for Kayleen
There, in the middle of the morning,
was a pause in which we floated
on the surface of the pond, floated
as if we were two rocks who, at least
for a moment, had learned how
to be feathers. If they were to write
the story of my life, they would likely
not mention the way the blue damselflies
landed on our legs, the way we drifted
into the reeds, but I hope I always remember
the way your legs dangled in the cold water,
the way your eyes stayed with mine
as I cried, the way we floated, no matter
how heavy the words, we floated,
like daisies, we floated.
Posts Tagged ‘friendship’
Even After We Were Back on Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged floating, friendship, memory, pond on July 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
Because It’s Hard to Not Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, love, ocean, support on July 20, 2024| 8 Comments »
for P
All day I imagine my love
is a great ocean that lifts you
on a warm and gentle tide
so all you need to do today
is float. Float and let yourself
be carried. Float and know
that in this hour nothing
need be done. Perhaps
if you are still today, even
for a moment, you can feel
the way these distant waves
are near as your own sweet breath.
The weight of all that scares you
doesn’t change. I know. I imagine
I lift that, too. Lift it all until
you are certain no matter
how much things change,
you are not alone.
Lately, Art Says, I’ve Been Thinking About Clumps,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art Goodtimes, clump, conversation, friendship, life on June 30, 2024| 6 Comments »
and for hours we drive through clumps
of mountains called ranges, clumps
of cars we call traffic, clumps of homes
we call towns. We speak in clumps
called subjects as we laugh in clumps
called laughter tokens. And sometimes
we’re silent in a flexible clump called silence.
I think of clumps of grief and clumps of joy,
clumps of celebration and clumps of time
when I forgot to wonder what comes next.
How many clumps does it take to screw
in a lightbulb? How many clumps make a day?
Something so satisfying about the clump.
Humble as dirt on the roots of a tree. Natural
as tufts of wheatgrass in the field.
Creative as a clump of atoms that, when infused
with heat from the sun, become a petunia.
Clumps of words make a sentence. Clumps
of notes create song. Clumps of time
build a friendship. And what is peace
but a clump of moments when we choose
not to fight? What is age but a clump
of memories? What is love but a clump
of surrenders? What is now but a chance
to be alive in this wondrous clump we call our life?
for Art Goodtimes
The Welcoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, friendship, singing, welcoming on June 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Moudi
With an open umbrella, he met me
in the rain having walked barefoot
to the place where I’d parked.
He handed the umbrella to me.
In the warm bright home,
he offered me a soft, dry chair.
He served warm bread wrapped
in a green and white cloth
and his partner sprinkled zatar
and olive oil on the labne.
The kale salad was crisp
with sweet chunks of beets
and thick creamy slices of avocado.
And in the warm, rich stew
offered to us in a rounded pot,
the eggplant disassembled itself
alongside chickpeas and tomato.
But before we ate, he served us a story
of a place where people begin a meal together
with spontaneous singing of sorrow and praise.
What stopped me then, while I sat at his table,
from singing? So I sing now,
of sorrow that I let my fear of singing it wrong
be louder in me than the urge to sing.
I sing of praise for the second chance.
I sing a prayer for the courage to learn
how to sing a new song, and the chance
to sing it again. And again.
Christie Sends Me a Photo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, friendship, habits, humor, laughter, patterns, solids on May 29, 2024| 7 Comments »
Her head is pasted onto my body
wearing a very plain black dress.
My head’s pasted onto her body
wearing a flamboyant jumpsuit
with pixilated technicolor chaos,
a jumpsuit she’s tried to get me
to wear for months.
She knows wearing patterns
makes me queasy. And what
is it in us that loves to make
our beloveds squirm?
I’m an easy target.
She knows I will squeal and
splutter and rail, so when I call
in a righteous outrage
over how she’s dressed my likeness
in a blenderized rainbow,
she laughs and I laugh
and something is so right
with the world then—
this goofy, giddy moment
when the stakes are low
and I am uncomfortable and prickly
and feel so deeply seen,
so able to laugh at the lines I draw.
