driving three hundred eleven miles—
learning to call every inch of the trip
home
Posts Tagged ‘journey’
One Journey
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, home, journey, travel on August 15, 2023| 3 Comments »
Journey of Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advice, brain, grief, impermanence, Joi Sharp, journey, love, path, wisdom on February 22, 2022| 6 Comments »
with thanks to Joi Sharp
When my teacher told me
Everything we love can
and will be taken from us,
I did not know how she
was preparing in me
a synaptic path.
I understood her words
in the way one understands a journey
by reading a map.
Now, ten years later, with every breath
I travel this path of loss
as so many others have before me,
and yet there is no trail, no signposts,
no destination, and the path changes direction
from moment to moment.
But the path does not feel foreign.
Every turn of it is paved with truth—
Everything we love can and will be taken from us.
Those words now offer
the strange comfort of prophecy
as I wander these trails of impermanence,
stunned with gratitude even as I weep,
alive with loving what doesn’t last,
astonished by the enormity of love—
how love is the red thread that pulls us through,
not a thread to follow,
but a guide that never, ever leaves the path.
Today It Occurs to Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, journey on August 27, 2020| 2 Comments »
Not all journeys require leaving the house.
Just this morning, I followed the hummingbird
as it circled the feeder, then flew to the flowerbed
and slipped its long beak into red nasturtiums.
And last night I wandered the garden rows,
pulling long carrots and thick round beets,
attending to the slow journey of ripening.
And all summer I follow the thin trail of loss,
how it leads me from one sorrow to another
my heart breaking open and then more open
then impossibly more open.
And all this sheltered summer, I navigate moments of beauty—
when I laugh at dinner until I fall off my chair,
mornings when the river runs startlingly clear,
the blue of larkspur, double rainbow over the drive,
the tender silence inside the shouting—
follow these moments like cairns in the wilderness,
that lead always to exactly where I am.
Wanting to Get It Right
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, journey, path, perspective, walking on August 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
Who is this woman so concerned with arrivals?
Doesn’t she know we are writing about paths?
What is her rush to get to the meadow?
What does she think she will find there?
She missed the sunflowers in the garden,
a whole row of luscious bright yellow bloom.
She missed the chatter of the chipmunk,
the hot scent of rabbit brush almost like sage,
the mica glistening like crushed starlight beneath her feet.
She is like one of those trucks on the highway,
a blur, a roar, an impersonal thundering.
Oh, see, now that she thinks she’s arrived somewhere,
now she starts noticing the field,
the crunch of dry grass, the dirt, her own short shadow.
Funny, she looks lost, standing there with her pen and paper,
her longing to find something worthwhile to say.
Should we tell her it’s okay,
that the lack of arrival could be her new point A?
And everywhere she looks, a new path.
One Journey
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged journey, name on August 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Off the Path
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged certainty, journey, path, poem, poetry on July 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
On the path, I am the one
who forgets to look up—
the one who doesn’t see the mountain
because I am focused on the path.
I am the one who fears the dead end,
who worries and obsesses about it,
only to discover it wasn’t an end at all,
just a sharp turn, and the path goes on.
I am the one who fears she’s not good enough
for this path, who wonders if there’s another path
somewhere that I am supposed to be on.
Everyone else seems to know where they’re going.
I can’t even seem to spot the signs.
Confused, I stop, which allows me
to notice the weeds gone to seed,
notice their tiny white globes, notice
how good it feels to stop
and notice them. I am the one who
cares so much about the path and still
fails at staying on it. In fact,
the more I pay attention, the more
I am the one who forgets there is a path.
Bushwhack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hiking, journey, lesson, poem, poetry, road, walking on February 2, 2019| 2 Comments »
I followed the road as if it were a teacher.
It went up, I went up. It turned, I turned.
It was a long time before I relearned
that the road is not the only way to go.
The first day I walked away from the gravel,
I fell. That was the day I learned
staying upright is not what’s most important.
One Continuation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged journey, poem, poetry, wonder on November 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »
returning from the journey,
as if the return isn’t also
a journey—
as if this journey called home
isn’t also riddled with wonder, surprise
One More Chance to Struggle Gracefully
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, journey, poem, poetry, whistling on October 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »
That’s what cars are for,
said the master whistler, when I told him
I could not whistle.
I auditioned for him
with my one-note draft,
and he said, Yeah, I
can work with that,
which I took to mean
that I could work with that.
Eventually, he said,
you’ll arrive at a tone.
And so I whistled
four hours as I drove north,
starting with Moon River,
Skylark, and Paris in Springtime,
then, demoralized
by lack of progress,
turned on the eighties station
and created a breeze
to accompany INXS, Howard Jones,
Prince and Tone Loc.
The difference between
what I heard in my head
and what came from my lips—
so much beauty
missing. And just
before arriving at my own
front door, I had somehow
begun a gusty rendition
of When the Saints Go Marching In,
and thought to myself,
yeah, I think I might
be getting it, but five
verses later laughed
at my longing for success.
When I opened the door
of the car, I felt the wind
meet my face. I let it
carry the almost notes
and decided tomorrow
I’d try some Moondance
and Fever before Hot Cross Buns,
knowing how it takes
a lot of wind
before one’s ship comes in.
All This Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged journey, path, poem, poetry on September 4, 2017| 2 Comments »