for Clea
We can go up there, she said,
nodding to the where the grave marker
was buried beneath feet of snow.
She knew it meant post holing
up over our knees. Uphill.
This, I thought, is true friendship.
So we wallowed through drifts
and laughed as we tripped.
And when we arrived at the place
where the ashes of my boy are buried,
I cried. And she did what the living can do—
she held me. She stood with me there
waist deep in snow and held me,
with her two strong arms, she held me.
Posts Tagged ‘friendship’
Lone Tree Cemetery, Mid-January
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, compassion, friendship, grief, touch on January 19, 2023| 10 Comments »
Big Picture
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged evolution, friendship, geology, hearing, San Miguel River Canyon, singing, song, Ulli Sir Jesse on November 27, 2022| 13 Comments »
On a rocky white outcrop,
Ulli and I stand in silence
at the edge of the canyon,
held by layers that range
from the Permian to the Cretaceous,
and Ulli begins to sing
a song we sang twenty years ago
and, from the strata of memory,
I unearth the German lyric,
excavate the harmony,
and we join our voices
to the structuring of time,
just one more arrangement
of temporal events
added to the linear record
since the singularity.
And the sound waves tremble
in the sensitive membrane drum
between the middle ear
and the cochlea—
a song of connection,
a song of fading light,
a song that somehow
has origins in the Ichthyostega
that crawled from the sea,
the development of Broca’s area
in the left frontal lobe of the brain,
the mountaineers who would sing
to each other across the Alps at dusk,
and this wonderful woman who
brought these words and this tune from Europe
and taught them to me in Colorado
so that decades later
we might stand side by side on this cliff
and know ourselves lucky—
after all that has happened—
lucky to find ourselves in the same remote place
singing the same familiar song,
the molecules a spiraling ricochet of praise,
our song itself part of the matter
that makes the world,
part of a pattern that is ever overlapping.
Is it any wonder
I cried?
Quince
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, fruit, newness, perfume, quince on November 18, 2022| 6 Comments »
for Christie
Shaggy and mottled,
lumpy as an old woman’s thighs,
five quince recline in the shallow bowl
and all day I marvel
as the delicate scent opens,
exotic and fragrant,
like guava, like honey,
like citrus, vanilla.
Every year my friend
harvests me quince from her tree,
and every year they somehow
astonish me again.
As if I didn’t know.
As if their sweetness is new.
Perhaps the annual forgetting is a gift,
because what joy
in falling in love with them
again each year,
their bright yellow scent,
the honest perfume of friendship,
the thrill in their ripening.
Soundtrack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, friendship, light, music on November 12, 2022| 2 Comments »
Sometimes another person knows our heart
so well they offer us a song that becomes,
at least for a moment, our anthem.
In that moment, listening to lyric and melody,
the entire body re-attunes to life,
each cell turning not only toward the music
but also toward the giver,
and we are led deeper into that strange
and beautiful grotto of our heart
with its mosses and echoes,
a place at once strange and familiar,
and the song becomes a shining remover
of darkness, its light bouncing on our inner walls
until we relearn who we are—
the light of a million suns.
Dear Students of West Side School
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, kids, kindergarten, kindness, school on November 11, 2022| 8 Comments »
Thank you for the pep talk.
When your teacher asked you
to record messages in the phone,
you could not have known
one day your innocent words
would reach this woman in Colorado
and I would sit in my car
and stare at a mountain and press 4
to listen to children laughing
and press 3 to hear a room full of kindergarteners
shouting YOU CAN DO IT,
and it would make me weep.
I imagine you do not yet understand
how something so beautiful
could make a person sob—
a complex, but very real emotion
we don’t have a word for in English.
But perhaps you are already learning
of the ripple effect: How kindness
brings hope. How hope opens us.
How being open can make people cry.
My friend Paula explained it to me this way.
That’s what friends do—
they share the truth with you.
Oh, young friends I have never met,
I thank you for the ripple,
for the way it has recharged in me a tide
so deep that currents leak out.
Thank you for restoring the great inner ocean
that sometimes turns desert, goes dry.
Thank you for reminding me,
pwease, do something you wike,
something that inspiwes you.
I remember now. Oh bless these salty tears.
I remember.
*
If you, too, could use a pep talk, or even if you don’t need one, call anyway: 707-873-7862
Bringing Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, friendship, generosity, light, Sherry Richert Belul on October 29, 2022| 3 Comments »
for Sherry
All it takes is one moonless night
to realize how grateful I am
for those who bring light to the world—
I am thinking of my friend
who travels with lanterns
and hangs them from doorways
wherever she stays.
How she brings long strands of fairy lights
powered by tiny batteries
and then passes them out like party favors
so people might wrap themselves in the glow
and know themselves as carriers of light.
How today she mailed me a photo
of me and a friend doubled over laughing
with a bright pink stickie note flashing “favorite!”
so that even the mail luminesces.
How, even in the darkest of hours,
she brings her gift for seeing good in others,
and she beacons, she candles, she moons, she stars.
