My tears mingle with yours and the dry world is watered again.
—Jude Janett
Parched and dusty,
the inner desert
forgets it was once a wetland.
Barren of confidence,
arid with self-disdain,
it forgets how to grow things
not covered in thorns
and spines.
Then you with your love
reach across the afternoon,
a brief shower of words,
and the whole inner world
remembers how it is to be lush,
to be nurturing, to be green.
Posts Tagged ‘friendship’
Why It Matters What We Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, connection, desert, friendship, jude Janett, words on February 21, 2021| 2 Comments »
Walking Past the Mud Puddle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dirt, friendship, lotus, mud, play on February 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »
for Michelle
Today I feel too clean to play,
but oh there was that day
when you and I
walked past the mud puddle,
all slick and ooze, a miresome mess,
and we reached our fingers into the sludge
and smeared the muck
onto each other’s faces—
thick mud, gray mud, slippery
and unctuous mud,
wide swaths of heavy mud
that slashed our cheeks,
bedecked our foreheads, mocked
our love of spotlessness.
Not war paint, but joy paint,
cool liquid earth on our skin.
Besmudged and besmirched,
we baptized each other
in the dirtiest of water,
a murky blessing,
our laughter blossoming
between us in the air,
a many-petalled prayer,
a jubilant lotus
startlingly (how?) so pure.
For Auld Lang Syne
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cup, friendship, new year on January 1, 2021| 4 Comments »
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,
says the song, and I would give you
the cup, friend, would fill it
with whiskey or water or whatever
would best meet your thirst.
I fill it with the terrifying beauty
of tonight’s bonfire—giant licks
of red and swirls of blue that consume
what is dead and melt the ice
and give warmth to what is here.
I fill it with moonrise and snow crystal
and the silver river song beneath the ice.
With the boom of fireworks and with laughter
that persists through tears. With
Lilac Wine and Over the Rainbow and Fever.
I toast you with all the poems we’ve yet to write
and all the tears we’ve yet to weep,
I hold the cup to your lips,
this chalice of kindness, we’ll drink it yet,
though the days are cold, the nights so long.
After a Graduate School Reunion on Zoom, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged education, freedom, friendship, lake on December 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
for Jennifer and Jennifer
And once again I am twenty-four
and I walk out the door
of our master’s exam and meet
my classmates down by the lake
and the day is hot and we drink cold beer
until we think jumping off the end
of the pier is a great idea, so
we kick off our shoes and run fully dressed
to the edge and launch and splash
and swim until we arrive at a party barge
full of men who pull us dripping
and life-giddy into their midst
and we do shots of something
that blissfully burns before laughing we
return to the open lake and side stroke back
to the shore where nothing’s the same
as it was before, though it still looks the same—
metal chairs still orange, our hair still brown,
the humid sky hazy, loud cheers all around—
but our lives will soon hurl us
in different directions—
to lovers and children and unanswerable
questions where the real tests cannot
be studied for with friends, and life’s master’s
degree doesn’t end till life ends, but oh,
for those few moments on the terrace,
soaking and shivering and whooping in glee,
my god, we were free, we were free, we were free.
One Devotion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, friendship, light, solstice on December 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
As You Have Done for Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, heart, treasure, value on December 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
There is treasure in you.
—Joi Sharp
If you were here
I would put my hand
on your heart
and hold it there
until our breaths
became a single tide,
hold it there until
I could feel the moment
when you remember
your infinite value.
It’s so easy to forget
we are treasure.
So easy to lose track
of our own immeasurable worth.
The chest rusts shut.
We think we are empty.
Amazing how easily
we are fooled into believing
we’re paupers.
Sometimes it takes another
to remind us
we have always been
not only the treasure
but also the key.
Though the hinges
are a metaphor,
the treasure is not.
We were made to open,
to share our priceless gift,
to press our hands
to each other’s hearts
and hold them there
until we all remember.
Winter Evening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, friendship, grace, laughter, memory on November 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Though I sit alone
on my couch at home,
I’m somehow also sitting
with Rachel and Julie
and it’s summer and
we’re laughing, laughing
until we tumble
into each other’s laps,
laughing as we collapse
into a puppy pile of giggles,
laughing because it feels
so good to laugh—
even now I laugh aloud
with no memory of why
we were laughing then,
but many years later,
it’s still contagious.
