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Posts Tagged ‘enough’

The Teacher

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 4, 2026| 21 Comments »


 
The cantaloupe was golden 
beneath its raised veins, 
the globe of it heavy in my hands,
its musky perfume filling the hot 
summer air at the farmstand.
 
When I handed the woman my money, 
I was paying her not so much for this melon, 
but for the memory of other melons
we have shared when I moaned my delight,
the sweet orange flesh deliquescing 
in our eager mouths.  
 
This melon was no such melon. 
Though we waited and waited, 
when I sliced in and offered you a bite,
we both agreed the flesh was a bit too hard, 
the flavor sweet but a little flat. 
A fine-enough melon. But not a melon
for rhapsodizing or writing an ode.
 
I think of Grandma Betty, how 
in her later years it didn’t matter
what you served her, she would always declare, 
This is the best pie I ever had. 
This is the best tea I’ve ever had. 
This is the best. The best. 
 
This is not the best cantaloupe I have ever had, 
just a substandard stand in for ecstasy. Yet here I am 
writing an ode to this mediocre melon, learning again 
how my longing for something to be different from what it is
can destroy any joy found in what is here. 
Somehow, this fine-enough melon is bringing me to my knees 
at the altar of the moment, humbling me, inviting me to question 
how I choose to meet the world. 
It is, perhaps, after all, the best melon I have ever had. 

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In the Airport, I Wonder about Enough

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 28, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Could they ever be enough,
these stumbling attempts
to bring kindness to an aching world?
Enough, this holding the door for a stranger,
this saying I’m sorry, this holding a place in line?
How could it be enough, asks the ache,
when today I saw the photo of the mother
holding the starving child in Gaza,
his brown legs as thin as my wrists.
I am sick with helplessness.
What does it mean, enough?
Beside me on a bench,
a man I have never met is humming.
His tune blooms like a sun in my chest.
The warmth twines with the beat of my question,
How could any small act be enough?
Until the child in the photo and all children
are safe and fed and loved and held by loving mothers
who are safe and fed and loved
and held by loving others who are safe
and fed and loved—until then,
how could anything ever be enough?
The old man beside me has started to sing.
His eyes are closed, and his
low gentle voice braids beauty
into everything around him.
Even the questions that will never
have answers. Even this terrible ache.
How deeply I want to believe
it is not too late to save this world.

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One Doable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 27, 2025| 10 Comments »


 
 
living in a leaning building—
still, she straightens
the picture on the wall

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Lessons from a Small Bush

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2024| 6 Comments »

Because it brings her enormous joy,
this pink-petalled flowering quince
that grows just outside
my mother’s back door,
I long to give her a thousand
such quince bushes,
all of them long-blooming,
voluptuous, thornless,
all of them lining her walk.
Though the other part of me
wants to honor how
it takes only one plant
to bring her such elation.
I am instantly stunned
with the wisdom of enoughness,
astonished again at how praise
needs nothing more than a crumb.
Somehow letting go of a thousand
imaginary quince bushes floods me
with a emptiness so great
I fall more wildly in love
with a single pink flower
and the luck-drunk awe of my mother.

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In the Garden, Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 6, 2022| 7 Comments »




After breaking, after kneeling,
after raising my ripe fist, after
opening my palm, after
clenching it again, after running,
after hiding, after taking off
my masks, after stilling,
after shouting, after bargaining
with God, after crumpling
and cursing, after losing,
after song, after seeking,
after breath, after breath,
after breath,
I stand in the sunflowers
of early September
and watch as the bees weave
from one giant bloom to another,
and I, too, am sunflower,
tall-stemmed and face lifted,
shaped by the love of light
and the need for rain.
I stand here until some part of me
is again more woman than sunflower,
and she notices how,
for a few moments,
it was enough just to be alive.
Just to be alive, it was enough.

*

This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22

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