Sometimes, certain she has botched it all,
certain she has made of the gift of her life
a desert, something desolate and harsh,
when surely she was meant to create
something lush and verdant, something fecund,
fertile and teeming with wonder, in that moment
of self-inflicted despair, fueled by comparison,
a woman might stand in the midst of that desert
and hold in her hands her own tender heart,
hold it the way she might hold any spiky thing—
lightly, as if it might float—and marvel at the wisdom
of prickly things, how each spine provides a small
measure of shade in a place with no other shelter,
how together those spines reflect the sun to protect
what is inside from burning, how even the prickliest
things are encoded to flower when given more light,
when offered the barest encouragement of rain.
Posts Tagged ‘failure’
Conditions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cactus, desert, failure, self-compassion, self-defeating behavior on July 6, 2026| 3 Comments »
Learning from the High Wire Walkers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, failure, practice, risk, tight rope on June 28, 2026| 4 Comments »
First, they start close to the floor,
practice walking heel to toe, practice
bouncing and turning and gazing
at a distant object instead of looking
down at their feet. As the stakes
and the rope get higher, they
begin to practice failure. Practice
hanging from the wire for long
periods of time. Practice holding
their own weight. This. Perhaps
this is what we are doing now
with democracy. Practicing
how to hold up our weight.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
View it all as practice. Trust that balance
depends on tension. Trust that
every step matters.
In Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, garden, parsley, patience, seeds, trust on March 28, 2026| 6 Comments »
In soil not yet worked this spring,
two perfect rows of parsley emerge
in a curly leafed celebration of green,
vestiges from last year’s planting.
Where is not garden?
Good hands, what will you do
with this new trust rising
out of what looked like failure?
With Astonishing Tenderness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, peace, self-compassion, self-talk, sleeplessness on January 14, 2024| 14 Comments »
When, in the middle of the night,
you wake with the certainty you’ve
done it all wrong, when you wake
and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,
in that moment, when dreams will not return,
this is the chance for your softest voice—
the one you reserve for those you love most—
to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,
this is not yet the end of the story.
Sleep will not come, but somehow,
in that wide awake moment there is peace—
the kind of peace that does not need
everything to be right before it arrives.
The peace that comes from not fighting
what is real. The peace that rises
in the dark on its sure dark wings
to meet you exactly as you are.
Going Deeper Into the Mystery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blame, failure, grace, grief, humanness on October 23, 2023| 18 Comments »
I don’t know why I did not see
my son’s choice to take his life as a failure.
Not as his failure. Not as mine.
Not the failure of the world.
Not the failure of his friends.
It’s not as if I’m a stranger to failure—
I who can endlessly beat myself up
just for failing to remember to return a call.
I don’t know why I did not need to blame.
Don’t know why I didn’t rail at God.
Why I didn’t contract
into a crumpled ball of shame.
I don’t know what grace stepped in
and turned my heart again and again
toward compassion, toward humanness.
Don’t know why it only occurred to me
to love him. To be gentle with myself.
I don’t know why the world
met my broken heart with such generosity,
obliterating any walls of failure
before I could even fashion the bricks.
I don’t know how it works,
this mystery of acceptance,
but it saved me,
never trying to rewrite the story,
asking nothing of me except
that I let myself be led through every moment
by what I cannot know.
Dear Failure,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure on October 22, 2023| 17 Comments »
It is easy to meet you in meditation.
Today, when I failed to focus on my breath,
I kept breathing anyway. Easy to meet you
in the garden where I planted the green beans too late
and harvestless, bought some at the store.
Harder to meet you when I fear
I am failing as a wife because
I missed my anniversary
to stay bedside with my mother.
Harder to meet you when I am afraid
I am failing as a daughter
when I leave my mother’s bed
to go to my own daughter.
I so want to get it right,
this showing up for the people I love.
I so want to get it right,
this longing to be enough.
Oh failure, I have not wanted
to learn your lessons, have wanted
to believe I could fix, could be all.
And you, great teacher, have humbled me
again and again, helping me see
how much I care.
There’s more than getting it right at stake.
You help me debunk perfection,
offering yourself as a friend.
Each time I fall,
you reach out to take my hand
saying, Fail on, sweetheart.
