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Posts Tagged ‘heart’

The Night I Remembered What Love Can Do

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 19, 2026| 12 Comments »

What is unwanted still serves. 
                  —Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”

I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe, 
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe— 
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed 
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me, 
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel 
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through 
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared, 
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart 
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge 
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.

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Heart Medicine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
To stay open 
 is what I wanted.
  Though winter and war
   have taught me 
    the importance of refuge. 
 
Even then, like a wild rabbit 
 that is no less soft
  and no less gentle
   inside its dark burrow,
    the heart in its shelter
     finds ways to stay open, 
      if not to the world, 
       at least to whatever
        it is that shines
         through the self,
          and the deep remove 
           becomes a chance
            to steep in tenderness
 
before re-emerging again 
 into the world 
  with all its threats
   and dangers, 
    with all its green 
     and radiant beauty.

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The Rooms of the Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 21, 2026| 8 Comments »


                  for Rachel
 
 
I thought my heart might need a makeover.
There are well worn paths from all the entrances
and exits. The color palette hasn’t changed
since the early seventies when the heart
was first decorated. And the four chambers,
sometimes feel a little tight. Shouldn’t I make it
a little nicer for guests? I spoke to the interior designer,
asked her to spiff it up for me. She smiled and said,
Sweetheart, there’s nothing more beautiful
than a well-loved heart. Its colors are always true.
You don’t need anything new or fancy. Every ding,
every scratch has made you who you are—
a home for love. Let it be.

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Gesture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 7, 2026| 2 Comments »

 

 
 
Most days, I rearrange the small stones
on the front porch into a new semblance
of a heart. What moves them? The wind?
A mouse? I gently reshape them with my palms.
They have been here over four years now,
since the day you placed them beside the door,
the day my son did not come home.
Two dozen-ish penny-sized gray and white stones.
Rough to the fingertips, soft to the spirit.
You taught me how simply we might care
for each other with whatever is here.
Small rocks. Fallen petals. Tall stems
of dry grass. A touch of love.
Two willing hands.

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We could say it took me my whole life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 16, 2025| 4 Comments »



 
 
to grow a heart from lake water and an old
junk yard, from an empty classroom
and cheap novels bought at the second
 
hand store, two-liter bottles of diet coke
and a dusty dead-end road. There was more,
of course. An old plaid couch with a squeaky spring.
 
The spiraling cord of an old telephone. A rusty pan
with cornbread made with Mavis’s fresh eggs.
The breathing weight of my newborn girl.
 
What hasn’t gone into the growing of this heart?
An old red truck. The pinnately compound leaves
of Jacob’s Ladder. But it is the unpetaling
 
that astonishes now, how all the stories
of my becoming—all the particulars
that seemed so essential—begin to drop
 
No, not drop, exactly. It’s just that I nourish
these stories less as I turn my attention
toward the vastness from which all arose—
 
and in this turning, discover how the more
the heart is undone, the more
the heart can grow.

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The Holding  

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
The way the shore holds the pond,
that is how I want to hold
the pain in my heart, honoring
how vital it is. How it is home
to things with hard shells and sharp
claws and also to beings with gossamer
wings. To drain it would be to lose
my aliveness. To become barren,
cracked, dry. I can’t say I love
the spider-like skaters that streak
across the top, nor the thick gray muck
that lines the bottom. But I love
the green rushes that rim the edges,
the red-stemmed willows, the wild
iris. It is no easy thing to hold pain,
but I look how vibrant the pond shore is.
This alive is how I want to live.

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Intergalactic Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 6, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you, and if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
—The Gospel of Thomas, verse 70
 
 
There is a galaxy in my heart,
a vastness that surprises me
each time I dare look—
my god, it’s so much larger
than I could ever explore.
Filled with dark things that defy
investigation and dead places
where nothing can live and brilliant
places so radiant I’m unable to look
straight on. There is a galaxy
in my heart so expansive it sometimes
frightens me—what does it mean
to not know my own bounds?
What if I never live into my capacity to love?
There is a galaxy in my heart
that knows itself by spiraling,
swirling out from its own center,
and forming new stars.
Did I ever believe it was limited
to hold only so much?
The galaxy in my heart
invites me to remember
I am made of mystery, and
whatever theories I have
of how and who I love
are always being changed.
Even now, it stuns me,
how galaxies sometimes merge.
Imagine, if your galaxy
and my galaxy come together,
my god, how much vaster
our hearts can become.

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One Ever-Changing Pressure

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

bless the accordion heart—
whether it opens or closes
it’s all a chance to sing

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Letter to My Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 8, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
Once I was embarrassed
you were a mockingbird.
I wished you were more
hermit thrush, more meadowlark,
more cliff swallow in the canyon,
heck, even wished you were
robin or wren.
At last I’m coming to see
the gift of learning another’s song,
letting it pierce you, own you,
then braiding it with your own tune,
to sing back to the world
as one.

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Since You’re Gone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
My heart is like a well-used couch,
the kind with a dent where your body
once curled in, the cushions threadbare
from years of use; the kind of couch
that remembers every time you gave
it your weight, that recalls every story
that spilled from your mouth,
your words now woven into its upholstery.
Since you’re gone, the picture of me looks
like less like a picture of me and more
like a picture of where you used to be.  

