Almost every spring, I forget them,
the six packs of cosmos starts on the porch.
All it takes is one cold night,
an innocence of frost.
By dawn, the buds slightly droop.
By noon, the leaves hang darkened and limp.
By the next day, they’re black.
And dead.
It’s a familiar story. How one night
changes everything. How one day
I’m blooming, thriving, alive,
the next all I’d grown is gone.
I used to believe all was lost.
I used to throw the whole plant away.
But I learned what is dead serves as a blanket
to protect whatever still lives.
Wait, and in days, a tiny green filigree
emerges from the base.
In a month or two, it’s a bask of blooms,
no trace of how bleak it was.
Such tender study, the cosmos.
Blame is no part of their process.
They let what’s been lost be of service.
They know they are here to grow.
Posts Tagged ‘death’
Again. Again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, death, frost, garden, spring on May 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
One Lifetime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, death, life, red wing blackbird, spring on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the way to the graveyard
taking a few detours through spring—
trill of red wing blackbirds
January 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, death, grandmother, language, loss, new years on January 2, 2021| 3 Comments »
When I say Happy New Year,
I hear my grandmother’s voice
inside my voice, the way
she slapped the first syllable,
the way silence hung for a moment
before she finished the rest of the phrase.
HAP-py New Year!
Each time I say the words, she
is so alive in that moment—
the syllables themselves
wear her bright red nails,
her signature updo
and her rhinestone earrings.
HAP-py New Year!
I sing out again and again,
loving how she enters
each conversation this day.
There are small ways
to bring our beloveds back,
little rituals so strong they
defy the loss, so strong
that each time we do them
we become more and more
who we love. Her voice
becomes my voice and her
joy becomes my joy.
I don’t have to look in the mirror
to see she is here, her smile
my smile curving up from the inside.
The Hero of the Imogene Pass Run
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, death, encouragement, jack pera, running on October 23, 2020| 8 Comments »
When I think of encouragement,
I think of Jack Pera,
who stood every year
at the top of Imogene Pass—
in snow, in sun, in sleet, in fog.
On race day, a thousand plus runners
would reach the top,
weary, having climbed
over five thousand feet in ten miles,
and Jack, he would hold out his hand
and pull each of us up the last foot,
launching us toward the long downhill finish.
I remember how surprised I was
the first time, and grateful,
grateful to feel him reaching for me,
grateful to feel his powerful grip
yanking me up through the scree.
“Good job,” he’d say to each one of us,
cheering us though we were sweaty
and drooling and panting and spent.
After that first race, I knew to look for him
as I climbed the last pitch,
trying to make out his form
at the top of the ridge.
And there was. Every time.
“Good job,” he’d say
as he made that last steep step
feel like flight.
There are people who do this,
who hold out their hand,
year after year,
to help those who need it.
There are people who carry us
when we most need it,
if only for a moment.
When I heard today Jack had died,
I couldn’t help but imagine
an angel waiting there above him
as he took his last breath,
an angel with a firm grip and a big smile
holding out a hand, pulling him through that last effort,
telling him, “Good Job, Jack. Good job.”
And may he have felt in that moment
the blessing of that encouragement,
totally ready to be launched into whatever came next.
Good job, Jack Pera. Good job.
Forecast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, loss, Neruda on October 11, 2020| 6 Comments »
Nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
—Pablo Neruda, “October Fullness,” trans. Alistair Reid
And if we can keep nothing of what we have
then let us love more right now. Naked as sunlight
and unapologetic as ripe apples. Let’s invent
new compassions and conjure new kindnesses
out of what seems to be dust.
And if life is only a borrowing of bones,
then let us use them well while we may.
Just today I ran through the corn maze
and marveled at the joy of being lost.
Bless these borrowed femurs and spines.
Bless these borrowed skulls.
And let us love more right now.
Though the forecast is for loss.
I Return to the Night after My Grandfather’s Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grandfather, grandmother, grief on October 10, 2020| 6 Comments »
My grandmother asked me that night
to sleep with her in her bed.
Though I was thirty-something,
I knew little of loss. I remember
the great weight of her as she slipped
into the soft white sheets—
a mountain inside a woman’s body.
I wore a long flannel gown with tiny violets
and she a thin flannel robe, slightly pilled and well worn,
with tiny embroidered roses.
We hardly spoke. She did not cry.
Any night stitched with that much sorrow
will linger in the heart for a lifetime.
I did not hold her—nor did she seem
to wish to be held. And when I return
to that night in my mind, I don’t try
to rewrite it. She sleeps on her side of the bed.
I sleep where my grandfather used to sleep.
I listen for the eventual slow tide of her breath.
But I am not the same version of myself
who shared a bed with her then.
Now, when I lie down beside her,
I know something more of how vast
an emptiness can be. How it can feel as if
a whole garden has been ripped up by its roots.
How sometimes in the dark, though we know
there are stars, we simply can’t open our eyes.
Forecast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, frost, garden, time on September 6, 2020| 8 Comments »
In two nights, the killing frost will come.
Because I know this, I wander the garden
and talk to the broccoli, the nasturtiums,
the cilantro. I thank the beets for their willingness
to grow. I tell the onions what is coming.
Tomorrow I will pick enormous bouquets
and fill the house with orange flowers.
Tomorrow I will sit in the garden
and try to store the beauty in my body
though I know it doesn’t work that way.
Please, just one more day, just one more month,
just one more life to try to get it right,
just one more chance to be as attentive
as I am when I know it is almost over,
the basil dark green, the marigolds crinkling with gold.
Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, learning, life, shadow, tree on July 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today the shadows
teach me to love
what is dim,
the sweet respite
of obscurity
when the sun
is too much
and a tree
yields its shape
so that I might slip
my clumsy heat
out of the bounds
of the vertical world
and find instead
a cool dark pool
on the ground,
as if I’m a boat
that has discovered
at last
a slim calm eddy
in which I might rest.
This is perhaps
the way we start
to meet our deaths—
sliding into the relief
of these dark, quiet
channels.
Flourish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, essence, growth, larkspur, rebirth, wildflower on May 27, 2020| 2 Comments »
Flourish
Whatever it is inside the larkspur
that says grow, grow, grow,
I want to know it, too. Want
to obey the voice that urges me on,
even in frost, even in rain.
I want to rise out of my own dried debris,
want to know how it is to die and return,
new and yet somehow the same.
And what is it that fuels the drive?
I want to know that— the divine
encouragement that knows
when to wait, when to push,
when to wilt, when to flourish,
when to swell into oh! bright bloom.
I want to know myself as wick,
to be lit, to be the fire itself.
After Hearing the Heartbreaking News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, sadness, shoes on May 8, 2020| 15 Comments »
Tonight, life wears me like
an old pair of shoes. The kind
it can slip its feet into
without untying the laces.
The kind of shoes a mother
would probably throw out
thinking of the act as a favor.
Life is tired, tonight,
of running. Doesn’t want
to dress to impress. It just
wants to know that it goes on,
especially tonight when
events seem to point
to the contrary. And so
though I am down at the heel
and shabby, life slips into me
as if life depended on it.
And we walk in the moonlight,
cry. And howl. Then take another step.
And then another.