Wouldn’t you like
to try again with your loving?
*
Update on Mom
Oh friends, thank you thank you thank you for all the thoughtful notes. Mom and I have felt so held through all this. I left Georgia yesterday and arrived home at 2 a.m. this morning.And in the first solidly positive news in the last two weeks about mom’s health, she was released from the ICU today. And she is, as usual, amazingly upbeat, positive and full of gratefulness. It is such a relief. May this truly be the turn around point.
There was just so much difficult news the last couple of days it was hard to share about it–uncontrollable shivering, delirium, internal bleeding–but friends, mom truly does seem to be on the mend. Thank you for every candle, every prayer, every generous thought, every note. I have read aloud and thanked aloud every one of you who has written. Thank you for reaching back with your support.
Then I Stood There a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, failure, falling, let x equal x, standing, winter on March 10, 2023| 11 Comments »
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
—Mary Oliver, “It Was Early”
There is no lovely way to put this.
It was sleeting. I am not going to tell you
how the gray sky unfolded like a somber rose,
how the misty air softened every dark
and barren thing. It was sleeting.
And slick. And when I fell, it hurt.
A lot. But I got up. I got up.
No Slam Dunk, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged basketball, failure, second chance, sports on July 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Every day, a second chance—
as if all of life before has been one big shot
and today, I get to try again. Get to
forgive. Get to be kind. Get to let go,
be open, be gentle with myself.
Get to learn, unlearn, play again.
I think of Michael Jordan, and though
I know nothing of basketball, I know
he missed more than nine thousand shots
and lost nearly three hundred games and missed
the winning shot twenty-six times.
I know Michael Jordan was named by the NBA
as the greatest player of all time.
Every morning, though I can’t dribble
or shoot any more than I can flap my arms
and fly, I step onto the court of the new day
and let myself take the next shot. And miss.
And take the next shot again. Every day,
a new foul. Every day I want to argue with the ref.
Every day, I realize it does no good to argue.
At the end of the day, I see how I am the basket,
the ball, the bounce, the pass, the MVP,
the sub, the booing, the cheers.
I am the one who keeps score. And I am
the one who marvels when,
sweet miracle, the score is reset to zero,
and I’m given another chance—how is it?—
to make the winning shot.
Ode to the Fallen Angel Food Cake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, cake, failure, impatience, patience, personal responsibility on November 16, 2020| 9 Comments »
I suspected I shouldn’t
open the oven door
ten minutes before
the timer went off.
Is it a sin if you don’t
know the rule?
The cake looked perfect,
when I checked,
but ten minutes later
the puff of white had fallen,
fallen like Lucifer,
fallen into a dense sponge
from which it would never
again rise. Oh angel food cake,
victim of my impatience,
we ate you anyway,
served you with strawberry fluff,
and you, like a true angel,
stayed sweet. It was no fault
of your own that you fell.
How often am I responsible
for the so called failures
of others? How often
do I, in my excitement,
cause more harm than good?
Praise the fallen angel food cake,
that still, though compact,
offered itself to the birthday.
Praise what is good
that insists on its own goodness,
despite adverse circumstance.
Let me remember
the graceful botch,
the redeemable flop,
the crumb yet moist, so tasty.
After Talking to My Teacher, I See the Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, failure, invitation, Joi Sharp, letting go, poem, poetry, teacher on July 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
What wants to happen?
—Joi Sharp
Today it is the tow truck
that leads me back to myself.
For though I call the driver
and though I receive
a text that says he is coming
and though I have paid
my AAA bill on time, the tow
truck does not arrive.
Though I did everything right.
Though the same actions have worked before.
Still the world has not turned out
the way I expected, the way
I want it to. The car
is still stranded. The tow truck
is still not here. Oh failure,
how clearly it shows my attachment
to outcome. How clearly it
shows me the world is in charge.
I look for more doors to knock on,
try to plan more ways to control.
Meanwhile, I am the door.
Meanwhile, this chance
to let go.
