And then one day, while I read
the news aloud to my husband
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant,
I shifted from disgust with the world
to awe. Awe for this fierce, bespeckled
miracle, this wonder of feather, beak and claw,
this small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.
Posts Tagged ‘falling in love with the world’
Today’s Headline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, bird, disgust, falling in love with the world, news, owl, shift on February 11, 2026| 8 Comments »
At Last
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, good enough, what is here on September 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
after years of bowing
at the altar of not-good-enough,
I turn toward the rest
of the world and fall in love
with what is here
Revival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, evening grosbeak, falling in love with the world, joy on May 27, 2025| 2 Comments »
For so long he lingers on the edge
of the feeder, as if he knows
I am willing to stand here for hours
to marvel at his bright yellow forehead,
the white patch on his wings—
such an ecstatic thing to watch
this first evening grosbeak
to ever find a way to our yard.
Aren’t you beautiful, I tell him.
He raises his head. I swoon
with raw joy, with full-bodied
love for this bird, for this day,
for this world with its wings.
Was it really just this morning
I was weeping?
At the Bonfire on New Year’s Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, bonfire, falling in love with the world, new year, wonder on January 1, 2025| 4 Comments »
To the list of things I will likely forget,
add the color of the sky tonight
as we stood around the bonfire,
the way the deep blue gave way
to a deeper blue, to a deeper blue,
until it was blue no more—
every moment more lovely
than the moment before.
How many moments of wonder
have I forgotten in just this past year?
The forgetting makes them no
less wondrous. In fact, as I stood
at the bonfire, I was aware of all
the wonder stored in this body,
how it has shaped me, created me,
as much as any food I’ve eaten,
as much as every walk I’ve taken,
as much as any vitamin. And so
I gathered it in me, the vision of sparks
against the clear night sky, and Venus
perched atop the barren tree. The heat
of the flames and the crackle
of trapped moisture turning to steam.
There will be times this next year
when I desperately need wonder,
and though I will likely forget
the particulars of this night,
let me not forget how to be stirred
by beauty, remade by it, even.
So I practice now, this art
of falling in love with the world.
Come tomorrow, I will practice again.
Wings of Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, eagle, falling in love with the world, wonder on February 13, 2024| 8 Comments »
There, in the field,
you catch the flash
of dark brown wings,
the tail a startling white,
just before the great bird
disappears into the pines
and the heart leaps up
at the gift—the thrill.
You almost missed it.
Once you stood
on a long rocky spit
for an hour watching
hundreds of bald eagles
fly and land, swoop and dive.
How is it that only one bird
for only one sliver of a second
could invite a wonder equally strong?
Such strange math—
the way it takes so little
to create a joy so large
so that seeing the eagle,
you lift your arms from your chair
as if you, too, are taking flight,
as if, you, too, might disappear
into the moment and soar.
Staying Alive, Staying Alive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, falling in love with the world, medicine on December 31, 2023| 5 Comments »
You say it straight, he says.
We’re standing in the middle of a party
surrounded by curly wigs and sequin pants
and the Village People spell again into the air
as the doctor wearing bell bottoms
tells me how to share bad news:
First the diagnosis—
the symptoms and tests that suggest it.
Then how much life might be left.
Then ideas for what steps come next.
And there in my white go go boots
I think, this is how I want to love life—
want to love it straight up.
Not only when it’s beautiful.
Not only when I’m laughing.
I want to love life when I’m face to face
with what can’t be fixed,
want to love it even as I see
this is how it might end,
want to love it as I take the steps
to do what can be done,
knowing it won’t change the end of the story.
I want to love life as if it matters
to know what’s at stake,
as if it matters what I do next.
Learning to Love Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, falling in love with the world, klimt, love, paradox, trust on November 11, 2023| 14 Comments »
We learn to love by being loved.
—Rafael J. Gonzalez, personal correspondence
There are days now when I feel so embraced by life
it’s as if life itself is pulling me into its great, strong arms,
surrounding me with warmth, tenderness, radiance,
as if life is whispering into my ear, loving and low,
I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you.
