The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. —Oprah Winfrey They return arm in arm, linked by elbows and laughter, linked by memories of women weaving and warm fresh tortillas and the girl who begged them to bring her home with them. They are the same girls who left, only more spacious, filled with vast lake and tropical rain and the generosity of the people who live with little. They are more citizens of the world, now, having sat on the earth and around tables with children and elders so different, so the same. Having left in service, they return the richer— oh sweet paradox, how in giving of themselves they are beautifully changed. |
Posts Tagged ‘giving’
After Their Trip to Guatemala I Watch My Daughter and Her Friends
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, girls, giving, growth, travel on July 2, 2022| 6 Comments »
Two Things I Would Give You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, giving, poem, poetry, purpose, sleep on September 18, 2019| 7 Comments »
Sleep, of course. Long,
uninterrupted hours of sleep.
For a week. For a month.
For a year. You’d just put your head
on the pillow, and sleep
would come meet you
like a devoted friend, or like
a dog that will come whenever you call,
and snuggle with you all night.
And then, when you woke,
I would give you the certainty
that life is worth waking for,
that you are beloved,
that everything you do
makes a difference, and
by everything, I mean everything.
To All the People I’ve Hurt Without Knowing It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, friendship, giving, leaves, love, poem, poetry on November 5, 2018| 7 Comments »
I watched it happen, the confrontation.
The one who was hurt and the one
with no inkling that harm had been done,
and my heart ached for both of them—
for all of us really—all of us fragile, all of us
witless, all of us longing to love, to be loved
for being ourselves.
Outside the window, the leaves
were brilliantly dying, burning auburn,
vermillion, a heart swelling show
of what it is we’ve come here to do—
to give our all and give some more,
to do it unreservedly.
It’s all a series of repetition, design—
the leaves, the fall, the hurt, the blame,
the confusion, the reconciliation.
It’s all a matter of pattern and letting
go, letting go of whatever we think we know
about how to give.
What I’m trying to say is if I have hurt you,
I’m sorry. I don’t understand my own thorns.
I think I am singing and it comes out crooked.
I think I’m supporting and it comes out cage.
There are so many mistakes in my blood,
all of them believing they’re butterflies.
My friend tells me the leaves in fall
are returning to their true colors—
how the necessary chlorophyll disguises
what’s really inside.
What I’m trying to say is look at the leaves
outside the window, see how vibrant they are?
I am trying to love like that,
every day, the colors more true.
One Giving It All
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged giving, larkspur, poem, poetry on July 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
praise the larkspur
grown so tall, so heavy with bloom
it breaks at its base,
but oh, how it grew,
it grew
And Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged giving, love, poem, poetry, selflessness on February 13, 2018| 3 Comments »
And what if I never get it right,
this loving, this giving of the self
to the other? And what if I die
before learning how to offer
my everything? What if, though
I say I want this generous,
indefatigable love, what if
I forever find a way to hold
some corner back? I don’t want
to find out the answer
to that. I want to be the sun
that gives and gives until it burns out,
the sea that kisses the shore
and only moves away so that
it might rush up to kiss it again.
Impossible to Wrap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adagio for strings, ars poetica, Christmas, gift, giving, language, poem, poetry on December 26, 2017| 6 Comments »
I want to give you words,
as if they might do what
the body can’t do—
as if with verb I could
meet the place in you
that most wants to be touched,
as if with noun I could
know the parts of you
that most want to be known.
I want to give you
the most faithful adjective,
the one that cradles you
before you even realize
that you need to be held—
once I heard a song
written by a man
for another man, a song
that swelled, then took
two steps back,
then swelled again, then
took two steps back
before finally rising
to an unsteady ledge
and my heart
beat outside of my body
and my eyes wept
with tears that were mine and not mine,
and I want to give you words
that will find every ache in you
that longs to be soothed,
words that will seek out
each lonely place, that will find
every branch of you—
not like a wind
that is here and gone, no, more like
the bark that gives everything
to protect you,
the bark that grows as you grow
and takes its shape from you.
On Thin Brown Wings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, giving, inspriation, poem, poetry, receiving on October 8, 2016| 1 Comment »
Perhaps not as many days of sun
as they might have wanted,
perhaps not as much warmth,
perhaps not as much rain—
rain that soaks in like a lover’s
lingering glance, and still
beside the trail in late fall
they are everywhere,
the seeds of next year’s flowers
giving their everything to the world.
A Strange Knowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desert, drought, giving, patience, poem, poetry, rain on May 26, 2015| 5 Comments »
It is not only that the desert longs for water.
Of course the water longs for desert, too.
Any raindrop can fall and get lost in an ocean,
but to fall where it’s parched, where just
the smallest amount of wet can launch a hundred
hundred blooms, can set ten thousand thousand
seeds into frothy flight, oh. Now that is something
worth falling for. No imaginary desert. The real thing,
all prickle and spine and thorn and barb.
And the petals after. The heat can spend months
holding off just the briefest sprinkle. But then
no one said it was going to be easy, this going
where we’re needed most. Patience is the marriage
of sweetness and sting. To bring life one must also be alive.
More than Sufficient
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alphabet menagerie, giving, insecurity, poem, poetry on February 9, 2015| 4 Comments »
If you’d let me, I would lift you up
so you could touch the moon.
But that is a fairytale thing to say,
and you’re so practical.
I’d move a mountain for you,
though you’d laugh and insist,
“Please don’t bother, the mountain’s fine
exactly the way it is.” I’d plant you a field
of Mariposa lilies or a garden of magnolia blooms,
but you would say, “Don’t trouble yourself.
All I want is you.” But what about a meteor
shower to light up the darksome nights?
Or a macaw to brighten up the room?
Or a Martian might be nice? “A Martian?”
you’d say? “Oh come on. That’s not even
real.” So I’d offer to take you fishing
for marlin. Or maybe for a blue gill? And you
would say, “I told you already, all I want is you.”
But I’d still try to offer you something—
something sweet like a marshmallow?
Something tasty like wild mushrooms?
Something humble like marigolds?
Something weird like a marmot with a mustache?
and you’d say, “Don’t you know
you’re fine just as you are. Bring me
you with your empty hands.”
Why do I find it so daunting
to come to you just as I am?
*an M poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
For My Brother, Who Must Have a Whole Closet of Soft Green Shirts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, gift, giving, green, memory, poem, poetry, sister on December 12, 2014| 5 Comments »
For Christmas, I want to buy you the softest green
shirt, green the color of Wisconsin in springtime,
so green we could almost fall into the color
and find ourselves running once more to the lake,
cane poles in hand, to see if the fish are biting.
Or we might find ourselves in the dark green woods
behind the neighbor’s house where we used to dig
in the old junk yard for shards of blue and white porcelain.
But green is my favorite color, not yours. And those days
of running down the great grassy hill are gone, are gone
and faded. You like blue. Forgive me, brother, for buying
you again for Christmas another green shirt. Oh hush,
can you hear them, the cicadas, trilling through the leaves
of the old willow tree, serenading the warm summer night?