Injustice everywhere.
How do we go on like this?
The air says nothing.
Nor does the window,
the wall, the desk.
But the desk holds up
the blank page I put on it.
Holds up the computer,
the cup of tea.
Holds the pens, the books,
the great piles of the stuff of my life,
as if to say, this is how you do it.
Hold what you are given
for as long as it is here.
Trust what you are made of.
That is what is doing the holding.
Posts Tagged ‘holding’
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, friendship, holding, mountain, tonglen on July 22, 2026| 2 Comments »
Alone, I am too small to meet
the great weight of your pain.
Loving, I want to turn toward you.
Aching, I want to turn away.
But yesterday I rested for a time
on a wide gray rock in an alpine cirque.
In my stillness I felt how surely
I was cradled by the world so much
vaster than I. There, surrounded
by greatness, I invited your pain
into my heart and held you there in me.
I breathed in your ache, my ache,
and felt us both surrounded
by vast fields of wildflowers,
by the deep green shoulders
of sheer gray cliffs. I envisioned
I was breathing out love, but more truly,
I was being breathed by the mountain,
or perhaps by life itself.
The weight of the pain was no less,
but I knew it as a blessing,
a gravitational force magnetizing you and me.
What a gift to hold the weight together,
to know in my whole being
how miraculously we are held.
Orbit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gravity, grief, holding, orbit on March 4, 2026| 6 Comments »
I thought I was holding grief.
Tonight I see grief is holding me.
Not with a vice grip. Not with a fist.
More the way gravity
holds the earth to the sun—
a force without which our planet
would lose all warmth, all life.
Love has many names. Grief is one,
and I am grateful tonight for the way
it tethers me not only to pain but
to beauty, goodness, connection.
Tonight I see grief not as a problem
to be solved but as an energy to explore,
to move with, to circle what is beloved.
There is some comfort even in knowing
it will never let me go. It is right that it
should hold me, even as I turn and turn.
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daily, daughter, holding, letting go, moment, morning, mother on October 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Vivian
Just today, you asked me
to hold the front door open,
your own hands too full
with a peach smoothie,
a cup of tea, your backpack
and dance bag and lunch box.
It gave me such joy,
this small act of service,
though now I also see it
as practice in letting you go.
I followed you out the door
into the frost-limned world,
yellow leaves falling before
the sun had yet risen.
It would be easy to forget
this moment with you.
We didn’t even pause
to enjoy it, just inhaled
the chill morning air,
both of us mumbling
how glorious it was
before you walked to the car
and I walked back inside.
Now, I see they’re everything,
these slim moments we share,
for a day is slim and a
year is slim, and soon your whole
childhood will also seem
slim. I hold them to me
like treasure, these slender
chapters, charged as they are
with beauty, hold them to me
even as I practice letting you go.
While Thinking About Letting Go
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, dead, holding, jay, letting go, sunflower on October 16, 2025| 6 Comments »
I hold a sunflower in my heart,
not in golden bloom, but filled
with small, dry seeds,
a desiccated husk of a disk, brittle
and brown. I hold it here
as a reminder some gifts
look unwanted at first.
I remember the autumn afternoon
I went to pull the dead remains
from the garden, then watched
as the Stellar’s jays landed
atop the tall dark stalks
and feasted. So I let the row
stand instead of clearing it away.
In my attempts to remove
what seemed no longer useful,
I almost missed this chance
to see the Stellar’s Jays balance
on the tips of the plants,
their bodies a blue exultation of wing.
What else have I tried to clear
from my heart too soon? How
easy to miss what is still nourishing.
Out my window, the jays gather
at the banquet of what is dead.
I am learning the wisdom of holding.
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, heart, holding, pain, pond 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.
Noticing the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, holding, infinite, language, meditation, paradox on June 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
When I am most still,
there is something that holds me—
not a being, but a voice,
no, not a voice, but a transmission.
