Sometimes when I fall long enough,
I stop hoping I will stop falling.
In those moments, when I no longer
wish for the wings of an answer,
or for the solid ground of resolution,
such beautiful surrender
in the dropping through space,
in submitting to the weight
of what it takes to hold a soul.
I wonder if Icarus felt it, too. Perhaps,
if only for a moment, he knew
the rush of air, the thrill of not trying
to inhibit the tumble, the gift of knowing
self as free fall, the skill of giving in,
every prayer coming out as sound of wind.
Posts Tagged ‘hope’
Acceleration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hope, icarus on May 29, 2021| 4 Comments »
One Dedication
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flat tire, hope on April 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
hope gets a flat tire—
stubborn, the heart
starts walking
Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, heron, hope, wasteland on January 5, 2021| 6 Comments »
Nudged by hope
the heart rises
from exhaustion.
It’s like the great blue heron
I saw this morning
flying up from a wasteland
on broad gray wings
with strong, slow beats
for a moment charged
with grace
before—did you
see this, heart?—
it chose to land again,
bringing all its beauty
to the desolate place.
This poem is published in the wonderful ONE ART Poetry Journal
Thanking the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, hope, news, plants on December 29, 2020| 7 Comments »
Tonight, for a moment,
my world shrinks to the size
of the Christmas cactus,
which, despite the storm
that even now blusters outside,
has opened dozens of voluptuous
red blooms, as if to say,
Here I am, blooming midwinter,
and you can do it, too.
There are days when
the news makes me doubt
the value of blooming—
when the headlines alone
twist hope into a crumpled,
unrecognizable heap.
But then some snippet
of beauty finds me—
a scarlet flower,
a handwritten letter—
and breaks any scale
I would use to interpret
the world. It’s not that the terror
goes away, no. But for a few
moments, I am blessed
with the certainty
that even the smallest beauty matters
and that it is my job
to meet life however it appears—
petal, bomb, sweetness, pain—
grateful for my humanness,
vulnerable and tenuous
though it is.
When the Interviewer Asked Me What I Most Wish for the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, light, wish on December 8, 2020| 2 Comments »
“We have a lot of things we are in the midst of. What do you think this moment is inviting us to understand? Where would you like to be in spring? Where would you like to see us as a world be?”
—Kara Johnstad, Voice Rising Host, Om Times Radio
For a sliver
of a moment
I cradled
the whole world
in my thoughts—
every president,
peasant, seamstress,
beggar, businessman,
acrobat, child—
every one of us
a vessel
and I knew
in that instant
the power
of a wish—
as if hope
has a foothold
in reality,
as if a slim glimmer
is inevitable
foreshadowing
of unstoppable radiance.
With quiet clarity
I knew exactly
what I wish
for each of us—
I told her, too—
but I will refrain
from telling you.
Instead, I’ll hand you
the question
so you, too,
might make a wish,
so that you, too,
might glimmer,
might beacon.
Making Applesauce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple, autumn, hope, preservation on October 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
To buy three boxes of apples
is to believe the world
will go on long enough
that we should preserve
the goodness of autumn.
Perhaps it is practical
to cook the fruit,
to store it in jars,
but I prefer to think of it
as hope filling the house
with its sweet red perfume,
hope filling the shelves
with the memory
of sunshine, of bloom.
One Arriving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arriving, door, hope on October 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
It Just Might Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, love, strangers on August 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
Everywhere I go, I find them—
people who bring love to the world.
Reading the headlines,
I sometimes think love is dead
and humans are brutes
and we may as well all give up.
But every time I leave home,
I meet pedestrians who wave
and women who give understanding nods,
and men who offer to pay when the person
in front of them is short a few bucks.
People hold doors for each other with a smile
and I’ve seen folks pick up trash
off the sidewalk and go out of their way
to not step on a beetle or a worm.
My friend Wayne says,
We have to love the world
to want to save it,
and sometimes, I think
it just might happen—
though every day unspeakable cruelty
happens on these same streets.
Oh this world.
Even as I feel my guard go up,
I see strangers chatting on the corner
as they wait for the bus,
notice how their laughter
threads through the noise of the day
like a song, like a kite.
Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, trail on April 4, 2020| 6 Comments »
Hope has holes
in its pockets.
It leaves little
crumb trails
so that we,
when anxious,
can follow it.
Hope’s secret:
it doesn’t know
the destination—
it knows only
that all roads
begin with one
foot in front
of the other.
Sign of Inner Spring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, pussy willow, softness, vulnerability, willingness on April 3, 2020| 9 Comments »
Sign of Inner Spring
Every year the pussy willows
astonish me with their willingness
to be soft in a time when the rest
of the world is stick-ish and harsh and bare.
Sometimes softness is the key to survival.
I search for it in myself—the courage
to shed the hard shell I thought would protect me,
to shuck the hard shell that no longer fits,
and I marvel as something new emerges,
soft as pussy willows, something essential
I can bring to the world,
this vulnerable, practical hope.
