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Posts Tagged ‘gratitude’

Just in Case We Needed A Reason

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 26, 2015| 1 Comment »

Because we did not drown today in a violent flash flood

nor contract hanta virus nor botulism,

because we were not tracked down and dismembered

by a mountain lion nor bitten by mosquitoes with West Nile,

because there was no hurricane, no earthquake,

no mudslide, no irate employees in the post office,

because both your heart and my heart continued

to pump rich blood through our bodies,

well, that seems reason enough to sit here

on the porch tonight and marvel at the world—

all those diving and banking green backed swallows

and the way the light shines through crab apple leaves

and the scent of the river and even that strangled sound

that the geese make—wouldn’t you say we are lucky,

my god, blessed beyond blessed to sit here

and fall in love with life not out of any sense that our time is short

but just because the field is full of green and gold

and the garden is free of gophers for now, and

the lawn has been mowed and there are no killer bees

in the yard, and there’s no tsunami, nope, not even a tiny chance.

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Just After Darkness Comes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 2, 2015| 1 Comment »

through empty branches
more than just a moon rises—
this full gratitude

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Not Wanting to Leave Anything Out in My List of Gratitudes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 26, 2015| 4 Comments »

Just think of all that had to happen
so I could sit on the porch
this clear winter day and feel the warm sun
on my naked shoulders—bacteria
were engulfed by eukaryotic cells,
and after over a billion years,
multicellular organisms evolved
in the oceans before an explosion
of Cambrian life—sponges, brown
algae and slime molds. And then,
of course, the colonization of land
by the plants and fungi, followed
by arthropods and insects.
Some 500 million years later,
my mother and father met on a date,
set up by friends, and my dad, a biology major,
brought Coke instead of beer, which impressed
my mother, a history major, and they sat
and drank it together, seated on a picnic blanket
which they laid out on grass so green, so new
one could almost wring the saltwater out of it.

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A Woman Addresses Her Body

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 23, 2015| 8 Comments »

Oh body, I’ve tried to silence you.
I have told you not to hunger
when you were starved.
I told you to run and ski and swim
when you were tired.
I tugged you long into the dark corridors of night
when you wanted to sleep.
I draped you in dresses two times too big
to hide your angled bones.
And you, you have lured me to the waterfall
to stand beneath the startling shock.
You have lain me down in tall grass
to lose myself staring up at sky.
You have curled into the softness of men
and held the fear of children.
Inside panic, you have found breath.
You have opened to let the new life pass through,
and given milk and song and hum.
And when the tears want to come,
you let them come.
Body, my vessel, my carriage, my curse,
my blessings, my bane, my teacher,
I am still learning how to be a woman.

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Joseph, I Know It Is Meant to Be a Comfort, But I’m Tired of Stumbling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2015| 3 Comments »

Joseph, I Know It Is Meant to Be a Comfort, But I’m Tired of Stumbling

Where you stumble, there your treasure lies.

—Joseph Campbell

Oh body, this is your real destination,

the fall. The lurch. The blunder.

The stagger. The hobble. The trip.

Though I’ve practiced at grace

and balance, though I’ve rehearsed poise

and lifted weights and risen early to run, to ski,

you are destined to stumble, to teeter,

to drop, to collapse, to rot, and to call it good.

Though I eat kale and spirulina,

though I go to my physical every year,

though I think about taking my vitamins daily,

you are ordained to fail and somehow,

I am to find this failure favorable.

Every day I recognize you less—these wrinkles,

these curves, these aches, this gray—

and every day I treasure you more. Oh damn,

I guess that Campbell was right, then.

Here, at the altar of vulnerability, I have

fallen in love with you, the way you have

carried me through forests, up mountains,

across rivers and into ocean waves.

How you’ve lain in the blood of childbirth and joined

the miracle. You have kissed and fucked

and opened and spilled and arched and

writhed and pressed. You have leapt and swung

and spun and reached and nestled and

lunged and wept. And broken and crumpled, yes,

and stumbled over and over again. Oh what

a gift to have a body, to know it at all, to fall

and fall and fall in love with the falling,

to lose sense of where we begin and where

we are perfectly, terribly, wholly, richly, thank you, lost,

and from that grounded place

to reach out and serve the world again.

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Finding Gratitude in the City

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 27, 2014| 3 Comments »

square of blue sky
I write your name on it then
fold it into a crane—
in the pocket above my heart
it flutters

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Little Lie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 11, 2014| 2 Comments »

Today it is blessing enough
that I did not drop the green vase,
did not lose my son’s place in his book,
did not spill the full bottle of wine nor trip
on my own feet while running, did not fall into a puddle.
So much that didn’t happen to be grateful for.
We did not get lost in the corn maze for hours
without our warm coats. I did not drop a baby.
The river did not overflow its banks. The raspberries
were a little sour, but at least they had no mold.
And as for that sweet thing that you didn’t say
that I wished you would have, well,
that detail seems so small amidst all these other
wonderful things that didn’t happen
that it’s no big deal you didn’t say it.
I barely noticed it was missing at all.

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Though Sometimes It’s Hard to Want to Believe It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

In the same breath that I curse the world
I praise it. It is impossible not to see
what a mess we’ve made, and yet … how
relentlessly beautiful the rabbit brush
blooms in the ditch, all yellow and vigorous,
growing out of the busted up asphalt
and Marlboro boxes and twisted beer cans.
It’s no miracle, you might say. It’s just a weed.
But I know a miracle when I see one.
It looks a lot like whatever is happening
outside the window right now.

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Such a Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 31, 2014| 1 Comment »

On a day when the desert potholes
are full of pollywogs and tiny
red-speckled frogs and the blue sky
is dappled with pink-bellied clouds,
and the San Juan is running muddy
and warm, well, you don’t have to have almost just died
to realize how lucky you are to be alive—
nope, it just comes natural, this wanting
to kiss your children, even though
they are whining all day about how
the desert is just full of rocks
and it’s so boring. Yeah, it just kind of happens,
this flash flood of gratitude, this falling in love
with everything dust can do.

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Thursday Evening 911

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 9, 2014| 3 Comments »

for the Placerville Volunteer Fire Department and EMTs

Within minutes after the ambulance leaves,
the girl who swallowed the ring
pulls out her toy doctor kit.

She fits the pink cuff onto my arm
and pumps until the little plastic dial changes colors.
What seemed like an emergency forty minutes before
has become a game. Only it is not a game.
She is replaying how we serve each other.

Our drive way, how small it seemed
flooded with red and white lights.
Nearly a dozen neighbors and strangers
rushed from their homes in response
to the terrified call.

Yes, my daughter says, I think you will be just fine.
Her voice is calm and reassuring. She speaks in the same
smooth tones that the EMTs used
as they sat on the floor beside her.
Now, she says, let’s check your temperature.

I marvel at how once the fear is gone,
it is gone—moved through, like the ring
no longer trapped in her throat.

What remains is relentless gratitude—
wave after wave of respect—
for all people who devote their lives
to meeting neighbors and strangers
in their most vulnerable, fragile, fearful states.

And what remains is deepening love
for the girl who even now
is reaching into her doctor kit
and pressing the button
on her pretend pager to say
that everything is going to be okay.

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