Not really a transmission, no, but a place
with gradations of color, almost like sky at dawn.
Well, no, not a place. More a placelessness.
A placelessness that holds me.
Yes. A placelessness. That holds me.
Or rather, a placelessness that is me.
And is also all that I’m not.
Oh, these words that try so hard to say something true.
They feel so small as they leave my mouth.
Like I’m tossing out tiny pebbles
into the pool of the infinite.
I stare at the tiny ripples they make,
in awe of their insufficiency.
Which is to say I’m in awe
of all that does not ripple.
With awe comes stillness.
The kind of stillness that invites me.
Invites me to notice how utterly I am held.
The One Great Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being held, belonging, holding on January 13, 2025| 7 Comments »
There are so many ways to hold and be held.
—James Crews, “The World Loves You Back”
Assume belonging.
—Augusta Kantra
There are so many ways to hold and be held.
Like the way the white and black cat holds my lap
even as I hold her small weight.
Like the way a woman holds a canyon in her heart—
its red rock cliffs and snow-thick spruce—
even as the canyon holds her.
And when I hold silence and offer it my whole attention,
I feel how silence holds me,
cradles me with such profound nothing
it becomes everything.
What if we assume we belong?
Then we might find we are held
by strands of birdsong, by the even beat
of eagle’s wings, by the blue moonlight
that reflects off the snow.
I spent so much time worrying
about how to fit in, changing
how I dressed, how I spoke, what I did.
I somehow didn’t learn until recently
real belonging asks nothing of me
except I offer myself exactly as I am.
I become more myself when I trust I am held
as much by shadow as by light,
held by the one shared breath, by the one
infinite song, held by soil, held by sky,
held even by the human longing to be held,
held by the one great story
from which our lives cannot be unwritten.
How We Are Held
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, broken, connection, held, holding, love on January 12, 2025| 7 Comments »
When my arms were the most empty,
when my hands were unable to hold anything
and I was most unselved,
that was when I felt the most gathered up
by love. An immeasurable and wildly precise love.
Even when I wanted to push love away.
Even when I felt too broken to be found.
I felt love gather all my pieces.
Not to fix them.
Not to put them back together.
Love simply held every shattered thought
and every ruined dream and cradled me
just as I was. Not because I deserved it.
Just because that is what love does.
I am learning to trust this feeling of belonging
to the world, broken as it is, broken as I am,
learning to trust I need not do a thing to belong.
I do not know how it all works
or why I was able to receive it.
But I can’t unknow this unfathomable truth:
how love holds us when we cannot
hold anything, gentle as silence,
fierce as a flood, true as the breaking itself.
The way the ocean forever holds every wave.
The way the shore forever changes to hold the ocean.
Wordlessly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, holding, marriage, touch on April 27, 2023| 12 Comments »
With such gentleness,
he stood behind me
and held me as I wept,
held me the way a pond holds a lotus,
the way a scarf holds perfume,
the way a man who has lost his child
holds the mother of the child,
his hands so light on my hands
as our fingers laced into a tender weave,
held me the way the pericardium holds the heart,
the way the eye holds a tear
then lets it slip away.
Grateful for Those Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, holding, missing, son, touch on August 4, 2022| 13 Comments »
Tonight it’s his willowy body I miss,
the way it fit so easily into my arms,
the way he’d find me on the couch
and slip in beside me and loan me
for a time the full weight of his loneliness.
I miss how sometimes we’d say nothing
and let the quiet crests of our breath
be the only thing that need be said.
I miss how sometimes we’d talk for hours,
our thoughts unspooling like ink-dark yarn.
I miss nuzzling my face in his hair.
I miss being with him everywhere—
in the kitchen, in the car, in the yard,
on a plane, in town, on the pond,
in the store, by his desk. But most of all,
tonight, I miss him in my arms,
here in my too empty arms,
this place where so many years I held him,
this place where the memory of his beauty
still leans full weight against my chest.
