Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, gardening, poem, poetry, silence on May 14, 2017| 2 Comments »
Digging there in the dirt
with small seeds
in your hands
you hear the wind
high in the cottonwoods,
you hear the silence
sown inside the wind,
and the quieter
you are, you hear
perhaps, within you
a call like the geese
that aren’t flying
overhead, a startling
call, an almost
strangled sound
that, if you heard it,
might almost
wake you up.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, poem, poetry, reslilience, sunflower on July 27, 2015| 1 Comment »
Those forlorn, sagging sunflowers,
all morning I watch the severe arcs
of their lifeless stems. Just yesterday,
they were so full of vigor before I pulled them up
and moved them across the garden.
I, too, have been ripped up. Is this why
I can’t stop staring at them all morning
at the slow, slow straightening,
the gradual unflagging of the leaves,
the marvelous resilience
I want to believe I might find inside me
no matter how brutal or well intentioned
the hand that tugs, tugs at my roots.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, gardening, poem, poetry, story on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »
After the frost, the cosmos fronds
are brittle and brown. Not a hint
of return. Not a trace of pink. Brown.
Partially dust already. Sometimes it needs
to be this way in order for us to do
the work that must be done—the pulling
up of things by the roots and discarding
them into a pile. No, if there were any green chance
that the cosmos might bloom again,
it would be easier to tell the self a story
about how, with some luck and some care,
the plant might leap back to life.
But the story is a trick ladder,
every rung is covered in oil and even
if you reach the top it leads to nowhere.
Look. The flowers are dead. They were lovely once.
Say thank you. And give the stem a tug.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, green beans, poem, poetry, slow food on August 29, 2014| 1 Comment »
What a gift
to kneel
in the dirt
and search
beneath
the heart-shaped leaves
for the long
and slender green
of beans,
marveling
at how straight
they are, how
green, marveling
as if
the way
they grow
could not only
feed us
but save us.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, midsummer, mountains, poem, poetry on June 21, 2014| 1 Comment »
Just because it’s the longest day of the year
doesn’t mean that the bean sprouts in the garden
won’t freeze tonight. Again. As they did last night.
And two nights before that. So I water them.
I water them real good, for I am still shocked
and delighted that the process of freezing creates
a degree of heat. Every time I consider that fact,
it stuns me. It’s like a joke that makes me laugh
no matter how many times I have heard it.
And though it’s all rather predictable amongst the rows,
what comes up when and what the frost will kill,
it is always new. I never stop marveling at the pure
determination of those tiny leaves as they thrust
through the hard dirt crust. And marvel again at their
vulnerability on nights like tonight when the wind
gets lost some other where and the stars shine clear
in the cold night air and the frost doesn’t care
if I’ve planted the beans again. And again. The earth
spins on its invisible spit and summer goes on
as it always does, different than it’s ever been.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, love, poem, poetry on August 4, 2013| 3 Comments »
On the Other Side of the Fence
A low fence lined
with wild roses.
Two white chairs
and a round white table.
Scent of a recent
afternoon rain.
Beet greens proud,
crimson veined and tall
and the gooseberries swollen
nearly red.
In this small garden
everything tended.
In me a longing
to love you like that.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, children, gardening, mothering, poem, poetry, wholeness on May 29, 2013| 2 Comments »
It is hard to not resent the ants
and grasshoppers, even though
they are doing the only thing
their bodies know how to do—
to eat what is green as they find it.
They do not know that these greens
are the first pea shoots, that if only
they waited another week or two
there would be thousands more leaves
for the eating and still enough left
for the peas to mature.
But no, they take the first green,
and now in the row against the fence
there are long stretches of nothing
but broken stems and empty earth.
Just today my son asked me
what a mosaic was, and I told him
it was the act of making art
out of broken bits of things.
Wouldn’t it be funny, he said,
if the whole world broke and
we made a mosaic from what was left.
My whole life I have clung
to some idea that the world
could be more whole than it is,
and then today, a twist.
I’m not saying I don’t resent
the ants, the grasshoppers
and their wake of fruitlessness.
I’m just seeing that everything’s broken.
And then there’s the art of the mess.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, hero, mother, narrator, poem, poetry, satsang, son on May 12, 2013| 8 Comments »
While digging
in the garden rows,
my son looks up
from his work
of ripping apart a clump
of roots and says to me,
Mom, how could
anything ever go wrong
with this day,
and I think,
my darling,
you teach me
so beautifully.
There are days
we forget that life
will unfold for us
if we let it.
It’s not that nothing
could go wrong.
Of course it will.
But if we are not
the heroes of our
days, rather the narrators
who notice and relate
all the events,
whether cheerful or tragic,
with equal interest,
well then even
the wrong things
are right. As it is,
he does not step
barefoot on the hoe
with its spikes
turned up nor do I
hobble to the house
with a back too sore
to stand. And the day
unfolds as some days
do, with nearly nothing
to report except the
weather—warm,
some clouds, the sun
still gaining—and
a mother and son
got the planting done.
Nothing to show for it yet
except the smile on my face
and the dirt still under
his fingernails. But I have
to admit I am glad there was
nothing painful or difficult.
And on this day, my son
is the hero of the poem.
And I can watch his mother
typing out her joy as if
I am not the same woman.
Between these two view points,
there is a garden. I walk
its rows. I bring it water.
What grows is what will grow.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged carnival, gardening, haiku, nostalgia, poem on June 22, 2012| 3 Comments »
spinning on the tilt-a-whirl
scent of tomato leaves
still on my hands
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing things to be, gardening, love, poem, poetry on June 9, 2012| 3 Comments »
I plant the seeds
and the wind
carries them away.
They were small,
the size of
the word love
typed 12-point
in this poem,
and the beauty I imagined
would come from them
so great.
*
Where does
longing come
from?
Nothing wrong
with it,
says my teacher,
as long as
it is opening
us.
*
I plant the seeds
and the critters
I never seem to see
nibble the green shoots
in the night
until there is
nothing left.
*
It is not true
that there
is nothing
left.
Here I am.
Love.
There you are.
*
Now the edamame
on the other hand,
they leap
from the dirt,
bless them.
*
Into a bowl
I sing
a blue song.
*
Just as the seed
buried in the dark
seeks light,
the light
too,
seeks the dark,
seeks everything
that is not
light.
*
It never
comes
the way
I will expect
it will.
Look at
these melons
volunteering
in every corner
of the garden.
*
I tell myself
the dirt
is also
beautiful,
the dirt
where the flowers
would have been.
I almost
believe it.
*
Not quite.
*
If a woman
sings in a bowl
and there is
no one there
to hear her,
did she
make a sound?
*
In my hand,
more seeds.
I plant some of them
just the way
the directions say.
Some of them
I throw
to the wind.