Could they ever be enough,
these stumbling attempts
to bring kindness to an aching world?
Enough, this holding the door for a stranger,
this saying I’m sorry, this holding a place in line?
How could it be enough, asks the ache,
when today I saw the photo of the mother
holding the starving child in Gaza,
his brown legs as thin as my wrists.
I am sick with helplessness.
What does it mean, enough?
Beside me on a bench,
a man I have never met is humming.
His tune blooms like a sun in my chest.
The warmth twines with the beat of my question,
How could any small act be enough?
Until the child in the photo and all children
are safe and fed and loved and held by loving mothers
who are safe and fed and loved
and held by loving others who are safe
and fed and loved—until then,
how could anything ever be enough?
The old man beside me has started to sing.
His eyes are closed, and his
low gentle voice braids beauty
into everything around him.
Even the questions that will never
have answers. Even this terrible ache.
How deeply I want to believe
it is not too late to save this world.
Posts Tagged ‘fear’
In the Airport, I Wonder about Enough
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enough, fear, helplessness, kindness on July 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, fear, night, paradox, worry on June 18, 2025| 8 Comments »
Walking alone into the dark,
my fear comes with me.
I feel it small and hard
in my belly like a tiny grenade
the mind has conjured
in case I need protection.
Meanwhile, all around me
the night is peaceful.
The dark spills its generous ink
into every open space.
Crickets rub their legs in bright music.
The misty rain makes no sound.
But the mind is not convinced
the night is safe. It clenches tighter
around its fear. It does no good
to tell the mind not to worry.
Hello, tiny grenade.
I carry it with me as I walk
through a field of fireflies—
and I’m laid bare by the beauty
I find there—thousands of glittering sparks.
Isn’t it a marvel how a person
can be both clenching and opening
at the very same time
while moving alone through the dark?
Walking Back from Sanborn Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, awe, fear, paradox, snake, terror on June 12, 2025| 6 Comments »
Four-foot rattlesnake.
Sunning herself.
Right in the middle
of the road. Strange,
how terror can also
breed awe. For long,
silent moments, I offer
her all my attention.
After she slips into swaths
of sweet clover,
the sky, such a startling blue.
The scent of wild roses,
so stirring, so sweet.
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, love, opening, paradox, salvation on June 8, 2025| 6 Comments »
There is a terror that claims us,
that snaps its strong jaws around us
and thrashes us till we are limp.
Who could guess such a maw
is a portal to grace?
There are wounds so great
no amount of salve or prayer
or kindness or care can heal them,
and through them we find gateways to love.
It is after the wailing and howling with ache
that we hear, as if for the first time,
the almost inaudible song of our breath
and know it as home.
How is it that what saves us
feels so far out of reach
but is here, bone close?
There is an infinite blooming inside us
we come to know only as we wither.
Even now, in this chill,
it is opening.
One Clearing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, fear, self-care on March 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
every day I dismantle its nest,
that fear that wings darkly
into my thoughts
To the Bunny Who Lives Under the Porch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bunny, elegy, fear, spring, vulnerability on March 9, 2025| 8 Comments »
Snug little lump of timid flesh
whose fur matches the brown
grass of late winter, silent
little being with your long
pointy ears twisted back,
oh, soft little wide-eyed prey,
thank you for returning
to the yard this morning.
After two weeks of not seeing
your fidgety-whiskered nose,
I met your apparent loss like an elegy
I didn’t want to write. I am tired
of writing elegies, though this
is what life asks us to do—
to meet the world of loss
and learn the beauty
that grows from it.
So imagine my joy today when
I was driving in a faraway town
and my husband sent me a photo
of your mild, quiet bunny-ness
nibbling grass beside the porch,
one shiny brown eye open
to the camera. A wild gratefulness
for life flooded me then, keen
as a pasqueflower, bright
as a globe willow greening
on the winter side of spring;
and my heart leapt out
from beneath its shelf of fear,
vulnerable as you, little bunny.
Self-Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, opening, self-compassion, self-talk on February 22, 2025| 10 Comments »
Because I know in my body
the power of spaciousness,
I command my heart, Stay open.
Stay open, I growl,
as it clenches and hardens
and granites and steels,
but my terrified heart
keeps clenching anyway,
tighter and smaller and stuck.
I said, Stay open,
my voice a demand,
as if with intensity
I could force a release.
And the heart curls in,
intent on survival, like a pill bug,
like an armadillo, like a heart
that has learned before
it is not safe to love.
And it hurts to be small.
And it takes so much energy
to clench, that finally
it’s exhaustion that helps me
to hear the softer voice
beneath the command,
the quiet voice that arrives
like the slightest of waves, the voice
that arrives like low morning sun,
and the voice enters the clench of me
like gentle rain meeting dry earth,
and it says, Of course, you’re afraid.
For now it’s enough to remember
the possibility of opening.
What I Didn’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged activism, fear, love, love languages on February 6, 2025| 6 Comments »
At last I am learning it’s okay
to be scared to the marrow
and still show up whole-hearted.
No shame it took so long
to learn this truth,
just giddy relief to finally trust
I can be clenched like a hedgehog
or poised as a snake
and still be open to finding love
at the center of what scares me.
And when I find no sprig of love there,
that is the chance
to offer love to the world
any way I know how—
with a gift, with my time,
with words, with touch,
or with a simple act of kindness.
And if I find I have no love
to muster, then that is the chance
to plant seeds of love in whatever
soil I find. And amend the ground.
And bring light. Bring water.
Letter to the Others in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, darkness, fear, maturity, writing on January 7, 2025| 21 Comments »
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
that the words on the page are legible,
no confidence you will receive this.
Still this impulse to reach out,
this longing to honor this deepening darkness,
though it is confusing, disorienting.
I find myself reminding myself
such darkness is natural, essential even,
and there is some comfort
in knowing this, in trusting I am part
of some great process, even though
it terrifies me. This is how the world
has been made and remade.
Of course we are no different
than stars. Perhaps you are not frightened.
But I am. Maybe this is why I reach out.
Because it takes so much courage
to trust the dark place, to attend to its demands,
to believe this is not the end, but a pause,
a stage between one world and another.
Please, don’t send me light either.
I don’t think I am ready yet, the pain still sharp,
not yet softened, not yet become wings,
though part of me longs to have already
arrived on the other side of transformation.
Perhaps you are reaching for me, too.
Perhaps you have already written
on this page, and because it is dark,
I can’t read what you’ve said.
Perhaps believing this makes me less alone.
And this is why I write.