.
—Salli Russell
There are some who, when
they turn toward the light
become the light. But we know,
too, the power of turning
toward despair, toward
heartache, toward grief,
toward loss, toward defenselessness,
a journey in a minor key,
and this, too, is an invitation
to lean in and open until,
informed by the darkness,
we find ourselves shining,
luminous from within.
I Didn’t Think I Could Do It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, dark, grief, light, mother, softening, son on November 15, 2021| 22 Comments »
But I found myself
rigid in the room where my son
took his life. And I sat
on the floor in the doorway
where he had last sat,
where his blood had pooled
and the air had briefly smelled
of burning. I sat there
beneath the wall
where the bullet had made
its narrow hole. I sat there
with my coil of sorrow.
I didn’t want to meet it.
I desperately wanted to meet it.
I wanted to give sorrow space.
I wanted to crawl inside it.
I wanted to be anywhere
but there on the dark wood floor
in the night dark room,
and I wanted to be wholly,
completely, obliteratingly there.
Fear-ridden, ferocious,I met it all,
felt the current pushing through.
Acceptance is a filament
that takes our resistance
and makes it bright,
makes it luminous enough
that we might see ourselves
exactly as we are.
I did not find my son
in that doorway. Perhaps
I had hoped I would.
But I saw the light
that came with me.
I softened into that light.
Adjusting to the Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, grief, serving, tea, waking on November 12, 2021| 8 Comments »
Just today I didn’t make you
a cup of chai—did not stir
in the dark clover honey,
did not warm the soy milk,
did not bring you the cup
with red flowers, the one
we got in Finland all those
years ago when we couldn’t
sleep with all that light—
instead I pour myself
into the black of morning.
There is sweetness here
in these quiet, predawn hours,
a vastness no cup could ever contain.
I want to serve it to you,
though I sense, love,
it is you serving it to me.
Talking with My Daughter about Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, daughter, grief, light, mother on November 2, 2021| 8 Comments »
We lie in the dark
and speak about anything
but what I ache to speak about.
Some part of me longs
to find the words like search lights
that will help us find
what we don’t yet know
we are looking for.
Or a black light
that might help us see
what is valuable right here,
but invisible to our ordinary eyes.
I try to infuse my words
with candlelight, but somehow
even this feels too brash,
too aggressive, and so
we lie in the dark
and I let the moon
do all the talking,
oh waning crescent,
you know when to shine,
when to simply be held
by the dark.
Wild Iris
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, flowers, friendship, pond, wild iris on May 15, 2021| 2 Comments »
From a handful of wild iris
planted years ago,
dozens of slender spears
and stems now rise beside the pond—
their pale purple flags
wave in allegiance to spring
and each other.
They know how to grow
not just up but to the side,
how to send out lateral roots
that will someday be new blooms.
Old friends are like rhizomes—
connected by invisible roots,
resilient, perceiving the light as good,
but knowing, too, how essential
to grow through the dark.
The Empty Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, bowl, dark, meditation, questions on August 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Answers don’t arrive if you’re afraid of sitting in the empty dark room of not knowing by yourself long enough for them to arrive on their own schedule.
—Michael Thelen
Oh let me, too, be willing to sit in the empty dark
and let the darkness enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
Let me lose my plans, though it terrifies me.
Let me not imagine any better time
to practice than now.
Let me be the bowl that sings when touched,
the bowl that is content with its own stillness.
If I want answers, let me sit with my longing.
If I want lessons, let me find them right here.
And if it is dark, let me not run from the dark,
but lean into it. And if it is light,
let me long for the light. Let it enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
A Change in the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brightness, dark, light on March 8, 2020| 5 Comments »
Now while the moon
is hiding behind the clouds
now when the rain
is falling midwinter,
and now that they’ve told us
not to hug or kiss each other
for fear of contracting
and spreading disease,
yes now is the time to find
whatever light we have
been hiding inside us—
whatever measure of brilliance
we’ve managed to conceal
from each other, from ourselves—
now is the time to bring forth
that luminescence and offer it
freely to the world, now
when light matters most.
One Almost Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, moon on February 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Surprise Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, losing the self, loss of the separate self, night, solstice on December 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And this is the chapter
when it just feels
too much too much
to turn on the light
and so you sit
in the dark.
This is not a myth
in which you are punished,
turned into a tree or a kingfisher—
nor is this the story
in which you discover
your own light.
No, this is the night
in which you are simply
a lifetime of tired
and unable to turn on the light.
And so it’s you
and the night.
It’s you and the night.
And then it’s just the night.
A Passing Truce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, fire, light, peace, poem, poetry, warmth on January 4, 2019| 5 Comments »
Beside the fire, inside
the dark, and lost amidst
the tide of thoughts,
there is a momentary warmth
that steeps into our every inch
and make us doubt
that we could ever feel
sharp cold again—
the mind, thus warmed,
forgets to quarrel and simply
nestles closer—and the dark itself
comes nearer by and we
lean in together.
One in Deep December
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, dark, poem, poetry, solstice on December 18, 2018| 3 Comments »
the night asked me
to read its poetry, all that ink
scrawled across the world—
reading late without the light,
I, too, become page, poem
Almost to Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, poem, poetry, solstice on December 2, 2018| Leave a Comment »
There is a light and it never goes out
—The Smiths, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
And even in these darkest days
in the darkest rooms
with the darkest thoughts
and the darkest words
with the darkest songs
in the dark-full ears
and when the darkening dreams
weights the darkest fear
even then there’s a light
and it never goes out,
even then, when the eyes
know only doubt, even then,
even then, there’s a hand
eager to spill shine
into our cup and all
we need to do is drink,
then pour a bit of shine
for someone else.
All This Worry About How to Paint the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black, dark, night, painting, poem, poetry on November 2, 2018| 4 Comments »
in part a response to Ferlinghetti’s “Instructions to Painters and Poets”
Teach me to paint the dark, the infinite
shades of the infinite dark, the basis of all
the light that is, the origin, the ink bright spark
that leaps from the great black well,
the darkling spring, the raven luck, the mother
from which the big bang sprang, the womb
of dawn, the only cloak measureless enough
to hold everything, everything in its folds.
Teach me to paint the inner midnight,
the moonless rooms, the lavish corners,
the mighty dark inside the fist, the vastness
of limitless space that links
with no effort the everything that is,
the everything that ever was, the everything
that will ever be. Teach me the song of soil,
the song of deep winter, the pure dark song
of the sea. All the dark that’s been terrorized
by light, and all the dark that’s been pushed away
and all the dark that’s been feared,
teach me its valor, its ferocity, its kindness,
its gentleness, its blinding generosity.
Black Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, fire, light, marcus aurelius, poem, poetry on September 30, 2018| 3 Comments »
A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.
—Marcus Aurelius
Let me be fire.
Let everything
ignite me.
Let the whole world
be kindling.
I’ll take all fuel.
Let me flash.
Let me flare.
Let me make brightness.
Give me the dark.
Let me blaze there.
The Field Was High and the Sun Was Low
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, dark, light, poem, poetry, wallace stevens on August 30, 2018| 5 Comments »
after The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens
The field was high and the sun was low
and the woman became the light; and the evening
slowed its pace perhaps to let the light remain.
The field was high and the sun was low.
She moved as though there were no night
worth fearing, as if the field could hold it all.
She leaned into the goldening, the way
the light itself leans softly on the world.
The night, a gentle friend, meandered quietly
across the land. There were no words
that could be said. The field was high
and the sun was lower. Slowly, hushed,
the wind a sigh, the field surrendered
all its lines. The darkness gathered
everything, the field, the woman, even
light, and made itself an offering.