There Are Many Ways to Hold Space
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cinema, grave, grief, holding, painting, self-forgiveness on June 19, 2022| 10 Comments »
This morning I painted
a wooden marker for your grave—
a slender plank to hold the space
until the stone arrives.
I wanted it to be perfect,
but I am not a painter.
I am a mother painting
a wooden marker
for the grave of her son,
but there is devotion
in the uneven blue coat,
devotion in the crooked silver lettering,
devotion in every brush stroke of white.
In the movie of me,
I watched as the lens zoomed in
on my awkward hands
to show their slow and loyal work.
Then the frame widened
to include the quiet rooms in the house,
widened more to comprise the summer field,
then panned and tilted to the sky
to show the gathering rain.
After the fade to gray,
I was still here, sitting at the table,
paint on my dress,
my life not a movie but my life—
every day the chance to live into it.
I flashed back to sitting
at this same table
where you learned to write your letters,
then learned to write your name.
Fast forwarded through thousands
of family dinners.
Flashed to this morning
as I finished the grave marker,
shaping the letters of your name through tears.
Though a camera couldn’t show it,
I forgave myself
for not being a better painter.
I told myself I did the best I could.
It was hours before the rain began to fall.
A Different Holding Pattern
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, photosynthesis, plants, transformation on March 3, 2022| 14 Comments »
If I am to hold the world in my heart,
then let me hold it the way leaves hold sunshine,
trapping the energy not for the sake of holding it,
but to transform it into nourishment.
Though the process isn’t simple, it’s common.
All around the globe, in every season,
leaves hold and synthesize
whatever the day gives them.
On a day when the energy of the world
seems too much to hold,
let me bid my heart turn
like a leaf to the sun
and make sugar.
The way Rilke turned grief into sonnets.
The way Sibelius turned war into song.
What the Sky Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, grief, holding, sky on November 26, 2021| 5 Comments »
Before the feast,
I slip outside
into the rose glow
of evening and
talk to my loves
who no longer
walk this earth,
and I cry and cry,
and I thank them
for being in my life.
How is it possible
at the same time
to hold so much gratitude
and so much grief?
And the sky holds me
and the rooftops, the
streets and the fields,
the factories and forests,
it holds it all, holds
what is most beautiful,
holds what is most foul.
The sky doesn’t try to change
anything. Like that,
it seems to say
as it turns a deeper
rose. Like that.
While I Could
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hands, holding, transience on November 5, 2021| 8 Comments »
We arrive empty handed, and leave empty handed. So then, how do we want to spend the time in between?
—Nimo, Empty Hands Music
For a time, I held
him. Before he
could walk, before
he could stand,
before he could
speak, I held
his full weight
in my hands.
Day became night
became day became
night became day
and I held him
and rocked him
and soothed him
and bathed him
and cradled
his beautiful face.
It didn’t last.
It never lasts.
But before he could run,
before he could
fall, before
he could choose
what I never
would have chosen for him,
I held him.
Oh, this gift,
to know the heft
of his life, to have been
the one—though
never again—
to have been the one
for a time, sweet time,
to hold him.
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.
Tonight I Want to Hold You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, sun, tea on May 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
the way the hand holds the mug,
the way the mug holds the tea,
the way the tea holds the leaves,
the way the leaves hold the sun,
the way the sun holds everything
the way everything eventually
lets go.
Holding Patterns
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, love, poem, poetry on April 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
It’s not patience
that makes the cup
hold the tea, it’s
simple practicality.
Not love that makes
bowl hold ripened fruit.
But it is patience
that holds the phone
and says I miss you.
It’s love that doesn’t
hold at all.
Three Transpositions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holding, letting go, poem, poetry on February 21, 2016| 1 Comment »
is it one small child
or the whole world
I cradle
*
this longing
to bring you a small bouquet
of possibilities
*
my limbs a clef,
I circle the changing
song of you