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Posts Tagged ‘Dolly Parton’

When Dolly Doesn’t Walk in the Door

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 27, 2026| 7 Comments »


 
 
I wish she would. I wish she’d breeze in
with her big white smile and her big blonde hair
and her sing song voice saying, “Hi, y’all.” 
I wish she’d come over and sit at the counter
so I could serve her a tall glass of iced tea 
or a cool lemonade. Serve her stories of times 
when her songs met me in dark hours
or lonely hallways, times when I sang 
“Coat of Many Colors,” but heard her voice
instead of mine. Times when I sang about
how wildflowers don’t care where they grow,
somehow feeling so seen by her as a wildflower. 
I would serve her stories of the children 
I used to work with who lived in a small, dirty house 
far from town with an angry dad and an earnest 
mom, and how they got books in the mail every month 
from Dolly’s book club, how those kids and I would sit 
on the old plaid couch and read aloud for hours.
I would want to serve her huge platters of gratefulness
for showing a nation what generosity looks like,
for being a role model for kindness. But I bet Dolly
wouldn’t want a huge platter. My guess is she’d want 
a few honest words, so I would say, Thank you,
and she would probably smile and do that shrug 
she does. Then we’d walk out to the porch 
and sit in the shade and watch as the grass in the field 
tells stories about the shape of the wind. 
It was never going to happen, this meeting, 
but now that Dolly’s gone, I walk outside
with a burgeoning bouquet of many-petalled thank yous 
and toss them into the air. I imagine the wind 
taking them to her, a colorful, fanciful folly. 
I imagine a world where we’re all as generous, 
as loving, as impossible yet possible as Dolly.

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It Did Not Look Useful, But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2022| 6 Comments »




for an hour we danced
in the tiny kitchen
and sang with Dolly,
our voices braided
like eager vines,
and for that hour
I smiled and swayed
and I felt such spaciousness—
like a lost girl in a fairy tale
who has walked through dark woods
and arrived in a glade
with sunlight streaming
and flowers and bird song,
and though she’s still lost,
for this moment she’s safe,
not only safe, but happy,
truly deeply happy,
and when she reenters
the cold, dark woods,
as she must,
a bit of the shine
has twined into her.
Even now, I feel it,
the radiance,
how it shimmies
just like we did
beside the old oak cupboards,
how it glitters in the dark,
how it moves.

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Making Breakfast with Dolly

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Tonight I read

that Dolly Parton

always wears

high heel shoes

in her kitchen.

“Don’t you?”

she asks.

I don’t.

I wear old brown

wool slippers.

With orthotics.

I try to imagine myself

strutting into the kitchen

before the kids

go to school,

making smoothies

and scrambled eggs

in my yoga pants,

my long gray sweatshirt,

and my four-inch

lucite stilettos.

Click, click, click

go the heels

as I teeter toward

the tea cups.

Click, click, click

as I strut

with paper towels

to the place

where the cat

has retched.

Oh Dolly,

as I slip into

these high-heeled thoughts

I thank you

for dressing up the day.

They two-step

through the morning chores,

while meanwhile

my slippered self

marvels at the fun,

but shrugs—

she’s just so darn grateful

for her arch support,

for the rubber soles

that ground her

as she sweeps

up the crumbs,

as she wipes

the counters clean.

Grateful that when

the high heeled thoughts

start to sing,

they invite her

to sing along.

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