I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks.
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six.
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened,
every time I’ve pushed her away instead
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her
in the sun in the grass while we waited
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too,
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.
Posts Tagged ‘forgiveness’
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, conversation, daughter, forgiveness, knitting, love, mother, naming on June 3, 2026| 4 Comments »
In Its Own Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bats, forgiveness, humility, surprise on May 12, 2026| 7 Comments »
Long before dark
a single bat zig zags
and dips, its erratic
twisting and diving
so unlike the smooth
loops of swallows—
it’s like when forgiveness
grows wings before the mind
is on board, moving inside us
with its own mysterious
intelligence. More agile than we thought,
surprisingly flexible, wild, clearly blind.
How strange to see it fluttering
in the light, something we’ve been told
is improbable.
We couldn’t say it’s beautiful,
yet we can’t stop staring.
How humble it is. How hungry.
Ways to Open
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, opening, stuck 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.
Unlikely Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, betrayal, forgiveness, grace, gratefulness 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?
Irony
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, irony, redemption 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.
One Inexplicable Lightness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dawn, forgiveness 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
Seeing Clearly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eyes, forgiveness, gaze, humility, love 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.
the other track
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, love, mercy, record 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
One Forgiveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, stone, transformation on May 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
how quickly
this basket of stones
becomes
a basket
of feathers
One Very Quiet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, phone, quiet on August 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Three Slow-Moving Wondrous Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, slow 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.
One Unforgiving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged basil, death, forgiveness, garden, poem, poetry 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
After Being Given the Assignment to Forgive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, friendship, letting go, poem, poetry, time on February 26, 2019| 8 Comments »
It took five days, but at last I thought of you, old friend,
friend I loved and wanted to trust, friend
who burned every bridge I tried to build between us,
who turned gratitude and apology to smoke, to ash,
who taught me that love is not enough—a lesson
I never wanted to learn, which is why I am grateful
you helped me to learn it.
No one gets through life without injury.
Still, I wanted to believe that a kiss and forgiveness
could make things better, but some things
are better left broken. Thank you for teaching me
that all passes, that even without a road, without
a bridge, without a track, the train of time
finds a way to keep moving, eventually
speeding by so fast that what seemed
unable to be overcome becomes a blur
and that hope gives way to something even
more beautiful: saying yes to what is real.
So though you will never know it, I forgive you
for your scissored words and sharpened
silences. I forgive you for giving up on love,
for saying no, goodbye. It takes almost no effort now.
Even uranium has a half-life—albeit 4.5 billion years.
How much sooner forgiveness has come. More like a lawn
that went unwatered and dried to brown, to dust,
but then when seasonal rains returned, turned green.
Yes, thriving and lush, here is the new lay of the land,
ready for anyone to arrive. Anyone. Even you.
Forgiveness 101
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, poem, poetry, sleep on February 21, 2019| 7 Comments »
The first person I forgive today is myself
for staying up too late last night—how
I loved reading into the late hours, the story
crooking its finger at me, tethering me
to its pages. What good does it do
to call myself stupid, to lash out at the part of me
who thrives on those slender moments
when I am alone and the house is quiet
and I am the sister of words. No, better to tell
that late night reader that I’m tired.
Better to smile at her, though she thwarts
the morning me who loves to rise feeling rested.
She does not apologize. I know I will have
to forgive her again. Somehow, when I start
with myself, it makes it easier all day long
to practice forgiveness for others—
the slow drivers, the complainers, the bullies,
the pouters. They probably have happier,
calmer, more rational selves, too,
that they are also thwarting. All day I practice seeing
the heart of a person. All day, when I yawn, I smile.
Becoming Crystalline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, poem, poetry, salt, transformation on December 8, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Forgive me. I do not mean
to be sharp, stark, sterile.
I’ve read of the salt mines
at Salzburg, how if you throw
a stick, leafless and dead,
into one of the abandoned workings,
then return months later and pull it out,
it will be covered in crystals,
“a galaxy of scintillating diamonds,”
writes Stendahl, “the original
branch no longer recognizable.”
I want to be like that stick.
Take my winter soul
and throw it into the mystery,
though it’s dark and cold
and easy to get lost.
What knows how to attract
the light will grow, will change me
until I barely recognize myself.
I do not mean to be short,
but I hear it in my words.
Stranger things have happened.
What is dead is sometimes
a chance to find new life,
to become a thing shining,
something the same, only fresh,
a thousand times more brilliant.
On a Day When I Realize I’ve Scheduled Two Meetings for the Same Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged busy, failure, forgiveness, poem, poetry on March 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Self-forgiveness is not the first impulse.
In fact, I curse. Run my hands through my hair,
tug at my scalp. Sigh. Again. My shoulders fall slack
in the place where my wings would be.
In my gut, the seed of apology starts to root.
Perhaps that is what changes things,
what allows me to let failure look me in the face,
let it trace my cheeks, the barest caress.
It never asks me to be beautiful. It never
expects nor wants perfection. It touches me so tenderly,
is it any wonder that soon the apology
spills from my lips like the clearest stream,
and I stand in the cold clear rush of it.
The whole world looks different from here.
As the Pressure Drops
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blizzard, bomb cyclone, compassion, forgiveness, poem, poetry, snow, weather on January 7, 2018| 12 Comments »
Across the country, blizzards—blizzards
so big that folks speak of bombogenesis
while standing in line in the coffee shop.
And the snow begins to fall, snow
blocks out the sun, snow fills the roads,
the drives, the sills until people begin to forget
who they are when there isn’t a storm.
Imagine the storm goes on.
Imagine that it isn’t snow falling,
but forgiveness. Imagine all those people
rising morning after morning to find
themselves buried in compassion.
Piles of it. Heaps of it. Giant white drifts of it.
It must be dealt with before anything else
can happen. Before people can even
walk out the door, they must lift it
and move it and feel its surprising weight.
Who knew there was so much of it? Who knew
just how completely it could shut things down
if not engaged with properly? It takes some time,
perhaps, before the people see
how beautiful it is, how every single thing
it touches is softened, turned to sparkle,
turned to shine. A disruption, to be sure,
but sometimes it takes a blizzard
to find the calm. Sometimes
we must be stopped
before we learn how to go on.
And the colder it gets, the more
we must work to be warm.
One Sitting on the Porch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, forgiveness, melting, poem, poetry on December 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Perhaps This is Forgiveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, poem, poetry, softness on October 5, 2017| 6 Comments »
Again this morning
the invitation to be soft,
to notice how when we wake,
the cage of thorns that sprang up
yesterday is not now here.
It takes only just one thought of blame
or righteousness, and the thorns
return in all their ferocity
and brandish their barbs,
and flaunt their hooks,
but there is this moment
when we can simply notice
how soft we are, how vulnerable,
and choose to stay that way,
and a moment later, choose again,
oh, the morning, it smells like freedom.
I’m Not Saying We Shouldn’t Be Angry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, forgiveness, Inuit, poem, poetry, walking on September 12, 2017| 89 Comments »
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry.
Anger seems reasonable. But perhaps
we will do what I’ve heard the Inuit do—
spend the emotion on walking, walk a line
until all the anger has left our bodies.
The moment the Inuit notice the anger is gone,
replaced, perhaps, by sadness or fear,
compassion or just a quietness,
they mark that spot with an object
to show the extent of their anger.
And perhaps, if we’re lucky, when we walk
this way, it will be a long enough walk
that we arrive at each other’s doors,
object in hand, and when the object
leaves our grip, we’ll be able to use our hands
to greet each other, touch each other’s faces,
point to the horizon to all the other places
we might choose to walk now together.