Wini weeps as she tells me “everyone is so broken,”
and a small shrine appears in the tear on her cheek.
I kneel inside it as it slips to her chin.
My throat clenches, my own heart widens,
enlivened by how deeply Wini cares,
and somehow her heartache begins to mend
my own grief for this cruel and callous world.
More than any beauty. More than the uplifting song
of the red wing black bird trilling through the open window.
More than the scent of basil and lemon.
More than the dark silhouette of two herons winging
through the nectarine sunset. Wini’s tears heal me.
Shared ache becomes its own medicine.
No. Not the ache. The medicine is in the love that fuels
the ache. It feels so right, I forget to wish it didn’t hurt.
Posts Tagged ‘heartache’
For What Ails Us
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, connection, friendship, healing, heartache, medicine, trust on March 25, 2026| 4 Comments »
All This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, heartache, paradox, peace, politics, snow, woods on January 11, 2026| 6 Comments »
after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, heartache, ice, immigration on November 13, 2025| 8 Comments »
Teachers and fathers,
bakers and builders,
sisters in plaid shirts
and sons with shy smiles
kicked and punched,
sprayed and tackled,
grabbed and tased
and thrown to the ground,
locked up and jailed,
despised, dehumanized.
What is the heart to do when,
in the face of brutality, we hear
not only weeping, but cheering?
How do we go on?
Maybe you choose to ignore it.
Maybe you tell yourself,
this doesn’t affect me.
Maybe you rationalize.
Maybe you feel your heart break
again and again, as seed walls
must give for a seedling to grow.
Maybe you notice breaking open
is the only way love can go on.
Maybe you turn toward
life, belonging, respect
and ask your longing to grow you,
to guide your hands, your breath.
Maybe you say to the ache,
teach me, bless me, enliven me.
Maybe you listen more deeply.
Maybe you find other broken hearts
with heartbeats that rhyme with your own.
The terror is real. Fear is strong.
We are still here. How will we go on?
Walking with KC on Christmas Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, conversation, family, heartache, paradox, sharing, walking on December 26, 2022| 4 Comments »
This, too, is Christmas, the quiet
walk on the quiet road in the quiet air.
The only carol here—
unending verses of river.
The only gifts we brought—
our attention, our trust.
This feast is for the heart.
There is a generosity to the sunshine
no candle could equal.
It’s a deep sweetness
to be wrapped in blue sky,
a deep sweetness
to share heartache, exhaustion—
something I would never wish for anyone,
and yet, this Christmas day,
the sharing of it,
such a beautiful present.
Holding What Must Be Held
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, growing, heartache, holding, river on August 11, 2020| 1 Comment »
Down by the river we sit and talk.
When I think I can’t ache any more,
the world serves more heartache.
And I meet it.
I say no, but I feel myself stretched
by some great invisible hand,
rendering me spacious enough to hold
what must be held.
When we rise to leave,
the river doesn’t stop.
Nor does the forgiving wind.
I swear I feel them move
right through me.
Patience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, falling in love with the world, heartache, patience on March 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Again today, the invitation
to fall in love with the world—
with the gray jay who flits
from empty branch to empty branch,
with the sharp scent of rabbit brush,
with the warm spring wind
and the dark buds on the crabapple
still tight with future bloom.
Some days, though the world offers itself,
it’s not so easy to fall in love—
days when heartache twists in the chest
and turns in us like a screw,
leaves us raw and sensitive, until,
too tender to hear any more bad news,
we shutter our hearts, we close our ears.
But if we’re lucky, an inner voice
sends us outside into the day,
and though it is gray, the world does
what the world does—
holds us despite our heartache,
holds us the same way it holds
the stubby pink cactus, all prickly and clenched,
the same way it holds last year’s thistles,
all brittle and flat and gray,
the same way it holds the dank scent of river
and the moldering scent of last year’s leaves,
holds us exactly as we are
until we are ready to fall in love again.
Hoping His Eventually Comes Soon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heartache, mother, scent, son on February 2, 2020| 6 Comments »
Allspice. Basil. Bay. Caraway. There were mornings
my boy and I spent on the floor pulling herbs and spices
from the drawer. We’d open the jars and close our eyes
and gently sniff. Cardamom. Cilantro. Cinnamon. Dill.
I took out the cayenne and red pepper flakes
and put them up high on an uppermost shelf.
Some agonies are easy to prevent.
We focused on Fennel. Fenugreek. Mint.
Today, he comes home having breathed in deeply
the scent of heartbreak, a jar I would have hidden if I could,
but all of us know it eventually, feel the burn, the inner sear.
Beyond safety, thyme, turmeric, there is fire, and once inhaled,
it hurts everywhere. Eventually we respect the heat as a gift.
Eventually the heart learns to walk through it.
One Scratched Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, goldfinch, heart, heartache, poem, poetry, thorns on May 15, 2019| Leave a Comment »
goldfinch stealing
into the thorn bush—
oh heart, bless you
for being willing, please
don’t follow him in
After a Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, heartache, poem, poetry, song on October 13, 2015| 1 Comment »
Because my heart is aching,
I clean the stove. It’s covered
in dark brown stains, stains
so burned on they seem
to be part of the stainless steel.
Because I am practical, I wear
plastic gloves while I scour.
I know that the cleaner
would ripple my fingers and dry
my skin for days. And because
I would rather not cry right now,
I turn on my music and play
Joni Mitchell as loud as the speakers
will play. She always knows
just what to say. There are some
places now where the stovetop gleams
so silver it looks nearly new. There
are some stains I know, that no matter
how many hours I scrub,
they will never leave.
Living by Breaking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heartache, love, opening, poem, poetry on June 4, 2014| 4 Comments »
The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
Stanley Kunitz, “Testing Tree”
Like any other muscle,
the heart, when injured,
will clench, and will stay that way
for a long, long time, most likely
long past the time of usefulness.
But when it relaxes again,
perhaps because it has been touched
in just the right way, or perhaps
just because it is exhausted
with its own clenching, well then
it is like when the sun hits the forest
in late morning and releases the scent
of pine and greening leaves.
And it is like when you walk past a spring
and a dozen blue butterflies all brush
you with their wings, a feeling so impossibly
soft and tender that you cannot help
but let the heart stay open, though you know
it will be wounded again. It is not
in the end the heart itself that matters.
It is the practice of releasing again, again.