Spring in Fall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, change, friendship, openness, walking on October 23, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Suzan
It feels right to walk
through naked trees
with our naked hearts
and our naked hands
and thrill in the sound
of wind in dry grass
and delight in how quickly
the clouds are shredded.
You could say, it’s just a day,
but perhaps a day such as this
spent practicing awe and openness
is what changes everything.
You step out of yourself.
Suddenly, anything could happen.
Scavengers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, friendship, healing, vulture on October 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
A wake of vultures circled above us
as we sat on the porch, conversing,
their dark wings unflapping as they spiraled.
How did they know there would be carrion to devour
when my friends and I did not yet know?
The conversation began, perhaps, like most others.
Weather. Politics. Health. But as it deepened,
we spoke naked. We spoke wound. We bled fear.
We cast off ideas that no longer served us
and left them for dead.
God, they were beautiful,
the vultures as they circled,
their black wings backlit by the light.
They feasted on the scraps we left on the ground.
We emerged so light, so wildly alive.
Surprise Treasure
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, loss of the separate self, trauma, treasure on October 19, 2022| 6 Comments »
Treasure is a picnic
in a clearing amidst redwoods,
a black and white blanket to lie on,
a sky only blue. It’s hours to wander.
It’s the braid of conversation
between friends and the moment.
Treasure is never what we thought it was.
Once we thought we were supposed
to live perfect, unfailing lives.
Now we know treasure can look like scars.
Can emerge from the scent of burnt dreams.
Now we know treasure often arrives
only after we’ve been torn apart—
torn apart, then woven back together
with bits and strands of the world woven in,
a process that happens again and again
until we know ourselves more as the world
and less as who we thought we were.
Sometimes, like today, the scents
of evergreen and bay weave in, too.
And the velvet of moss. And the clean
taste of water. And the heartbreak
of another who we treasure,
a heartbreak so tender,
we now feel it and grow from it
as if it is our own.
It Did Not Look Useful, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, Dolly Parton, friendship, light, singing, woods on October 16, 2022| 6 Comments »
for an hour we danced
in the tiny kitchen
and sang with Dolly,
our voices braided
like eager vines,
and for that hour
I smiled and swayed
and I felt such spaciousness—
like a lost girl in a fairy tale
who has walked through dark woods
and arrived in a glade
with sunlight streaming
and flowers and bird song,
and though she’s still lost,
for this moment she’s safe,
not only safe, but happy,
truly deeply happy,
and when she reenters
the cold, dark woods,
as she must,
a bit of the shine
has twined into her.
Even now, I feel it,
the radiance,
how it shimmies
just like we did
beside the old oak cupboards,
how it glitters in the dark,
how it moves.
Ripening Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, joy, persmimmon on October 15, 2022| 10 Comments »
Joy grows, sometimes, like a persimmon.
A moment might begin like a lifeless-looking stick
shoved in the ground and ignored and, somehow—
perhaps through the fine soil of friendship—
perhaps just through luck,
it becomes a giant tree with branches
laden with the bright orange, honey-ish fruit,
so much fruit you have to scrape sweetness
from your feet just to walk in the door.
No way, you think, can joy can go from barren
to bountiful so quickly. But just today, I woke
with an ache and within an hour found myself
with friends under a tall persimmon tree
picking ripe, warm fruits.
We gathered the globes with our hands,
those reddening ambassadors of joy,
pulled the lusciousness to our mouths,
laughed with our good fortune,
and bit into the jam-like flesh—so delicate,
so unashamed of the fact it wasn’t always this way.
Self-Portrait While Sleeping Alone in Alison’s Room
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, friendship, gratefulness on October 14, 2022| 8 Comments »
Of course, there are books everywhere—
shelves and stacks and bags of books.
Though I would not have guessed
there would be small wooden ladders
with many rungs for the mind to climb.
And the colors on the walls are warm
and the breeze through the open window
is cool. Through one window, some neighbor
is playing their radio loud,
though it’s after one a.m.
And out the back window, I can see
in the moonlight a persimmon tree
laden with hundreds of pale orange fruits.
And though Alison isn’t here,
she is so thoroughly here,
and I feel so very not all alone
as I fall asleep by myself in Alison’s room,
aware of my exact shape and grateful
that for this moment, I know myself
as something else that belongs here,
something chosen, something defined in part
by its presence here, something integral
as the tennis ball, the blue flashlight,
the tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall.
Nothing to Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken heart, compassion, friendship, grief, name, silence on October 9, 2022| 2 Comments »
So I light a candle
and though I am hundreds
of miles from you,
I say your name
into the flame—
your name
and the name
of your beloved
who is gone—
these the only
syllables worth saying.
Then I hold silence for you
the way the earth
holds the ocean,
the way a canyon
holds wind,
the way a broken heart
holds another
broken heart.
After Attending the Conversation on Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, awe, friendship, nature on September 30, 2022| 5 Comments »
for Jay
We stepped into cool autumnal air
ripe with the red scent of tiny crab apples
and charged with the darkling promise of storm.
We were well-armed with studies and stories
on why we might want to choose awe—
but awe chose us the way gold chooses aspen,
the way love chooses friends,
the way shorter days choose fall,
the way beauty chooses what will die.