One More Rejection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, poem, poetry, rejection on March 12, 2019| 10 Comments »
in the cathedral of failure—
learning to bow to our weakest self
and rise emptier, more full of song
One More Lesson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, poem, poetry, tea on April 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »
while pouring tea for failure,
I forgot to add the tea—
we drink the hot water together and laugh
On a Day When I Realize I’ve Scheduled Two Meetings for the Same Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged busy, failure, forgiveness, poem, poetry on March 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Self-forgiveness is not the first impulse.
In fact, I curse. Run my hands through my hair,
tug at my scalp. Sigh. Again. My shoulders fall slack
in the place where my wings would be.
In my gut, the seed of apology starts to root.
Perhaps that is what changes things,
what allows me to let failure look me in the face,
let it trace my cheeks, the barest caress.
It never asks me to be beautiful. It never
expects nor wants perfection. It touches me so tenderly,
is it any wonder that soon the apology
spills from my lips like the clearest stream,
and I stand in the cold clear rush of it.
The whole world looks different from here.
Should We Tell Her?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged courage, failure, love, poem, poetry, tightrope on February 22, 2018| 2 Comments »
Somewhere in my heart
there is a tiny woman
with a crimson scarf
and hair pulled back
who is balancing
on a tightrope—
she has not yet learned
that it is okay
for her to fall,
that the net
will always catch her,
so she keeps doing
the same boring walk
back and forth
thinking how brave
and how proficient
she is at staying
on the rope,
never learning
she could also
jump and swing
and leap and twirl and fall
and get back up.
A Venture into Storytelling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter in law, failure, family dynamics, holiday meal, pumpkin pie, storytelling on December 18, 2017| 1 Comment »
Dear poetry friends,
I’ve been dabbling in storytelling, both written and oral, and this month Edible Southwest, an elegant gourmet magazine, picked up a story of mine in their annual storytelling issue. It’s a story of when things go wrong around holiday meals … and how sometimes, that allows for things to go right …
You can check it out here: The Lesson of the Daughter-in-Law
One More Chance to Struggle Gracefully
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, journey, poem, poetry, whistling on October 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »
That’s what cars are for,
said the master whistler, when I told him
I could not whistle.
I auditioned for him
with my one-note draft,
and he said, Yeah, I
can work with that,
which I took to mean
that I could work with that.
Eventually, he said,
you’ll arrive at a tone.
And so I whistled
four hours as I drove north,
starting with Moon River,
Skylark, and Paris in Springtime,
then, demoralized
by lack of progress,
turned on the eighties station
and created a breeze
to accompany INXS, Howard Jones,
Prince and Tone Loc.
The difference between
what I heard in my head
and what came from my lips—
so much beauty
missing. And just
before arriving at my own
front door, I had somehow
begun a gusty rendition
of When the Saints Go Marching In,
and thought to myself,
yeah, I think I might
be getting it, but five
verses later laughed
at my longing for success.
When I opened the door
of the car, I felt the wind
meet my face. I let it
carry the almost notes
and decided tomorrow
I’d try some Moondance
and Fever before Hot Cross Buns,
knowing how it takes
a lot of wind
before one’s ship comes in.
Though It Is Tough to Choose It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, Joi Sharp, poem, poetry, transformation on March 24, 2017| 4 Comments »
This is the path of failure. We see that our definition of success is what is not working. What is working is deep, unseen. —Joi Sharp
Even a small discontent is enough to shut us down,
convince us that the world is cold and indifferent.
Everywhere there’s evidence of this: The slush
that falls on your car seat when you open the car door.
The carrion eaters with their great black wings
that linger beside the road. You pray for sun,
and it gets darker. Someone asks
you a question, and you see your whole life
fold into one small envelope of failure.
Then one day you hit against the same
impassable wall you always hit and this time you fall
to your knees, not because you are weak,
but because at last you are ready to be opened.
Oh sweet failure, how it leads us.
Any unhappy ending is only an invitation
to crawl into the blank pages
of the next unwritten chapter.
It was never success that transformed us—
always the breaking. Not the breaking itself,
but the mystery inside pushing through us
like bindweed through pavement
making cracks in everything
we think we know so that the world
can come streaming in.
One Lesson from the Circus Juggler
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, life lesson, poem, poetry on July 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
when all the balls drop
pick them up with a smile
and let the last thing
they see be the sparkle in your eye
and your hands no longer grasping