joy in the city—
we return home
to sleep like mountains
Posts Tagged ‘home’
One Vacation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, mountain, vacation on November 26, 2023| 4 Comments »
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.
Motherhood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beaver, home, mothering, parenting, resilience on April 30, 2021| 1 Comment »
—with thanks to the wise Rebecca Mullen
Today, again, I praise the beaver
who spends her life building,
rebuilding, rebuilding
her lodge where her young will live.
With small sticks and big sticks
and tall solid trunks,
with logs and rocks and mud,
with her teeth she builds a home,
builds it on moving water.
Because rain, because snow,
because warm, because cold,
because flow, because flow, because flow,
her home is forever in need of repair.
And so on a day when a surprise storm
has flooded the stream
and washed much of my lodge away,
I honor the beaver,
stalwart, resilient, habitual.
I notice the longing to move to land,
then I gather new sticks of courage.
Stones of forgiveness.
Logs of compassion
and the deep sticky mud of love.
I wade to the middle
of the current.
I, like all the other mothers,
I build this home again.
Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arriving, home, nature, river on March 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Even after all these years
of wandering this twisting path of self,
how is it I am still surprised
to find a new home inside the rush of river,
as if I haven’t been here
in this song of melting many times before?
How is it I forgot my home
inside the brittle brown grass of March,
home in the sweet moldering scent of spring,
home in the sun soaked day—
as if the great star of beginnings
is saying again to me, Come, friend.
How is it I sometimes forget to arrive
exactly where I am, especially in these days
when forgiveness arrives like the cranes
on great wings that charge the air.
These days when love comes crashing in
like western wind, breaking branches
and rearranging the yard, as if to say
it is here to change everything.
Sometimes I forget the world will find me
wherever I am and insist in the language
of willow and trunk and hawk and noon,
home, home, you are home.
The Song Speaks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, longing, loss, love, song on March 4, 2021| 4 Comments »
Lyrics from “Golden Slumbers” by Paul McCartney and John Lennon
I love when my lyric
slips into your thoughts,
when I float from your lips
for hours. Once there was a way
to get back homeward.
Sometimes I even believe
my own lines.
Once there was a way
to get back home.
Sometimes when you sing me,
I have faith in home.
Please pretty darling do not cry.
And yet you do cry
and make me want to forget
I am a song about longing,
a song of loss.
I want to be the song of finding,
song of arriving together,
song of coming home.
I want to be the song
that lies down to sleep
beside your heart each night.
I will sing a lullaby.
I want to be the song
that that makes you breakfast.
The song that dances with you
in the living room.
The song that always stays.