And aspen leaves whirled all around us
and caught in our hair, and we knew ourselves
as small essential beings in a wide, astonishing world.
*Hey, friends, just saying that the Original Thinkers Festival program on the Power of Awe was AMAZING!!! If you have never checked out Original Thinkers in Telluride, well, it is great for people who are curious and like to engage in conversations about paradox, science, emotion, the natural world and community.
Late Summer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, fruit, harvest, orchard, present, summer on August 28, 2022| 8 Comments »
for Vivian and Christie
This lyric afternoon with its fruit trees
and friendship and barest kiss of rain,
is it so wrong to want to save it, the way
I will process the dark plums into jam?
Is it so wrong to want to preserve
the honeyed song of summer, the warmth
of sun, the pleasure of an afternoon
with my daughter and a friend?
An ovation of thunder.
Scent of basil. Purr of cat.
The creamy fuzz of the growing quince.
The joy as we try for the first time
black apricots, their skin so surprising,
their flesh so nectar-ish. I will freeze
most of the ripe blackberries we gathered,
will savor them come snow, come cold.
A day such as this is like yeast in wheat dough—
it’s not there just for taste, it’s the difference
between bread and a brick.
It invites a trust there will be other days
filled with elation. Dig in, it seems to say.
Don’t save for later what can only be lived today.
Even the disbelief that a day could be so good—
that too, tastes so nourishing, so sweet.
Walking with Lulu Down to the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, ritual, river, wildflowers on August 8, 2022| 10 Comments »
She carries a vase
of delphiniums and daisies
and I carry a tune
and we toss them all
like wishes
into the river.
Some wishes
are more beautiful
for knowing they will never
come true.
When we are done
we hold hands in the twilight
and watch the last
of the flowers float
in the shimmering eddies.
This is the moment
I would not have known
to have wished for.
I lean into this moment.
On a Day When I Am Determined to Get Things Done
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, friendship, serious, stress on August 5, 2022| 12 Comments »
for Augusta
There is not a shade of judgment in her voice
when my friend says to me, “You feel serious.”
Serious, I know, is a kind way to say,
There is joy all around you that you aren’t seeing.
Serious is her way of saying, Sweetheart,
I can tell you are locked into stress.
How strange and beautiful to have her name
the seriousness, and that’s all it takes
to feel my thoughts ease, to remember hands,
remember breath, remember lips.
There are, of course, good reasons today
to be serious. And there is also a tea party
with a seven-year-old girl. And yellow snapdragons
in ecstatic bloom. And a juvenile grosbeak
at the feeder. And daisies gracing the river bank.
There’s goat cheese and sauvignon blanc.
There’s waking to the purr of the cat.
Oh the gift of spaciousness. How it leaves me
astonished at life—so able to see there is more.
So simple, sometimes, when a friend
shows you a door in the day you never
could see on your own. So generous,
how she doesn’t try to offer you the key.
She just trusts you to walk up to that door,
perhaps push, perhaps see what happens next.
Night Walk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, dark, friendship, night on July 30, 2022| 12 Comments »
for Lara and the Dark
Some conversations prefer the dark,
so, long after sundown we walk
in the nearby field
where a wide path’s been cut
through tall grass gone to seed
and there’s just enough starlight
to make out the twin dirt ruts
where we can walk side by side.
I love conversing this way,
when the dark is less a setting
and more a partner in conversation—
as if nothing we say
could ever make it stop holding us,
as if it will listen for as long as we speak,
as if it will fill in any gaps
with its own simple syntax
of infinite ink. And so we walk,
you, me, and the gentle dark.
When we finally return to the light-warm home,
a little midnight comes in with us
and joins us for sleepytime tea.
It seems to know not even a whisper is needed,
just the certainty that we are being heard,
truly heard, the way
only an old best friend can listen,
and there’s nothing we can’t say.
Though I Would Converse with You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, silence on July 6, 2022| 8 Comments »
I can be the silence
that touches your skin
like raw silk,
silence soft as a lover’s hand,
silence that holds you
when you have pushed
everyone away, even me.
I can be the silence
that leans in to know you,
silence that opens
like the scent of peonies,
silence that opens
like troughs between waves.
I can be silence
that wears clunky boots
and the silence
of the phone that does not ring.
Though I want to give you
the gift of my arms, the gift
of my ears, the gift of now,
I am learning to be the silence
that gives you the gift of yourself—
silence of patience, silence of time,
generous silence, tender silence,
silence that falls like the softest rain,
silence of sunshine, silence of soil,
silence of leaf, silence of bud
as it grows into what it will be.
By Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, friendship, love, opening, saxifrage, wildflower on June 30, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Andrea Bird
A person, once a stranger,
can slip into your life,
unplanned, of course,
as if brought by the wind
in much the same way
a seed of spotted saxifrage
can slip by happenstance
into a crack in a rock
then root and grow.
Eventually, the saxifrage
will split the rock open.
By then, it will be full,
its flowers prolific
and beautiful.
If you are lucky,
this once stranger
will do in time
the same to you—
will be alive in you,
crack you open
with their beauty,
make you grateful
to be so broken.