Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘hot springs’

Remembering


All those nights
we’d go to the hot springs.
Once warm,
we’d roll in snow
and call ourselves
sugar cookies
then jump back
into steaming water.
Today, I do it again.
In the untouched snow
beside my shape
I see where your slender
shape is not.
I slip back
into the water.
Everything the snow
has touched
tingles.
Everything your life
has touched
is even more alive.

Read Full Post »

Sitting alone in warm water
with the sun doing what the sun does
when given a clear, clear sky,
everything seems possible.

Imagine, the earth heats this water
before it enters the rounded stone pool
and this seems miracle enough
to make me think that whatever is sacred

in this life might be very, very simple.
Simple as it is, I don’t understand
how it works—just as I do not understand
the heart with its longing to love.

Doesn’t it remember the hurt?
Doesn’t it remember the walls crashing down,
the rubble, the wreckage, the stench?
Doesn’t it remember the long, slow

blossoming of ache? How it unfurled
like the chokecherry tree in the yard—
tiny buds, tiny buds, tiny buds,
larger buds, then bloom! A riot of bloom!

I recently read about frogs, how
if they jump into a pot of boiling water
they immediately will jump out
and survive. But if they are put

in a pot of cold water and the fire
is lit and the temperature increase
is slow, then they will stay in the pot
even though it is getting uncomfortable,

even though it is more and more hot,
they will stay until they are boiled.
And dead. Does the heart learn from this?
Apparently not.

Here I am sitting alone
in warm, warm water, the sun
burning red the skin on my chest,
and all I can think is how good it feels

to be naked, to be warm, to be alive,
and to let the heart love, to love despite.
Oh foolish woman. Oh pleasure
in being a fool, how it burns.

Read Full Post »

%d bloggers like this: