astonished how much light
can fill a note so dark—
singing it again, again
Posts Tagged ‘dark’
You Are My Sunshine in a Minor Key
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, poem, poetry, song on December 4, 2017| 1 Comment »
Day of the Dead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, moon, poem, poetry on November 2, 2017| 8 Comments »
for Babette
Out the window, a moonless dark.
Sometimes inside, it is moonless, too.
Then we come to realize
how we rely on things
outside of ourselves to see.
This morning, sitting in the dark
with my eyes closed, I wondered
about the turning year,
and two words came to me.
More love. More love.
Curious now I did not think to ask how.
The words seemed both mantra and map,
both question and answer,
all-encompassing as the dark.
Do you remember that day
we tore out of our clothes
and slipped into the frigid lake
in northern Wisconsin?
How we laughed as we swam
deeper and deeper in.
How dark the water,
how it dripped light from our arms
as we raised them to pull
through the surface.
I am again swimming in the dark.
Sometimes I feel the cold
is too much for me.
It helps now to remember
that it’s possible to find laughter
in cold waters. More love. More love.
Just yesterday, I was thinking
of the way Jesus turned water to wine.
It is no use to ask how.
The invitation is to accept the miracle,
praise the change and drink.
Perhaps in these moonless times,
this is when we learn to make light
out of dark, the way two stones
make a spark. Now, perhaps,
is not the time to ask who we are,
but what we can do.
Now is the time for miracles.
More love. More love.
My Son Teaches Me to Draw Aspen Trees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, mistakes, parenting, poem, poetry on February 12, 2017| 1 Comment »
I like the way he leans over the paper,
the way he pulls the black ink
across the page, the matter-of-fact way
he says, “Like this, Mom,
only you don’t have to be afraid
to make mistakes. They usually turn out.”
I want to tell him
his life is like these trees—
that no matter how much
he thinks he’s messed up,
there is no blotch or line
that cannot be transformed
into an opportunity.
Instead, I say, “Show me
what to do next,”
and he shows me how
to shade the sides
with small quick strokes,
the dark lines holding
so much light.
The Long Marriage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, marriage, poem, poetry on October 22, 2014| 2 Comments »
If the night were not dark enough,
not dark enough and too short,
then we perhaps would not
have had the patience to find again
in each other the light,
a tiny light, but still light enough,
enough to draw us close again—
that small light in the other
the only light that can lead us home.
Who Can Say?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossom, dark, light, poem on April 8, 2013| 1 Comment »
Already the body
is dawn. Before
the eastern glow. Before
the edges of darkness
give up any of their darkness.
It is not that we deserve it,
this light. It is just
that here it is,
inside us, continuing
to grow, the way
plumeria seem to grow
on what looks like dead wood.
But grow they do, with
all that perfume, too,
and all that milky white.
Who can say how
such beauty comes
from what looks
lifeless? But it does.
Your blossoming,
my blossoming.
Crazy how light
it can be,
this darkness.
After Several Very Hard Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comfort, dark, hard times, love, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, son on December 18, 2012| 5 Comments »
In the boat of night
my boy and I float.
There are no oars.
We use our voices
to move through
the waves. But
the currents take
us wherever the currents
take us. It is dark.
We hold each other
as if there is no one
else in the world.
For this moment,
there is no one else
in the world. There is
his voice. My voice.
His ears. My ears.
Our warmth. And
the cold all around.
Almost to the Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, photons, poem, what are we really on December 9, 2012| 4 Comments »
I’ll be your harvester of light.
—Sara Bareilles, “Winter Song”
Darling, it is dark.
Here are my hands,
the hidden spirals
in the palms. And here,
from my fingertips,
my forehead, my feet,
streams of photons—
invisible beacons,
tiny energized
increments of light.
From yours, too. Imagine
the lattice we make.
The Buddhists say
we are what we are
only in relation
to what we are not.
This long night.
This darkness. This
thinking we are alone.
Six Bafflements
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, haiku sequence, light, parenting, poem, poetry on September 10, 2012| 3 Comments »
it’s the dark, she says
crying, while all around us
the dark, the dark
*
same moon, same sky,
same woman, same why,
a crow flies by
*
behind every door
another door, this one
no light underneath
*
not once does the snake
look back at its skin and say
gee, I miss it
*
so much beauty
cannot be seen
without the dark
*
mama, she says,
there’s a window in my head
I kiss her there
Where Does This Stuff Come From?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, fear, poem, poetry on August 24, 2012| 3 Comments »
Walk in the dark
and slowly the eyes
adjust. There a tree.
There a roof. There
the hill across the street.
But tonight, too lost
in my own thoughts,
I looked a long time
into the dark and saw
what was not there—
the hulking back of bear,
the gimp of a stalker,
a badger nose.
A squirrel chirped
and I ran for the house.
Everything we fear,
it will find us, will fill
the night with its
empty suggestions.
I make fun of myself
once I reach the lit room,
but the fear doesn’t laugh,
it just walks to the bed
and sits behind the lamp
waiting for a dream.
Not Even a Slip of Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, love, night, oneness, poem, sound on July 10, 2012| 4 Comments »
Sometimes the night
comes with a quiet,
although the crickets
are riotous.
Although the machinery
in the distant field
makes eddies in the dark.
Even the stars
are ohming in octaves
eight scales below
what the human ear hears
and still, there is this quiet.
I was so busy praising light
that I missed how the dark
will tenderly, slowly, with no song
open the heart. Like tonight.
How first it drains the blush
from the peaches. Then steals
the deep green from the pines,
the red from the rock walls,
the mud brown from the water,
the violet orchids that nearly
bloomed in my thoughts,
until all is gray, then grayer,
then pitch. The pine,
the wall, the water and the woman
all lose their individual shapes
and become one vast dark.
This too is a way to love.