Sometimes we tumble
so wholly into the grace
of a moment
that it opens in us forever,
continuously blooms
and spreads its perfume
like night-blooming jasmine,
christens everything
with its fragrance,
even this empty room,
even this tired woman
now so surprisingly awake.
Learner
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amy Irvine, edge, friendship, knowledge, learning, walking on October 28, 2020| 1 Comment »
Just because I don’t see the edge
doesn’t mean the edge isn’t there.
Walking with Amy through the scrub oak woods,
I had no idea that just to my right
was a deep canyon. I could have walked on for miles
believing the world was flat
if she hadn’t suggested we walk off the trail
to see the gaping chasm.
It wasn’t that she was trying to teach me,
she was just doing what she does—
straying from the path to see what else is there.
Now I am looking everywhere for edges—
in every conversation, in every thought.
Now, I am looking at everyone as a teacher.
I have no idea what they see that I don’t.
Conspiracy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cartoon, friendship, words on October 18, 2020| 5 Comments »
Sometimes when walking
or driving or sitting in a chair,
I thrill to see some words of yours
float through the air—as if
a cartoon thought bubble
cut loose from your thoughts
filled with calibri sweetnesses
and times-new-roman puns—
and I pluck the words
from the sky and wrap them
around my wrist. They bob
above me like a helium balloon—
sometimes I almost believe
could carry me away.
Just in Case
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, luck on October 13, 2020| 2 Comments »
As a girl, I walked with twenty pennies
in my shoe. A penny in your shoe
was good luck, I’d heard,
and with each added penny
found on the sidewalk, I felt luckier.
The bottoms of my feet, of course, turned green.
And sometimes when I’d dangle my shoe from a toe,
it sounded like a child was shaking a piggy bank.
But dang, I was lucky. I believed it.
I don’t walk with pennies anymore,
and I don’t really believe in luck
but if I could give you some pennies tonight
to put in your boots, I would.
And an upturned horse shoe.
A kick-ass horoscope.
A candle to blow out and make a wish—
and the beautiful darkness after—
and a match to light the candle again
to make another wish. And another.
It’s So Damn Sweet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, gratitude, love, self acceptance on September 23, 2020| 4 Comments »
(title after a first line by e.e. cummings)
when you with your nimble
and radiant thoughts
reach into the junkyard of my mind
and there—hiding behind
some old rusty shoulds
and burnt-out what ifs—
you find a small tarnished scrap
of lost perhaps and hold it up
like a treasure, burnish it
with fierce devotion
until even I can see
how it shines.
You Belong Here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, friendship on August 29, 2020| 8 Comments »
for SRB
You belong here—
here in the world
of wonder and fear,
of Zumba and street fights,
of pink hats and protests.
You belong here
with your questions,
your anger, your trust,
your voluptuous cursive,
your stubborn tears,
you belong here.
With your fine darkness,
your involuntary shine,
your shuttered faith
and your reckless love,
your uncertainty,
you belong here—
in the alleys, the rooms,
in the meadows, the halls,
in the sacred cathedral
of your body.
Whether or not
you asked to be here,
whether or not
you feel wanted here
here is where you belong.
It is for you the moment arrives,
wondering what comes next.
It is for you the next breath
finds your body and fills you,
it’s for you, this day, you
right here where you belong.
Holding What Must Be Held
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, growing, heartache, holding, river on August 11, 2020| 1 Comment »
Down by the river we sit and talk.
When I think I can’t ache any more,
the world serves more heartache.
And I meet it.
I say no, but I feel myself stretched
by some great invisible hand,
rendering me spacious enough to hold
what must be held.
When we rise to leave,
the river doesn’t stop.
Nor does the forgiving wind.
I swear I feel them move
right through me.
Hiking with Joan Through the Aspen Glades
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, clarity, friendship, hiking on July 6, 2020| 3 Comments »
We speak the way old friends speak—
knowing each other’s stories,
the nuances and undertones.