I fall inside the laughter,
feel it wrap around me
bright as that flashy jumpsuit.
And I, who crave what is solid,
I dissolve into that brightness.
Make a Wish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, candle, friendship, kindness, light on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for JS
No cake and no you.
Still, I light a candle
on your birthday
and notice the way
one small flame
changes the feel
of a whole room.
I think of your light
and how many
gather around it,
how quietly you invite
the shadows to dance,
how gently one person
can change the world.
Coming Home the First Time after Our Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, friendship, grief, help, loss, love, receiving on May 22, 2024| 20 Comments »
Someone had taken small rocks and shaped them
into a heart in the center of our drive
so when we arrived, we knew we were not alone.
At the front door, we stepped over
another small heart made of stones
filled with blue petals of larkspur,
golden petals of sunflowers,
the tiny red petals of geranium.
We walked into our home
to find wildflowers in a vase on the counter,
our fridge filled with fruit, soymilk and hummus,
the shelves lined with cans and boxes of tissues.
There were love letters tucked into every room.
The house itself was quiet,
too quiet without the boy who wasn’t there,
but it was not a lonely silence.
Those were the days when I learned
to say okay every time someone offered help.
Can I bring you lavender lotion? Okay.
Can I make you a meal? Okay.
Can I pick up your mail? Okay. Okay.
What a gift to be carried by others,
to learn by heart the sacred bond
between those who are broken
and those who offer their hands
to cradle the ones who are broken.
Years later, those same small stones
still grace our front porch,
though the shape of the heart
has been rearranged many times.
As has mine. I want to remember
how we need each other.
The petals I add never stay.
The love infused here has never gone away.
When Molly held out her tight leather vest
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, friendship, generosity, giving, kindness, Molly Venter, receiving, vest on May 21, 2024| 9 Comments »
with its two-foot-long green fringe
and suggested I could borrow it,
I felt that long familiar clench in my chest
as the word no puckered on my lips.
The clench said, who was I
to borrow clothes from Molly Venter?
It said who was I to wear
flirty and sexy green leather fringe?
It said, can’t you dress yourself?
I don’t know why I held out my hand,
but as soon as I did, I relaxed.
That whole night, as the long green fringe
swished and swayed all flirty around my thighs
no one else knew I was dressed in kindness.
No one knew I was alive with the blessing
of new friendship. But perhaps they could sense
I was honey-blissed on the inside with the thrill
of wearing Molly Venter’s vest,
so much more than just a sleeveless scrap of fabric—
I was wrapped in the velvet of her voice,
the willow tree of her wisdom,
the raw delight in her guitar
and the freedom that comes when
we receive the gifts of others.
Days later, dressed a slouchy cardigan,
I’m still wearing the generosity I saw in her eyes
as she handed me the vest—
I feel that fringe swish with every step I take.
You Belong
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, friendship, grass, love, meadow on May 8, 2024| 6 Comments »
The way grass belongs to the meadow—
how without it, the meadow
would not be meadow—
this is the way you belong in my heart.
Not that I’ve made a space for you here,
more that you’ve helped make my heart what it is,
and without you, my heart is not my heart.
I cradle you here as in a nest of wheat—
soft home, humble home, ever rewoven
to fit the changing shape of you.
It’s not true our hearts are our own—
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Who am I? Who am I?
You, my sun, my grass, my wind.
As I Walked Out the Door
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, gift, language, resilience, Wendy Videlock, word on May 3, 2024| 8 Comments »
for Wendy
Into my hand, she pressed
a smooth rock she’d painted copper.
In all capital letters, turquoise and navy,
she’d written the word RESILIENCE.
Beneath it she’d drawn a lopsided helix.
I thought of her own spiraling with death.
Two years later, she volunteers
to teach in schools and dances
before breakfast every morning
with her husband in their living room.
She finds compassion for tough neighbors
and welcomes the wayward into her home.