This Desperate Week, the Orchid Reminds Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bud, Corona Virus, flower, hope, orchid, renewal on March 19, 2020| 3 Comments »
It looked dead, the orchid.
After long extravagant glory,
the blossoms dropped quickly,
one by one. The stem shriveled,
dried. Every time I looked at it,
all I saw was what wasn’t there.
People said it would reset.
They said it needed rest,
a little bit of extra care.
But eight months later,
the plant still looked dead.
There are times we lose hope.
Times when our eyes tells us
we’re fools to believe beyond
what we see here now.
But from what seemed
like nothing, a long dark stem
appeared, lined with buds.
And what a fool I was to doubt,
to let the eyes lie to me.
Already they’ve remembered how to see
what will be. Already they remember
how to see the beauty
of exactly what is here.
One Before Evening Comes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, cranes, hope on February 23, 2020| Leave a Comment »
in the dry field of hope
the rattling bugle of sandhill cranes—
the sky alive with great wings
One Indestructible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, no, yes on February 6, 2020| 2 Comments »
just when the sledgehammer of no
takes its best shot,
finding in me an invincible yes
How It Goes with Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, grief, hope, loss, tenderness, what is on January 15, 2020| 7 Comments »
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Eventually a burning hope |
Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, hope, loss, paradox, poem, poetry, science on December 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Hope is, perhaps, a quantum thing,
a paradox, like Schrödinger’s cat,
simultaneously alive and dead.
Today, I wandered the snowy field
and the icy banks and the shadowed wood,
calling the name of my sweet gray cat.
If I could find her now, I’d see
she’s either alive or dead.
But in this moment of uncertainty,
she’s both alive and dead to me.
I’m tugged by both possibilities as I wade
through tall dry grass. Oh damn that hope,
and bless it, too, how just a candle-measure
opposes a whole tower of unfounded certainty,
sends me out into the blizzard
calling her name, listening.
Perhaps a Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, flame, hope, poem, poetry on December 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »
It’s not that way with all things. Some that go are gone.
—A.R. Ammons, “Eyesight”
And so it is that
even after the candle flame
is gone, yes, after
the flame is gone,
the carbon and unburned
wax vapor in the smoke
will still combust when touched
by a match, will travel down
the smoke and reignite
the wick. It sounds
like magic—looks like it,
too, a small ball of flame
dropping bright through the air.
So tonight when
my friend sends me
a video of just such
a marvel, I play it
again and again.
And all the burned out
wicks in me stand up
just a little bit straighter
and I stare at them
to notice if there is
still any smoke, and
my god, if I don’t just
run to the drawer
and find me
a box of matches,
their sticks brittle,
their tips as red
as hope.
Slowly Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged experiment, hope, poem, poetry, rats, science on September 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Most days I wake with hope,
which is to say a willingness
to keep trying. Just tonight
I read the study about rats
where they put them in glass jars
full of water. Most of them quickly
stopped swimming and drowned,
even the wild rats renowned
for being good swimmers.
But with the next round of rats,
the researcher from time to time
would put his hand in the jar
and lift the rats out. Just knowing
such a lift were possible was enough
to make the rats continue to swim
and they survived. And I wonder,
then, whose hand is lifting me these days,
reaching just often enough into my jar?
Sometimes When I Despair
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Beethoven, hope, impossible, poem, poetry, possibility on August 29, 2019| 5 Comments »
There are no barriers for a person with talent and love towards work.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Everyone knows Beethoven
went deaf, could hardly hear
by the time he composed
the Moonlight Sonata.
I think of him sometimes
when I want to believe
in impossible things.
Like great harmony
born out of dead silence.
Like love in full bloom
despite drought.
Like finding a pocket in time.
Like hope, growing like mint.
In the Hummingbird Nest Outside My Window
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, hope, hummingbird, nature, nest, poem, poetry on July 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
From eggs
the size
of small
jelly beans
come these
two beaks
that peak
beyond the
edge—today
they save
me, these
two tiny
wingless things.
Even this
bruised heart
remembers how
to marvel.
Some People Choose to Believe, Some Don’t
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, hope, lie, parenting, poem, poetry, Santa on February 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The hope that is left after all your hopes are gone—that is pure hope, rooted in the heart.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast
And so tonight when my daughter says to me,
Mom, are you Santa Claus? I ask her if it
would make a difference, and she says, Yes.
I don’t want him to just be a hoax for making
kids be good. And I say, I’ve never thought of Santa
that way. I think of him as generous. And magic.
And she says, But magic’s not real, and I say,
Some magic is. And she says, Well, it would
make sense. You always know what we want
because you’re the mom. And I tell her,
It is my great privilege to work for Santa,
and she says, What do you mean? And I say,
Well, you know, buying presents. And she says,
Why do you think he didn’t bring us a big present
this year, like he did last year? And I hear
in her voice, against all fact, hope,
the hope that lingers when hope is gone,
a pure hope, the hope that goodness is real,
that there is generosity beyond comprehension,
that some magic is real. She rolls over in the dark.
I keep hope rooted in my heart.