listen as your days unfold
Challenge what your future holds
—Patti Austin, “You Gotta Be”
And if I could
I’d scatter all the seeds
of grace, release
them from their old dry pods
and let them fall
in tired places—
like your heart,
my heart.
Posts Tagged ‘grace’
Imagine What Might Happen Then
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, poem, poetry on July 14, 2018| 2 Comments »
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, love, poem, poetry, thanksgiving on November 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Though the world is dented and dinged
and scuffed and scorned,
we trim the beans and peel the potatoes,
and the kitchen is warm and full
of laughter. We hum as we work
and break into scraps of song.
All day our hands are joyful
as they prepare the meal to come.
There are wars and battles even now,
not all of them fought with guns,
some waged intimately in our thoughts,
our scraped up hearts. And still,
this scent of apple pie, sweetening
as it bakes, this inner insistence
that love is not only possible,
it is every bit as real as our fear.
Whether the host has brought
out his best wine and his best crystal glasses
or water in chipped clay cups,
there is every reason
to be generous, to serve not only
our family, our friends, ourselves,
but also those we don’t yet know how to love
and those parts of ourselves we
have tried to keep separate.
Tonight the host has hidden bait
in the dinner—we all are caught.
Scent of sage, scent of mushrooms
and cream. The bite of cranberry.
Never mind the potatoes cooked too long.
Blessings seep into all the imperfect places,
even if you can’t name the blessings—
consider them secret ingredients.
The point is not to understand the feast,
but to eat, to eat it together.
One Self Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fool, grace, poem, poetry on January 30, 2016| 1 Comment »
the house on fire
and me still trying
to get all the beds made
*
One Grace
what is the next step—
letting myself not know
until I am stepping
In the manger of my heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, manger, poem on December 21, 2015| 2 Comments »
there in the muddle
where I do my best
to keep it swept
but it gets messed up
every day anyway,
there amidst
the drafts
and the animal chorus
something new
and beautiful
is being born—
not because
I prayed for it,
not because
I am worthy,
only because
that is how
miracles work—
sometimes
by grace
we peek through
the cracks in the walls
and see just
how light
even the messiest
places
can be.
Two Unsuspectings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, poem, poetry, trap on October 20, 2015| 1 Comment »
setting a trap
with honey, catching
myself
*
this song
of relentless yesses
a set up for grace
Stumbling on the Fairy Slipper
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calypso, Calypso bulbosa, Fairy Slipper, grace, Odysseus, poem, poetry on June 16, 2014| 2 Comments »
photo taken by Karen James
Calypso bulbosa
A tiny orchid lifts its small cup
to the world. It is only by luck
that we find it, absorbed as we are
in talk of anger and shame, rushing
along the path like sycophants of time.
But grace has a way of finding us
when we need it the most, inviting us
to linger, to stop, to sip beauty, to marvel.
Light sifts through the forest canopy
like a golden shuttle on a miraculous loom
in which we are two threads in the one
great cloth. It seems likely we will leave
this enchanted hour, but for now
this bright cup, this radiant pause,
this intoxication that makes us forget
there is any other world but this.
On the Day I Tripped on the Curb and Threw the Latte into My Hair
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, poem, poetry on October 24, 2013| 1 Comment »
Anything else
I can help you find
says the man
in the pharmacy.
Well,
I say,
I could use
some grace.
Any for sale?
He looks
at me
with uncertainty.
No, he says
at last.
Rats,
I say,
browsing
the band aids,
the rows
of antibiotic
creams.
I don’t
even bother
to ask
about
dignity.
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, grace, life, poem, spring, weed on March 13, 2013| 4 Comments »
Spring comes to the sidewalk
in the longer days of March.
The sun warms the slab, and beneath
it the seeds of old weeds start to stir.
They are tiny. And who knows how,
but in the dark, they begin to grow
and put down roots and,
though it seems unlikely,
begin to push through the concrete itself.
First a hairline crack. This fissure is somehow
sufficient to provide light and water enough.
Soon there are tendrils, then whole leaves,
then the yellow blooms of new weeds.
What is it in us that knows to push?
I, too, have wintered in a dark, thick cast, one
of my own making. Cramped and dormant,
I had stopped believing in hope.
But it was not hope that cracked the shell.
Nor was it anything that I did.
It was life’s longing for itself.
Video Poem: In Unlikely Places
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Catherine Ghosh, grace, Journey of the Heart, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, storm, video poem on December 7, 2012| 1 Comment »
Video Poem: In Unlikely Places
I am such a fan of this blog, Journey of the Heart, and today they’ve posted another of my video poems, this one about the grace that sometimes comes out of what looks like a big big bummer …
The Morning After My Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, grace, gratitude, life, living, parenting, poem, poetry on November 27, 2012| 8 Comments »
The day after I die,
I wake up a little late.
The sun is already
thick in the air—see it
glitter, all that dust I didn’t dust
before I died. I do not
dust it this day, either.
Nor do I worry
that I have not dusted.
I notice I have hands.
They are heavy
on my belly, my chest.
I rise. There is no
special exuberance
in the rising, though
it is a miracle. All day
I marvel. It is very quiet,
this grace. I saw myself
leaving these rooms,
this place. Yet death
came and went and
there is breakfast
to make and a job
to do and a hum
to be hummed by and later
this night when
my daughter comes
to me in her silky
pink Dora pajamas and
lifts up her arms,
she says into my neck,
I wish that my room
was farther away
because I like it when
you carry me and I
can pretend I
am asleep in your arms.
She pretends she is
asleep all the short way
to her bed, but when
I lay her there, she begins
to laugh and kick. Is this
what I have been doing
all my life, pretending
I am asleep? I lay with her
a long time, held by
invisible forces I could
perhaps explain but
do not understand.
All day, no one noticed
I had died. It’s not
that I was trying to hide
it. It must have been
all that life still falling
out of my pockets,
not that I was saving
it on purpose, just
that it was there
for the living.
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