She knows in every cell
the definition of resilience,
and so when she offered me
resilience on a rock,
I felt it, the full invitation
to be both grounded and vital,
to be both solid and springing,
the chance to be both the anchor
and the hand that reaches as if to say
come on, let’s leap, I’ll show you how.
One Reason I Keep Reaching Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, friendship, love on April 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
she pushes everyone away
while wanting to be loved—
clear sky pretending it isn’t blue
Talking with Andrea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, friendship, grace, language, praise on March 5, 2024| 12 Comments »
I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne Lamott
With every cell, I listened
to her familiar voice,
her thoughtful silences,
her precision with verbs,
and though we spoke
of showerheads and
grocery shopping,
elections, underbellies and
standing beneath the moon,
we spoke only of grace, every
sentence somehow stitched
with the most stripped-down
kind of praise, the kind
that doesn’t sparkle,
doesn’t sing, doesn’t
shimmy, doesn’t offer
sweet perfume, the kind
of praise that is so naked,
so plain, so bare
there is nothing at all
between us and the
sheer magnificent truth
that we are here.
I long to name such aliveness,
at once composed
and uncontainable,
but it slips my attempts—
it’s like trying to fit a dress
on a sunbeam.
But I felt it, how
as we spoke I went
from being stone
to being sky. Oh glory,
with my everything,
I felt it.
Blustery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, friendship, laughter, skiing, wind on March 3, 2024| 4 Comments »
for Corinne
Into the wind, the whipping
wind, the fierce, tempestuous,
mighty wind, we skied
as it pushed us and
bent us and slapped us
in a language made wholly
of howl—how alive we were,
laughing into the gale,
taking the storm into our lungs,
as if our breath could learn
its syntax, translate
its tongues of gust and squall
into wild, untamable mirth.
This is how we carried the storm
home in our bloodstream.
This is how, even now,
I feel it in my lips,
an uncontrollable, reckless smile.
Loving You No Matter What
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, healing, helplessness, joy, loss, rainbow on March 3, 2024| 10 Comments »
for Dan
Still, this longing to help.
I want to write the impossible poem,
the one that would make what is terrible
less terrible, want to give you
something useful as a tool belt,
practical as long division, hopeful
as the grace that rises out of our losses
as surely as sunshine rises
at the end of our valley.
There was that cold March morning,
years ago, when you grabbed my hand
and pulled me toward the street
to see a rainbow of ice crystals
glowing bright in the east.
An ice rainbow! you shouted,
your joy so feral, so real it became my joy.
God, how I needed it.
That. I want to give you that.
*
One Way She’s Shaped Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, foot, friendship, humility, Kayleen Asbo, touch on March 1, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Kayleen Asbo
With hands that have played Bach
on the finest pianos in Europe,
hands that have written poems
and love letters and treatises on art,
with precious, skilled, talented hands
she lifted my foot to her lap
and smoothed oil into the cold, rough skin,
kneading and pressing deep circles
into my arches, squeezing my toes
(once deemed by a boyfriend
“the ugliest toes I’ve ever seen”).
And she made me feel beautiful.
I remember how all of me softened,
even those voices that sometimes rage,
you’re not good enough.
How could those voices stand a chance
against such a gift of touch?
Her hands said, you are not alone.
Her hands said, you belong.
Her hands said, you are treasure to me.
And the day was gray; her hands were strong.
I was less woman, more clay.
With hands that coax music
from sorrow and fear,
she made me into song.