Not that I’ve forgotten how fear enters in
with its wide-eyed hunger, how grief gnaws at raw flesh,
how the heart’s walls fall down in cacophonous descent,
but there are, I must tell you, golden hours sparked with joy,
love-dappled days steeped in flowers and song
and I can’t pretend it’s not beautiful,
can’t not share how the same life that ravages us
also gathers us in so gently, so surely
that we, too, become golden, become sun and moon,
become rapturous bloom, become kiss.
inspired by The Beethoven Frieze (1901), Gustav Klimt
The Ask
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, fairy tale, falling in love with the world, rumplestiltskin on June 28, 2023| 2 Comments »
Among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing.
—Tony Hoagland, “The Word”
Perhaps it looked like I was dancing,
but I was being danced, was being twirled
by some great mystical spinning wheel
turning the straw of my thoughts into gold.
What a gift to have a body, to be alive
on a night when the sun is warm
and the grass is green and the mountains
are not yet tinder dry and the music is joyful
and the minutes slip through the hours
like page after page of happily ever
and there is no imp to be seen, just
the glory of brass shining in the air
and the miracle of hands clapping
as if applause is the only response that makes sense,
and the only thing the world asks of me
is to love it.
On the Night I Learn (Again) We Are Doomed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doom, falling in love with the world, lilac, spring on May 30, 2023| 18 Comments »
And if it isn’t deep sea mining
it is drought, and if not drought,
it will be mobs incited by memes,
and if it’s not mobs it will be
our own fear. And
the lilacs that have been here
for a hundred years are blooming
more beautifully tonight
than I have ever seen them,
every branch heavy
with sweet purple blooms.
It is all falling apart, love.
That’s what the river sings
as it carves the canyon,
as it breaks down the boulders,
as it carries the detritus, the logs.
Just tonight I heard an estimated
eighty years left for humanity.
Still, tonight the scent of lilacs
meets us with faithful beauty
and an old song of spring
rises on the lips.
How is it, despite the trouble,
I feel so much love
for this disappearing world,
so much love for this doomed race
as I begin to sing.
The Mystery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, falling in love with the world, mystery on March 21, 2023| 1 Comment »
By now I know it’s impossible
to make someone else
fall in love with the world,
so when you say to me,
Look, Mom, the sky, it’s so beautiful,
and you stand there in the glow of sunset,
soft pink shining on your face,
I fall more in love not only with you
but with whatever it is
that opens us to wonder—
whatever grand mystery it is
that breathes warmth on our tight scales
and whispers to us, open,
then helps us get out of our own way
as one by one the petals unfurl,
and my god, the beauty,
the mystery, the beauty.
Monday, Midsummer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, shoulds, summer, wildflowers on June 28, 2021| 2 Comments »
It could be any ordinary midsummer day
when the world redefines green
and the field leaps into leaf and bloom
and the birdsong plays in a nonstop loop,
but I’m sitting inside because it’s Monday
and there are bills to pay and deadlines
to meet and stovetops to scrub
and children to feed. I know
I’m supposed to seize the day and
walk in the waist-high wildflowers
that even now splay into deep purple bloom
in the alpine meadows still rung with snow,
but I know, too, there is work to be done.
Perhaps there is no such thing
as balance. There is only this story
of should versus should. For a moment,
I step out of the story and notice how
good it feels to not believe any of it,
to let myself be led by the next true thing—
this word asking to be written, this breath
asking to be breathed, this life wanting
to be loved no matter how I spend
these ordinary, precious hours.
Skiing By the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, solstice, sunrise on December 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
It is late morning
before the sun rises
over these red cliffs,
Golden halos blaze
behind the evergreens.
What luck on winter solstice
to watch the sun rise twice—
like getting to fall in love
two times with the same lover.
May the sunrise always remind me
to fall in love again with the world.
Every morning may I know the choice
to open the heart and see myself
as the world.
