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.
Posts Tagged ‘falling in love with the world’
Skiing By the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, solstice, sunrise on December 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
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
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.
Though We Were Walking Toward Frustration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, falling in love with the world, light, poem, poetry on August 23, 2015| 1 Comment »
“Look,” she says, “at the light
on the waves,” and no matter what else
has happened today,
there it is, the light, the light on the waves,
and for this moment it’s beauty enough
that the rest of the world
falls away, and I fall in love
with being alive
and with the light,
the light on the waves.