I don’t know how, after your son has died,
you go on, she said, and I don’t know either,
but this morning, I walked through the field
where he used to drive the Gator, pulling his
friends behind him in an old red canoe, all
of them howling their laughter, shrieking their joy,
and I stood in that empty field and wept, my heart
in halves, and a scrap of old joy slipped through
the crack, and I laughed, tears streaming, I laughed.
Posts Tagged ‘joy’
Ongoing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, laughter, memory on August 20, 2025| 1 Comment »
When I’m Feeling Serious
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, joy, laughter, mother, wildflower on July 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
Curled up beside me,
my girl studies the laugh
of a man she admires
and the more he guffaws
the more she guffaws,
which of course,
makes me laugh, too,
and soon the evening
is a riotous bouquet
of giggles. I gather
the sound in me like a field
of wildflowers, a pleasure
that reseeds itself,
lovely as lupine, common
as blue flax that thrives
along even the busiest road.
U PICK
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged innocence, joy, news, strawberries, time on June 22, 2025| 6 Comments »
STRAWBERRIES, said the roadside sign,
big red letters on a white-washed board.
We followed the signs to the farmer’s field
and wandered into long green rows,
one stiff blue carton my hands. Such blessing
to kneel on the ground and gather
ripe red sweetness with our fingertips,
to pull the small fruits into our mouths
and hum as their sun-warmed flesh turned
to juice on our tongues. How simple
to smile, thinking of nothing but finding
the deepest red berries, praising
our backroad luck. Oh innocent minutes
spent only in joy, forgetting for a moment
how everything is fragile. Later, the news
came crashing in. Such difficult news.
But for those moments, we lived in such
generous sweetness, such abundant
red sweetness, such wholly shared sweetness,
the kind of sweetness so real that while
you’re in it, you slip out of time
and mistake sweetness for eternity.
Revival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, evening grosbeak, falling in love with the world, joy on May 27, 2025| 2 Comments »
For so long he lingers on the edge
of the feeder, as if he knows
I am willing to stand here for hours
to marvel at his bright yellow forehead,
the white patch on his wings—
such an ecstatic thing to watch
this first evening grosbeak
to ever find a way to our yard.
Aren’t you beautiful, I tell him.
He raises his head. I swoon
with raw joy, with full-bodied
love for this bird, for this day,
for this world with its wings.
Was it really just this morning
I was weeping?
Mud-Puddling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterfly, joy, mess, mud on May 4, 2025| 8 Comments »
after James Crews, “Mud-Puddling”
Those were the years we gathered dark mud in our hands,
slathered it all over our legs, our bellies, our arms,
our faces, our hair, until only our lips and eyes
were not coated in thick river mud.
We did not know then we were mud-puddling
the way butterflies do, gathering essential nourishment
from what is fusty and damp and messy.
Is not pleasure one of the greatest nutrients of all?
How I loved going from clean to filthy, the slick mud heavy
on our skin before it dried and cracked in the sun.
We’d peel it off in chunks or in flakes,
then jump into the brown waters
of the Gunnison River and emerge less caked
but no less dirty. Perhaps this was training
for the heart, learning to let the self roll in the mess,
to treat the great muddle like a playground.
Then I still believed in a shiny version of happiness,
but fifteen years later, haven’t I come to trust there is something
nourishing in death, in ache, in turning toward fear—
something necessary I need to sustain me?
It is no surprise when I read that butterflies seek not just mud
but dung, rotting fruit, urine and carrion.
Oh heart, bless the wings of your intuition.
You know it does no good to fly only toward the beautiful.
Still it is not easy to choose what is messy, disordered, dank.
Perhaps it helps to remember now how much joy we once found
in that cold, blackish mud. When we were fully covered, I remember
how brilliant they were—our flashing eyes, our smiles so wide.
This moment I want to remember,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bathing, friendship, joy, seeing, vulnerability on April 29, 2025| 4 Comments »
when my friend filled the giant
white stone resin tub with great mounds
of frothy eucalyptus lemon
scented bubbles and water as hot
as she could stand and I walked in
to find her laughing, laughing!
head thrown back and eyes alive
with her great luck to find herself
here “in a millionaire’s bathtub,”
her giddy giggles ricocheting
around the tiled room, radiating
gladness and naked joy, and though
only her head was visible above the bubbles,
I saw her, really saw her as herself,
the uncurated version—that glorious
creature we so seldom chance to glimpse
in each other. As I walked away, her voice
followed me up the stairs, full-throated
and citrus bright as she sang out
her bliss, the words indecipherable,
the tune a tune I’d never heard before
but somehow knew by heart.
Celebrating Timothée Chalamet’s Birthday … Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, daughter, joy, mother, Timothee Chalamet on December 28, 2024| 1 Comment »
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
—Mary Oliver
I could not have imagined
how every year my daughter
and I would bake a chocolate beet cake
for Timothée Chalamet’s birthday—
nor could I have foreseen
how it would thrill me—
this sweet ritual in which we celebrate
the life of an actor who brings
us joy. Joy needs such a meager
door through which to enter and reveal
itself. A door I can’t imagine
with a handle I can’t find
except by loving the world
and the people in it.
I would have thought loving
made the heart more full.
And it does. But it makes
the heart more spacious, too,
a place where anything could happen,
even what is real: a daughter,
a mother, and hours in the kitchen
singing and stirring, the scent
of chocolate, earthy and nutty,
floating in the air like a song.
Kinetic Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged billiards, daughter, joy, mother, physics, science on December 21, 2024| 5 Comments »
for my daughter
It’s perhaps like billiards,
in which the cue ball collides
with another ball, and the kinetic
energy passes on to a second ball—
that’s how it is when you,
in your joy, collide with me in a hug,
and your joy passes on to me,
my every molecule vibrating
as your bliss becomes my bliss,
your joy becomes my joy, until
I’m dizzy with it, spinning with it,
rolling around the room with it,
in fact it’s what I was made for,
to be moved by you, by your joy.
After Wendy Pulls the Fool for Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fool, joy, tarot, Wendy Videlock on December 18, 2024| 7 Comments »
The Fool doesn’t ask
what is past the edge—
what some might call
The Wrong Direction.
He simply smiles
and continues toward
the beginning—
Barefoot. Grinning.
A rucksack the size
of a honey hive.
A walking stick.
Pockets full of maybe.
A shining, walking
sacred energy.
All day, I feel as if
I might step off
the world. All day
I put my faith
in laughter. All day
I notice how in moments
of terror lives also
the chance
to be extravagant
with my joy.