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Posts Tagged ‘inner landscape’

Places I Long to Go

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »


 
 
Every time we pass this spot on the dusty river trail, 
my daughter gazes across the water to the other side, 
shaded by cliffs, where moss grows thick and deep. 
I would love to sleep on that moss, she says, 
as her eyes go gauzy, her voice grows soft.
Living in high desert, as we do, mossy places are few.
As a girl, I had in my bedroom a whole wall covered 
with a mural of a Japanese garden, its gray rocks
mostly covered in green. I, too, dreamed of stepping 
into in a place so lush, so verdant, so alive even rocks 
proved fertile ground. To find that kind of fertility inside me—
inviting what is sensual, vital, to flourish in the barren, 
desiccated places in my heart—that is my new dream. 
But it is not always easy to let in the dark. Not always easy 
to let what is hard in me be broken down so something 
might grow. There are places I long to go with my girl. 
Some are nearby, just across the stream. 
Some, breath close, are much harder to travel to.  
 

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As It All Comes Down

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
On the day his brother died,
we walked, mostly silent.
The old aspen trees were tall
and dead. In a meadow, we found
a single yellow flower where almost
all else was brown. The air carried
the wild scent of elk, dank, sweet.
And the wind made of dry grass
an epiphany of sound.
But it was the quiet landscape
inside us that was most changed.
In a voice so bare I could hardly hear,
he said, These are the days
that bring us closer together.

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Inner Landscape

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 31, 2025| 2 Comments »

 
 
There is inside me a field of pink paintbrush,
lush and unbounded—a riotous blush
no one has planted. It’s rooted and spread
in the places where I am most open.
Nodding pink. Waving pink.
Glorious flourishing stems of pink.
Even when I’m walking concourse T. Even
when I’m at the bank drive through.
Even when I’m waiting at the stoplight.
Even when I’m dull, still I am filled
with lavish meadows of dusky pink,
mounds and mounds of soft dusky pink,
great mountainous expanses of deepening,
opening, surprising pink, the kind of pink
that becomes more pink the longer you look.
It survives even the harshest winters,
always returning with wild and unmanaged
beauty. No one tends it, and yet it thrives.
Not that I deserve it. It’s a damn wonder, really,
a meadow of pink so generous, so vast
I’ll never stop finding new paths.

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Mostly Invisible

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 11, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
So imperceptibly they show up,
the rings of a tree, and yet,
there must be a moment when
the dark line of the ring is not there
and then it is. So, too,
today, I swear I could feel it,
the emergence of another ring
inking itself around my heart
as my love for you, again, grew.
No one else will ever be able
to count these rings. No one
will know how love grew.
But I do.

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