*
Exploring Dante with Guides for your Head and Your Heart
March 7, April 4, May 2 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Zoom (recordings available)
Oh friends, if you weren’t able to join us today for an ecstatic hour of exploring Dante’s Divine Comedy, don’t worry–here’s the replay. It’s free–a preview of a three-part class that begins next Thursday and runs the first Thursday of the month for three months. The classes themselves with be spacious–with lots of time to listen to composer, pianist and cultural historian Kayleen Asbo lead us through the art, music, history and mythology that informs Dante’s life and writing. Then I will help you explore the truth of your heart and how this centuries-old story might have something valuable for you in times of loss, struggle, elation. It’s a story of connection, of how we help each other, how we become most wholly ourselves. Join the big conversation as we Find Our Way Out of Hell to the Shores of Acceptance (Inferno, March 7); Climb the Mountain of Hope (Purgatory, April 4) and Come Home to Ourselves in Paradise (Paradiso, May 2). Each session has a 30-minute break in the middle. Recordings available to all registrants. Sliding scale. Scholarships available. To register, click here. You do not need to have read Divine Comedy–in fact, we suggest you read it AFTER the class so you have more tools for understanding and appreciating it.
One Beyond Practical
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, song, umbrella on February 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for KC
an umbrella of song—
sure we got wet,
but man, did we smile
The Same Trail, Only Different
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eagle, friendship, gratefulness, time on January 31, 2024| 4 Comments »
for Michelle
After staring at the eagle
in the barren cottonwood,
I stare at you as you stare at it,
knowing the moment more precious
because we’re together on this river trail
stopping to stare at the white-feathered head,
the sharp yellow beak,
the thrill of the stillness of the bird.
How much of my life
has been better because
I shared it with you?
Heartbreak and gray mud,
surgeries and eighties songs,
short skirts and big hats
and cars with fast engines,
all of it fleeting as the chance
to watch an eagle on a branch,
glorious in part because we know
it will soon fly away.
So much change so fast. This is why
we hold out our arms to each other,
why we bury our noses in the pungent sage.
This is why we laugh until we cry,
cry until we laugh.
It’s the only life we have.
Ambush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, guns, trauma, triggered on January 28, 2024| 14 Comments »
Hi dear readers,
Before you read this poem, I feel as if i should warn you that it talks about guns and alludes to the trauma that guns can cause. And if this would in any way provoke you, I wanted to give you the chance to not read today’s poem. But it didn’t feel right to leave you poem-less … so here, in case you want a poem that does not mention guns, is one from a year ago today about beets in which no one gets hurt.
Thank you for joining me for this daily practice. I am so grateful you’re in this with me.
Rosemerry
Ambush
It only shoots lasers,
I tell myself as the biathlon
skiers skate by with guns
strapped to their backs,
smiles wide on their faces.
I smile and wave back
and on this most blue
day of winter, I start weeping
in the middle of the perfectly
groomed corduroy track as my
heart falls apart again, because
apparently that’s what this heart
does when reminded what a trigger
can do. Corrine holds me
until the tears slow
and we stand there together
in the spruce and the snow
until I am again exactly here,
in this year, on these skis,
on this day, with this blue,
with this sharp burn of loss,
with this still pulsing love,
with these arms of a friend,
with this heart that after two
years is no less broken. Nor,
I notice, is this heart less whole.
I don’t hear a gunshot,
just as I didn’t then.
I wade into the silence
like a baptism.
Contact Shine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, moon, shine, snow on December 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
Sometimes we don’t know
what we’re capable of
until we find ourselves
in the light of another;
suddenly we’re radiant,
downright incandescent—
as tonight, the blue snow
gathered the light of the full moon
in its facets and it flashed and sparkled,
though the snow owns no shine of its own.
This is how it is with my heart—
when I am with you,
it becomes a luminous living thing
and I barely recognize it,
resplendent-sprung and bright-winged,
where just moments before
it was dull. Even the memory of you
can make me shine.
As if nothing is lost.
As if we are made of memory.
In This Tender Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, consolation, friendship, grief, Rilke, silence, song on December 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
Offer your beauty always without calculation or defense.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Initial,” trans. Mark S. Burrows
Oh friend, it’s true. These dark hours
can crumple us, can press.
No way to escape their crush.
How merciless it can be,
the fist of grief,
how strong the squeeze,
how difficult to believe
we’ll survive.
Today, it is enough
to offer the world
only the simplest song—
the wordless, tuneless
song of beingness.
How beautiful it is,
this offering,
your breath against my cheek.