Patience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, falling in love with the world, heartache, patience on March 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Again today, the invitation
to fall in love with the world—
with the gray jay who flits
from empty branch to empty branch,
with the sharp scent of rabbit brush,
with the warm spring wind
and the dark buds on the crabapple
still tight with future bloom.
Some days, though the world offers itself,
it’s not so easy to fall in love—
days when heartache twists in the chest
and turns in us like a screw,
leaves us raw and sensitive, until,
too tender to hear any more bad news,
we shutter our hearts, we close our ears.
But if we’re lucky, an inner voice
sends us outside into the day,
and though it is gray, the world does
what the world does—
holds us despite our heartache,
holds us the same way it holds
the stubby pink cactus, all prickly and clenched,
the same way it holds last year’s thistles,
all brittle and flat and gray,
the same way it holds the dank scent of river
and the moldering scent of last year’s leaves,
holds us exactly as we are
until we are ready to fall in love again.
Dare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cruelty, falling in love with the world, what is on January 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
On a day when the world is cruel,
I do not try to fall in love with cruelty.
No, I invite myself to fall in love
with the what is beneath what is cruel.
In the meadow, it is a herd of elk walking through the snow.
In the room, it is a kitten curled in a crescent on the couch.
In myself, it is the part of me that defies any label—
woman/man, Christian/Jew, good/bad, knower/unknower.
I invite that ineffable part of me to go find itself
in the world. And everything is beautiful then.
There is nothing I cannot love.
RSVP
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, poem, poetry on October 27, 2017| 1 Comment »
Again this call
to love the world—
though there are men
with buttons to push
who could turn it to ash
within hours, though
people have tongues
that fork and curl,
though the things
and beings we love most
disappear.
And still this sweet
metronome of breath
ticking here, here.
And the scent
of the leaf pile,
loamy and playful.
And the pansy in October
still purple and soft.
Turn to the sun,
let it touch your skin
like a lover, so tender,
warm. Now spread that shine.
It’s what we do.
RSVP
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, poem, poetry, spring on May 11, 2017| 2 Comments »
And why not be flagrantly happy,
really. The moon is full and rakish
and spring keeps teasing the morning
into taking off its sweater. By noon,
everyone is blushing. In the garden,
strawberries come up on their own,
their fearless white flowers
pre-wired for sweetness.
Who cares the weeds are already
releasing their onslaught of filigreed seeds.
Inside us, an open invitation to fall in love.
Inside us, the pluck to say yes.
Parched
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, poem, poetry, spring, weed on April 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »
How could I know
it’d be a weed
that would save me—
one which I’ve
spent hours on my knees
trying to eradicate—
didn’t know that
on a day when
I needed to believe in spring,
it would appear in the quack grass,
its tiny purple flowers
calling to me
as if I were not the woman
who had uprooted them,
calling to me
as if I too
have some spring
left in me.
Communion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, poem on February 13, 2017| Leave a Comment »
A woman’s soft skin, I have it—
not on my hands, which thrill
to garden and spread shine—but
soft I am in neck and belly and the long
slow reaches of my side body.
I hum like a woman, and
laugh like a woman and weep
for beauty, for sorrow.
In the early evening,
I leave on the lawn
the long curving shadow of a woman.
Sometimes I even fool myself—
but sometimes I remember
I am also sand and elephant,
skylark and sunflower,
blood orange and button,
wind,
and the stillness after.
On the Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, light, poem, poetry, solstice, world on December 22, 2016| 2 Comments »
On this gray, near-drizzling day
I write again this love letter
for the earth, which is, I suppose,
what all poems are, though they
disguise themselves as poems about
children or wine or baseball or snow.
On this longest night, it’s so clear—
the truest reason to write at all is to fall
more deeply in love with the world,
with its trees and its drizzle
and its stubborn shine and its
relentless hunger and its corners
that will never ever ever see the growing light.
Fall in love with the octopus that can detach
an arm on purpose and then grow it back again.
Fall in love with the elusive lynx
and the crooked forest and the frazzle ice
tinkling in the San Miguel River.
Fall in love even with this profoundly flawed
species that, despite all its faults,
is still capable of falling more deeply,
more wildly in love.