In a city where we meet,
mom arrives with thin
rye crackers, dill Havarti,
carrots, fresh raspberries,
a tea kettle, and packets
of peppermint tea—all
things she knows I love.
And sipping right now from
the slender, porcelain
pansy mug she wrapped in
clothes and brought in her suitcase,
I listen in the dark of the hotel
to the soft, even luff of her breath
as she sleeps, and inside it
I hear the light of her, the
generous light, the tender light,
a nectary of light, a clear channel
of light that teaches me something
of how to live in these long, cold
volumes of night.
Posts Tagged ‘home’
Home Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, generosity, home, light, mom, travel on November 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, home, mother, reunion, travel on August 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
To drive through the starless night.
To arrive at the airport in time to greet
the traveler at the gate.
To embrace her in your arms
and nuzzle your nose in her hair.
To be nowhere in that moment
but there. To stare into her face
until the heart is satisfied
and the lungs remember
how to breathe. To see
in her eyes a constellation
that helps you navigate home. To know
reunion’s sweeter for the letting go.
Where We’re From
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, Colorado, home, landscape, natural world, wisconsin on July 16, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though I love this high desert,
I am a lake walking amidst
the cactus and the pinyon pine.
I am sunsets on flat water
and waves in the spring.
I bring my white trillium soul
to the arroyo and let dry sand
run through my fingers.
They never leave me,
these Wisconsin summers,
even though I left them when
I was a barefoot girl,
even though I’ve made a home
amongst red rock cliffs and empty
river beds where the gray trunks
of juniper twist in deep curves
and red-tailed hawks spiral
making visible the wind.
How surprising it is to discover now
in my silvering years some new
insight into what it means to belong:
how sometimes we choose,
how sometimes we are chosen.
There Is This Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, home, joy, music on June 20, 2024| 12 Comments »
with the full moon rising
and a large bird of prey
gliding spirals in the sky
and my husband on my right
my sweet friend on my left
and the two-person band
transforming sorrow into joy
just by singing it in harmony
and giving the song their everything,
and maybe that’s what is ours to do—
to give ourselves wholly to a moment
as if we are the singers and life the song,
so I give myself to the low summer sun
and the dust on my feet,
to the pucker of lime
and the tears of my friend,
give myself to the ache that never leaves
and the relentless beauty that ever arrives,
and the more I give myself to the world,
the more the world rushes in
and says home, home, home,
you are home.
One Vacation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, mountain, vacation on November 26, 2023| 4 Comments »
joy in the city—
we return home
to sleep like mountains
The Humming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, home, icu, mom, song on October 15, 2023| 26 Comments »
And there in the ICU, amidst the tubes
and rubber gloves, amongst the pillows
and the scent of disinfectant,
we build a house of song,
a house with rafters of “Moon River”
and a foundation of “Amazing Grace.”
There are lintels of “Wild Mountain Thyme”
and a hearth of “The Water is Wide,”
For an hour, we live inside the tunes
as they surround us, familiar rooms
where laughter is welcome,
where sleep might come,
where we live not outside of time,
but inside its melodic chambers,
not escaping the fear and the pain,
but companioning it with so much love,
so much beauty that somehow,
even in the halls of distress,
we nestle deeper in and feel safe.
*
Hi friends–oh my sweet mama is having a tough time–multiple surgeries, so many side swipes. It’s been a crazy time. At this moment, she seems to be stabilizing. Tonight I am so grateful for everyone who works in the medical professions–from those who leave home in the middle of the night to do emergency surgeries to those who keep the hospital floors clean–thank you to all who help those who need healing.
One Journey
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, home, journey, travel on August 15, 2023| 3 Comments »
driving three hundred eleven miles—
learning to call every inch of the trip
home
First Time Driving in the Berkshires
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, daughter, dreams, home, parenting on May 5, 2023| 6 Comments »
I could live here, says my daughter;
and staring into the generous green
and the time-softened hills,
she sees an open door in the landscape,
a door she could walk through
and call the new place home—
and I watch as she becomes
the hero of her own story,
watch as in the passenger seat
she grows wings, listen as she hums
like a tuning fork suddenly come alive,
struck by her own dreams,
and mygod, its beautiful watching
as aspiration slips itself into her body
and whispers possibilities
and bids her keep her eyes open.
Before the Burial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, gratitude, grief, home, loss, mother, self-talk, son on June 14, 2022| 13 Comments »
Because I can, I carry the box with your ashes
around the house as if you’re a baby on my hip.
I point out things and explain them,
just as I did when you were young and alive.
There, I say, there is where you practiced piano.
Here, I say, is where you sat at the counter
and wept when I told you the story
of Cinderella. And here is the wall
where we hung all your artwork.
And here is the room where you slept.
Here’s the plant you gave me last year—
see how it’s doubled in size?
And here’s the new couch in the place
where the old couch once was,
the one on which we snuggled each morning
before school. I walk the floor as I did
when you were young and fussy and needed
touch and movement to calm you.
Now I am the one who is calmed by the walking.
So familiar, these steps around the kitchen island,
these steps around the table.
So familiar, this weight on my hip.
Soon we will place this small wooden box
in the ground, so while I still can, I carry you.
Oh sweetheart, how is it I’m thriving amidst this gravity?
It is, I am sure, because I, too, am deeply companioned,
carried from moment to moment, from space to space.
And though I don’t hear it, there is perhaps a voice
that says to me, Here is where you lit
a candle every day. Here is where you practiced
to love in new ways. And here is where
you did not judge yourself as you wept.
Here is the place where you did nothing but breathe.
And here is where you thought of all the people
who have carried you.
And here is where you said thank you.
At the Houston Zoo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bird, home, nest, pigeon, zoo on July 13, 2021| 2 Comments »
Not the chuckwalla
nor the cheetah nor the capybara,
it was the pigeon
I couldn’t stop watching
as it sat on its nest
in the tall sturdy grass
beside the glassed-in walls
of the chimpanzees
with its fluffy grey chicks
tucked against its grey breast.
She looked as if she belonged
exactly where she was—oh
how I cherish that feeling.