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Posts Tagged ‘hiding’

Hiding Comes Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »


 
 
The hiding doesn’t want to hide anymore.
It’s done with shadows and corners and masks.
All it wants is to show up. To step out.
To be seen. There was a time
when everything frightened it, when hiding
was desperate for a veil, a shroud, a disguise.
Hiding doesn’t remember what changed.
It only knows that one day it was no longer content
with holing up. Couldn’t. It no longer fit in its hole.
It wants big sky and meadows and space.
It wants to skip down main street.
Naked. It wants to know itself and be known,
to be as out there as exposé, as confession,
as a kiss on the sidewalk at noon. It wants
headlines. Declarations. Independence.
It knows things might get messy.
That’s why it brought a broom,
but damned if it will wear gloves.
It wants to get all that dirt in its fingernails.
It wants the callouses that come with revelation.

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Ars Poetica

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 27, 2017| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

learning to hide

in the open meadow—

it’s not hard

just ask

any blade of grass

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In Fact, Her Life Depends on It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 21, 2015| 4 Comments »

For most life on the planet, being hidden is the default condition.
—Michael Dickinson, biologist

The little girl is not like the hermit crab,
though both live by hiding, finding small
spaces where they can retreat and occasionally
poke out a well-armored claw for transit
or feeding. It’s natural to all living things,
this impulse to survive through concealment,
only this girl, who has tucked herself under the bed,
her soft body curled into itself,
this girl, though she pinches
at anything that draws close,
she desperately, urgently
wants to be found.

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Love Bent the Bars

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

hiding in this cage
felt so safe until
I began to notice
what else
was hiding in this cage

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Finding the Girl

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2014| 1 Comment »

She pulled the covers
over her head and hid.

She didn’t really want to hide.
She wanted to be found,

but the only way to be found
is first to be lost.

I find her.

Her body heaves. A little lump, she is.
A little lump that whimpers and longs

to be held, even as it kicks
at whatever warmth comes close.

Oh this terrible loneliness.
It becomes a habit. It is so easy

to see the lie of it
as it ravages someone else.

But this morning
when loneliness rose up in myself

I only pretended I wasn’t hiding.
I’ve learned to wear my covers

on the inside. No one notices. Either that,
or perhaps they’ve learned to pretend

to not see that I am a lump,
a little lump just hoping (or is it dreading)

to be found.

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Should It Be a Capital T?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 22, 2014| 4 Comments »

The truth doesn’t care if I try to hide.
It knows exactly where I am and what
I am doing. It is perhaps like the game

I play while walking downtown
with my daughter. She runs ahead
on the sidewalk, then tucks her body

into a breezeway between buildings.
I pretend I do not see. Vivian? I call.
Vivian? Yooo hoooo. I walk past her,

while looking the other way.
I know that she knows that I know
that she knows that I know where she is.

Here, truth, here I am, I could say. As if I could be
anywhere else. As if I am longing for it to call
out my name so I might run toward it,

my arms open, laughing at the very joy
of being found at last, the joy of knowing
I was never really lost at all.

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I Used to Blame You for not Seeing Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 11, 2012| 9 Comments »

with one hand
I wave for you
to see me
with the other
I retie my mask

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