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Posts Tagged ‘forgiveness’

Ways to Open

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 22, 2025| 10 Comments »


 
 
There’s the lilac way, impulsive,
shrugging out of hard bud scales
while the nights are still cold,
then flooding the world
with the sweet perfume of vulnerability.
Or the way a housefly opens its wings,
almost mechanical,
prompted by a pulse that triggers
marionette-like pulleys and hinges.
There’s the wine way, sensual, responsive
to air, like how a glass of sauvignon blanc
opens into a meadow with a fresh cut path
through tall green grass with wet stones,
flanked by asparagus and nettles.
I am thinking now, of how tightly I’ve closed
my mind around a certain thought.
How impossible the unclenching seems,
though all around me are proofs
of how naturally things might open—
open the way a child will open his hand
to his mother when he desperately wants to be held.
Open the way a sky does when afternoon clouds
evaporate and all that is left is blue.
Open the way a life does when,
through what grace, we learn again
we can forgive.

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Unlikely Gratefulness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 5, 2025| 14 Comments »

Hello friends, 

So seldom do I feel I need to preface a poem, but … this one. It was so not easy to write and I don’t know that I have said yet what most wishes to be said. I think that happens sometimes … when I have a feeling so big that I’ve felt for so long, I put too much pressure on the poem to tell the whole story when really, something much simpler wants to emerge. All this is to say I am wrestling with questions of love and forgiveness and humility and betrayal and grace … and will likely be wrestled by them as long as I live. You, too? 

Unlikely Gratefulness

I will not excuse what he did.
His words, cruel.
His actions, callous.
So deliberate,
the way he turned his back.
Did he not see another path?
Or did he, with spiteful intent,
choose the lowest road?
And after the fact, did it matter?
The dark seed he planted
could not be unsown.
 
Perhaps my brokenness was a gift,
because if I had been less broken,
I would have mustered the strength
to hate him.
Perhaps because I was so broken,
my eyes could not not remember the way
his face reddens and crumples when he cries.
My throat could not not remember
how often I sang him to sleep.
And my hands still remember
holding him when he was scared.
My ears still hear the raucous ways
we laughed while in the car.
 
But how it is I still let him in?
How is there room in my heart for his?
I don’t know. I don’t know how to name the gift.
What is this grace that holds me
so I can still hold him?

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Irony

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 12, 2024| 14 Comments »

The more forgiveness
you have, the more
whole you are,
but the less
of you remains,
as if life is a cloth
and you the spool,
and the only way
to stitch the story
of your redemption
is to use
the blue thread
of your veins.

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One Inexplicable Lightness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on February 15, 2023| 4 Comments »




the way sun arrives—
first as a suggestion of light,
then startlingly brilliant

so comes this revelation—
I forgive you

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Seeing Clearly

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 18, 2021| 4 Comments »


Forgive me for wanting to fix you.
As if we could be anything
but who we are.
 
Forgive me for every time
I have looked at you with hawkish eyes,
eyes with talons, eyes that hunt.
 
Forgive me for thinking I know
what you need, for thinking I am right.
For scrutinizing, for judging,
 
for using my gaze to build walls.
I want to look at you with eyes
as soft as the light in the field after dawn.
 
Want to meet you with eyes
as benevolent as rain. Want to see you
with eyes as open as sky, open as innocence.
 
Want to see myself this way, too—
then, it is easier to soften, to lean in, to bloom.
This is how I want to look at you—
 
not with eyes that fix, but eyes
that dismantle defensiveness,
eyes that say let us meet in our flawedness,
 
eyes unstintingly generous,
a gaze that says you are safe with me,
a gaze born of humility, a gaze made of wings.

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the other track

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »


 
 
on the b-side of love
a song of mercy—
sweet groove of forgiveness,
beat of a thousand
soft wings

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One Forgiveness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 24, 2021| 2 Comments »

how quickly
this basket of stones
becomes
a basket
of feathers

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One Very Quiet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

morning sun inclines

my heart toward forgiveness—

still the phone does not ring

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Three Slow-Moving Wondrous Things

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 15, 2020| 5 Comments »

The heart of the blue whale

is in no hurry, only four to eight

beats per minute. And the glaciers

move their brilliant blue mass

less than three hundred meters a year.  

And forgiveness, it can move even

slower than that. It may be months,

even years before it blooms.

But how wondrous, when at last

we recognize that, perhaps through

no effort of our own, it has released

its unhurried perfume into our thoughts—

oh sweetness we thought might never arrive,

oh surprise when it touches us everywhere.

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One Unforgiving

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

basil on the porch

the morning after a frost

leaves limp and black things—

how greenly it met yesterday

no amount of I’m sorry will do

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