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Thank You Letter to My Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 5, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
Thank you, heart for breaking open
every time you hear of the throbbing
ache of war. The devastation of hunger.
The agony of humans choosing
to hurt each other. May you always break.
May you never grow callous enough
that you listen to news of bombs
and betrayals as if you are listening
to the weather report. Thank you,
heart, for letting yourself be stunned
by joy at the slightest of beauties—
by the stilting gray hop of the bunny,
the pink pucker of grapefruit,
the crimson blush of amaryllis
as the tepals burgeon against the green bud.
Though the mind longs to organize,
you thrive on surprising me. Like the way
you rise up for the same rain I once reviled.
Like the way you crave the silence
that once I feared. Like the ways
you have taught me to love the parts of me
I once thought were unloveable.
For all the times I have forgotten
to say thank you, forgive me.
I am still learning. I will forget how to love,
will forget to thank you again.
But here, on the edge of who I will be,
here I am, open as I know how,
gratefulness growing, pushing
against my own green.

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Allium sativum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 8, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
Not unlike the garlic
bulbs pulled today
from garden soil,
the heart, too,
is lumpy, misshapen,
filled with strong
and good intentions.
Never quite what
I dream—but hey,
it’s not nothing
to grow where
there is no light.
It’s not nothing
to grow at all.
 

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Dactylography

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 7, 2023| 6 Comments »


Just when you think you know who you are,
you take a closer look at your heart
and notice it is marked
with the whorls and loops and arches
of everyone you’ve ever loved
and everyone who has ever loved you—
those who left you, who broke you,
and those who still charm and nourish you.
As if the heart’s reason for being
is simply to be shaped and reshaped
by the hands of the world.
As if the detectives of love
could visit your heart
with their fingerprint powder
and lifting tape and unfold the mystery
of how you became who you are,
fashioned by the uniqueness of others,
discovering your heart
is not a crime scene at all,
but a rare and incomparable work of art.

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How the World Goes On

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2023| 10 Comments »


 
 
There’s the burr that relies on brittle prickers,
the cheat grass with sharp and spiky barbs,
and then there’s the milkweed
that attaches its seeds to gossamer fluff
and spills forth in an ecstasy of diaphanous floss,
white puffs of wish-downy, dream-gauzy,
breeze-easy lushness. Oh, heart,
this, too, is what survival looks like—
an almost impossible softness
that gathers light in silky froth,
that entrusts itself to the wind.  

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Timing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 4, 2023| 11 Comments »

 
Today the heart has forgotten
how to ask questions
such as how do I serve—
instead, it scuttles like a spider
to the edges of the room,
looks for cracks to slip into and hide.
Today, it doesn’t feel safe to love.
It’s okay, I tell my scared heart.
It’s okay to slip away.
But come out again.
Everything depends on this.

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Holding Your Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 29, 2023| 7 Comments »


 
I want to trace the rings of your heart
the way I would trace tree rings—
not to count them
but to honor each season of you.
I want to touch my fingertips
to your scars, want to learn
your heart’s stories, find clues
of how you became who you are.
I want to press my palms
to your heart and praise
how it is we grow,
even in disaster, even in drought,
want to praise the dark center,
the time-thick bark, the record
of the ordinary days. I want
to chart the thin slivers of your wounds
and let my hands speak love,
want to tell you in a language
of quiet touch, I see you.

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New Epoch for the Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 24, 2023| 5 Comments »

 
I think of how the narrow blue bodies
of the dragonfly ancestors
once skimmed clear lakes—
over a hundred million years
before the great diplodocus
came to wade—
how they flew through the Permian,
the Cretaceous, through mornings,
through meteors, through floods,
through to the Holocene, to now.
How much change they have seen
before coming to balance here
on the reeds beside me,
their bodies like thin blue proofs
of resilience, endurance, constancy.
Meanwhile, the sun is disappearing
below the horizon.
Meanwhile this heart, too,
is learning to adapt, to become
something as surprising as beauty
that survives great challenge,
something as durable, as delicate
as gossamer wings.

Happy Birthday, Suzi! This one’s for you!!!

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Once Upon a Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 16, 2023| 14 Comments »

While dancing barefoot in wet grass
with the dark all around us and
the star-bright sky above
and a song in the air and joy
and sorrow crashing through me
in equal force, it is only now
with tears running down my face
I realize the tears themselves
are the river where I can lay down
my burdens, these tears are the stream
that will never run dry, these tears
are the river where I will again
and again and again return to pray,
Oh sister, let’s go down, come on down,
and Hallelujah, at last I know the river
is nowhere if not in my heart,
and if there’s a river here,
then every moment is a baptism,
every moment a chance to be lifted,
to be healed.

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More Sunflowers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 11, 2023| 14 Comments »

The sunflowers, which came from seeds
no hand planted, now overshadow
 
the tomatoes, the eggplant,
the gardener, the beans.
 
They branch out across the pathways
and teem with bees and wasps.
 
Perhaps your heart, too,
knows something of exuberance,
 
knows what it’s like to burst
into an explosion of golden joy,
 
not just savoring the moment,
but growing more wildly into it,
 
reaching in all directions,
certain of its own beauty
 
and living to share it.

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Beyond Conversation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 7, 2023| 17 Comments »


There was a time I believed
we need to tell each other who we are
so you can know me, so I can know you.
 
Now, I see how words, too,
can be like little masks, little disguises
we can use to hide.
 
I don’t want to hide anymore.
I want to find the most naked words—
words with no ribbons, no sparkle,
 
no paint—and speak in the barest
of tongues. I want to speak with you
blood to blood, breath to breath,
 
grief to grief, fear to fear.
I want to know you and be known
by whatever it is that resonates
 
inside the words—
a raw and vibrant IS, IS, IS
that pulses between us
 
like a common heartbeat—
the way two living heart cells
from two different people,
 
when placed together in a petri dish,
will find a shared rhythm
and sustain it. This is how
 
I want to meet you—
two silences becoming one silence,
infinite beings, one life.
 
 

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