Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, emptiness, light, poem, poetry, winter solstice on December 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »
One of the rooms
in the longest night
has an empty chair
and an open book—
and in the book
is an empty page
full of light—
if you read it
long enough
you might forget
what an hour is,
or night,
forget all stories
besides this one,
older than scripture,
where everything
is possible.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, death, emptiness, loss, poem, poetry on October 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »
on my lap
the emptiness refuses to purr—
it is all that I hear
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, fall, poem, poetry, soul, wind on October 21, 2017| 2 Comments »
Last night’s wind scoured
the trees and stripped
their boughs—
it is easy in today’s calm
to wish my soul had been out
in the woods last night.
Emptiness reveals more
than all the gold, all design.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, movement, poem, poetry, still life, tree on November 6, 2015| 3 Comments »
No leaves on the trees
beside the ditch,
and the first snow
outlines in white what remains
in their absence.
What remains is
the dark gesture of tree,
thrust and jut and extend.
Just this morning,
Meredith taught me
to see the movement
in what appears to be still—
even a brown jar,
she says, suggests twist
and elongate and turn.
I wonder if I could be still
like that, still enough
that the snow might settle
on me, though I’m reach
and wrestle and brawl.
This is our practice,
to move at the same time
toward quietude, toward swirl;
to be the scaffolding that holds up
the miracle; to be shine and rise and fall.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, poem, poetry, wanting, words on June 14, 2015| 1 Comment »
Two Nearlys
these empty hands—
there was a time
they grasped for emptiness
*
just before the words
there’s the chance to say nothing—
trees don’t have this problem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, nest, poem, poetry, staying on March 8, 2015| 2 Comments »
I find a deserted nest
just big enough to carry
in one hand—
it is beautiful, this emptiness,
so beautiful I want to hold it.
Somewhere else, a great migration.
I cradle the wreath of dried grass.
It is another kind of journey
to stay.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, poem, poetry, save on August 26, 2014| 4 Comments »
It’s always something else
we wish would save us—
the right words, for instance,
especially spoken on the right lips.
Or perhaps the temporary shine
inside the generous glass of wine.
And if not that, then friendship.
Or an altar. The sun or a song or a kiss.
But somehow in our hearts
there is always an empty chair,
some sense that someone or something
else is supposed to be here,
even if the room is light. Even when
the rightest words are found.
Even if the wine tastes of melon and grass.
Oh that emptiness. That emptiness
is a chance to ask ourselves, really ask,
who is the one who thinks she needs
to be saved? Sometimes I watch her
slip right through the cracks.
She takes her cross with her,
her books, her prayer mat,
her musts, her beads, her shame,
and what remains is everything.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, failure, poem, poetry on August 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I used to have it, the longing
to be cleaned out, to become
like the school room before
the students arrive on the first day
of school—the desks polished,
the dry erase board perfectly white,
no un-erasable traces of old problems
and schedules and conjugations.
I longed to be even cleaner than that—
to be emptied. To be like the room
without furniture. Or perhaps even
to be like the vacant lot after
the building had been torn down.
Call it a second chance. Or a third.
A clean slate. We have so many ways
to speak of starting over. And of course
I believed I’d do it all better this time.
And then one day I stopped believing
in the sanctity of the eraser. What
great teachers, all these perfect failures.
One day I could feel it, how
the life I wanted to live was nowhere
near as beautiful, as full, as rich
the life that wants to live me.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, emptiness, loss of self, poem, poetry, surrender on September 29, 2013| 5 Comments »
Gold, gold, gold, gone.
This is the season of surrender.
The time for release has come.
Aflame! Then emptiness.
It happens so fast.
I notice the no rising up
in my throat, and notice, too,
how it has no effect on what is.
How quickly the invitation to change
becomes the change.
Emptiness everywhere.
Again, I find myself
the student of yes.
I know I will learn
to find it beautiful, the emptiness.
Already, I feel it doing its slow
unselving work inside me.
Oh wind, do to me what you do
to the trees. Take me and shake me
and loosen my hold on whatever gold
I would grasp. Oh October, teach me
how this, too, is a beginning.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, emptiness, haiku, openness, poem on March 9, 2013| 2 Comments »
not only the aspen
wear nothing, not only
the sky
*
shoveling
the walk, making a path
for the sun
*
the rose does not try
to re-adhere fallen petals—
still this impulse to fix
*
in the sky, a door,
in the door, a sky, in the
sky a door