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Posts Tagged ‘falling in love with the world’


 
 
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.
 

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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.

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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.

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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.
 

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IMG_3399

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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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.

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RSVP

 

 

 

Again this call

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.

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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After hoping and trying

and failing and hoping

and trying and failing

and hoping and trying

and failing the mind

perhaps will finally say

I don’t know what comes next

and, startled by the sweet

clarity of this, the body

raises both arms, though

the mind didn’t tell it to—

yes, the arms rise weightless

and open, as if there is nothing

they aren’t ready to embrace,

as if the world as it is

might come rushing in.

 

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