She always knows just what to ask,
just how to nudge me toward
quiet revelation. I don’t do my best
to hide. In fact, it is easy
to speak of my brokenness.
We pause in a field
where the forest has been felled
in an avalanche—
the slender white trunks are strewn
in a chaotic jumble—
but oh, how clear the view.
On Red Mountain Pass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, mountains, path on June 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for C, A, A, A and J
I want to share with you a trail with no map
and the clean scent of spruce and a clear Colorado sky.
I want to spend an afternoon above tree line
in a field of corn lilies and alpine buttercups
the pica chirping brightly in the rockfall.
Let’s not find the lake we were looking for.
Let’s stop where our feet say stop.
I want to share a leap and a shimmy,
a chocolate cookie, the mighty salt of love.
I want to slide down snowfields on our raincoats,
to find more paths to take another day,
to wade through the cold rush of change.
I want to take a bolt cutter to any door
that won’t let us in, to let the ears of my heart
attune to your words, to lose our hats to the wind
and find them again. And as the night
fills the room, I want to sing as the guitar
of friendship finds a new tune. I want to hear it
play on long after the day has gone.
Ravenous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, friendship, love on June 18, 2020| 1 Comment »
Perhaps I was already full
when Danny offered me
a sweet potato pancake
for breakfast, but there
he was with a bowl
of homemade batter
and a cast iron frying pan
hot on the stove, and so
I did what I longed to do,
I said yes, yes to feeding
a hunger that has little
to do with food—
the hunger for someone else
to offer you something
they’ve made, the joy of sharing
a meal together, the honor
of being served. The fact
that the pancake was delicious—
both sweet and hot—
was a bonus. The salsa
he handed me fiery—
fantastic as long friendship,
fierce as gratitude, as love.
I Woke Up Needing Proof of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, James Tipton, love on June 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for Jim Tipton
I woke up needing proof of love,
proof that we feel it,
proof that we share it, proof
that it matters. And there,
old friend, on the shelf
I found you, surrounded
by dusty covers. I hugged
your pages to my chest.
Is that silly I somehow felt your book
hold me in response?
The way you would hold me—
the kind of embrace that has summer
inside it, and desert honey, and patchouli, and silk.
No one could write a love poem
like you—a poem that made
almost every human feel as if they, too,
had a heart full of orchards made for wandering in,
eyes wide as high mesas
where any lover would want to explore.
Today, I want to read everyone your book.
I want the dark bread of your words to find
every lonely woman, every lonely man,
retelling them they are beautiful. I want
the salt in your words to dissolve on my tongue,
to attune me to thirst. I want to remind
every person what we are capable of—
a love so astonishing it gathers in us
like ripe peaches, sweet,
so impossibly sweet, and yet real—
something we treasure so completely
that all we want to do is give it away.
Always Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, home, song on June 6, 2020| 8 Comments »
And on that Saturday morning
when you feel isolated, alone,
no matter the time, or even
if it’s a Tuesday, call me.
I won’t be able to fix anything,
but I will remind you that you
are home, right there in your body,
you are home. And I will listen
as you weep. I will listen.
And though I won’t sing
in a way you can hear,
I will sing for you. I will sing
a circle around you,
I will sing you home.
Stolen Hour
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, summer, the moment on May 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for Danny, Wendy & Art
The breeze was warm
and the day was hot
and the shade on the porch
was generous.
It was nothing magic.
It was total magic—
each moment, each word
a spell.
We spoke of news
and poetry, we spoke
of healing and loss.
It was forgettable.
I will never forget it—
the hush of our voices,
the currents of laughter
that wound around
the trees and the willows,
surrounding us like moat.
How could we predict the moments
that shape us the most?
The dogs lying at our feet.
The summer just starting
to burn.
Once Upon A
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, friendship, relationships, story on May 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
Because you are the porch,
I am the rocking chair.
Because you are the pen,
I am the unfinished poem.
In the conversation of what happens next,
I am always the pause.
I am always the pause
and you the verb.
And if there should be a run on sentence
that jogged right through the
end of the story, way past the end,
well, I would not be the period.
But I would be ever after.
And I would be the one still listening after that.