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.
Posts Tagged ‘failure’
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 »
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.