Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flower, poem, poetry, surrender on August 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
A flower in the field
is always changed by rain.
It is never indifferent
to sun. Even the slightest
of breezes will bend it,
will rearrange. An ant
walks through its center—
now so much more is possible.
It never pretends
to be unaffected by the world.
I have so much to learn
from the flowers of the field,
how they never turn their backs—
they don’t even have backs.
How they withstand hail
and flood and snow and chill
and still, they bloom,
they spill seeds, they
bring all the beauty they can.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, gratitude, peony, poem, poetry on May 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
(with thanks to Donnalee for the peony buds)
Sitting with the peony
whatever is red in me reddens
and whatever in me is fist
loosens its grip
and whatever was sorrow
finds no mirror
and whatever is grateful
becomes fragrant
and I don’t even think
to remember
it won’t last forever,
all I know is
inside,
sweet nectar.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bluebonnets, death, flower, friendship, life, love, poem, poetry, wildflowers on March 29, 2019| 6 Comments »
She wants to go see the bluebonnets, she says.
This is after she tells me they’ve said she has three months to live.
And I want to find her vast fields of bluebonnets,
acres and acres of white-tipped blue bloom.
And I want to send her more springs to see them in,
more days to live one day at a time. I want to remove
the pain in her belly, the pain that aggressively grows.
I want to make deals with the universe. Want to say no
to the way things are. I want to tell death to wait.
I want to tell life to find a way. I want to hug her
until she believes she’s beloved. I want to give her
the pen that will write every brave thing
that she’s been unable to say. There are days
when we feel how uncompromising it is, the truth.
How human we are. There are days when the bluebonnets
stretch as far as the eye can see. There are days
we know nothing is more important than going to see them,
a billion blue petals all nodding in the wind, teaching us to say yes.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flower, opposites, poem, poetry, thorn on November 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »
You think it’s so much better to be petal,
pink flower, the perfumed bloom that lures
the bee. You with your flutter and blush.
Not all of us can be soft. Not all of us
can be beauty, and you have that role
all wrapped up. You with your tender buds,
your loveliness splayed. But I was not
made that way. Was made prick. Was
made barbed. Was made snappish
and piercing and sharp. Was made
fierce. Was made lance. Was made
to take no chances with survival.
There is glory in defense. Everything
that touches me remembers. I’m the one
that defines the scene. How would you know
your beauty without me?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, order, poem, poetry on June 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, kindness, poem, poetry, tulip on April 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Consider the tulip,
how it rises every spring
out of the same soil,
which is, of course,
not at all the same soil,
but new. How long ago
someone’s hands planted a bulb
and gave to this place
a living scrap of beauty.
Consider the six red petals,
the yellow at the center,
the soft green rubber of the stem,
how it bows to the world. How,
the longer we sit beside it,
the more we bow to it.
It is something like kindness,
is it not? The way someone plants
in you a bit of beauty—a kind word,
perhaps, or a touch, the gift
of their time or their smile.
And years later, in the soil that is you,
it emerges again, pushing aside
the dead leaves, insisting on beauty,
a celebration of the one who planted it,
the one who perceives it, and
the fertile place where it has grown.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, flower, Georgia O'Keefe, petunia, poem, poetry on January 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »
When Georgia painted the petunia,
she knew that to make busy people stop
in surprise and consider petunia,
she needed to make it large—
and she did—enormous petunias
revealed, unfolding along the wall—
and there the busy people saw
the intimate petals of women,
when all Georgia wanted to show them
was flower, the essence of flower,
the beauty of flower, the pure
purpled splendor of flower—
how soft, how sensual, how
wholly day stopping
a single flower can be.
to see the artwork, visit:
https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/store/products/posters/flowers/petunia-no-2-1924/
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dinner, flower, missing, mother, parent, poem, poetry on July 26, 2017| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, flower, poem, poetry, seduction on May 15, 2014| 1 Comment »
Stirring inside the barely
open flower, the bee
dances his legs
in the golden
pollen, his whole
body trembles against
the core until he is wading
in gold, he is covered,
he glitters and I
become fully
flower.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged busy, flower, going inward, haiku, poem, vulnerability on January 31, 2012| 3 Comments »
adios map
from now on I travel
in
flower to flower—
so much honey here I turn
it into work
why are you surprised
I’m naked? I don’t know why
you’re not
