The woman in 7D reads me an essay
she wrote for her husband in 7E
about how they first met at a party
when his hair was dark and thick.
He is bald now. She is gray, as am I,
but in those moments before take off
we three thrum with the thrill of that first
uncertain glimpse, and I enter the Hollywood
party with them, him in yellow suspenders,
her riding high on recent success.
They were strangers twenty minutes ago,
but now I am cheering for them—
for the people they were almost forty years ago
as they went out for coffee, then talked
through the night. Cheering, too, for who
they are now, no longer strangers, but Ellen and Bruce,
a writer and retired architect, who will likely
never remember meeting the woman in 7F,
but for tonight, something unspeakably lovely
happens as we fly over Chicago and Detroit
and we are woven into each other’s lives
for a few hours, a momentary plot full of laughter,
tenderness, and a spontaneous, shimmering joy,
while all around us the world goes dark.
Posts Tagged ‘joy’
While Sitting in 7F
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airplane, connection, joy, story, strangers, travel on June 13, 2026| 4 Comments »
In a Name?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged destiny, joy, name on March 20, 2026| 8 Comments »
In the moment when a person names a child,
Gail tells me, it is said a sacred wisdom
shines through the namer that connects the child’s
soul to their character, infusing the new being
with what they need for this life.
In these days of heartache and horror,
I think of my mother holding me wet in her arms
for the first time, when she whispered syllables
that charged me with joy—that sincere, love-drenched
moment out of which my whole life has bloomed.
Perhaps this is why I cry when Gail tells me
about the magic of that moment. It’s as if mom
gifted me an underground spring that flows
even when the land around it is dry. Even when
it doesn’t rain. For years. Still, that water flows.
!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ecstasy, exclamation point, joy, punctuation on February 26, 2026| 6 Comments »
for Mark Burrows
And there, in your letter, several doors,
all of them in the shape of an exclamation point,
all invitations to slip myself through
their dark slender lines and into
the realm of ecstasies—world of oh!
and wow! and yes! and love!—
into the sensory kingdom of blisses
that is always here, and yet somehow
I miss it, dulled as I am by the ellipses
of shoulds, the endless commas
that join me to the litany of frying pan,
dish soap, calendar, telephone,
toothbrush, postage stamp, pillow.
But oh! The wide spiraling of eagle this morning!
The deepening rose of the clouds at dawn!
My daughter asleep in her room!
Oud! Ginger! Dark crimson yarn!
Emptiness! Cool breeze! Your letter!
What joy this morning when I saw
all those tall, slim exclamation marks
and recognized them as the doors they are,
each one the chance to say yes! Yes!
to vibrating with elation! Yes! to the bright
bubbling champagne giddiness that rises inside
because wing! Because spring! Because sun!
Because pillow! Because toothbrush! Because breath!
Because orange! Because toes! Because you!
Ongoing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, laughter, memory on August 20, 2025| 1 Comment »
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.
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.
Of Course I Am Grateful, And
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, feeling it all, grief, joy on December 12, 2024| 10 Comments »
Forgive me if, as we wade through
December’s blue shadows,
if, as we pull the wood toboggan
across the basin of field,
if, as we wander through spruce,
as we traverse the crystal petals
of hoar frost, forgive me if, on this most
perfect day when I am so deeply
in love with my girl and my husband
and the day itself, forgive me if
as we cut down the finest,
most symmetrical Christmas tree
we’ve ever found, if in the midst
of beauty and luck and laughter and joy
I also feel inside me the ache
for the boy who would now
be a man who is not
with us here. Forgive me.
It’s all so beautiful. And still
this sorrow. How they mix together
like vinegar and pure water—
completely dissolved into each other.
I couldn’t begin to tell you what it means,
this tear.
After the Barely There Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, love, snow, whole heart on November 14, 2024| 16 Comments »
It happened. The tiniest perfect stars
fell from the sky and into the yard.
Dozens fit on a single brown cottonwood leaf.
There were millions of them. Millions!
An uncountable cache of crystalline stars.
When the sun rose, I ran from shadow
to shadow to witness them before they melted,
joy rising with every star I saw.
Within minutes of morning, they were gone,
but no sorrow came from the loss.
There is no name for this kind of love.
All day, it has lingered, the thrill
of bringing my whole heart
to the moment without ever once thinking
of holding anything back.
Changing Rhythm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anapest, joy, loss, meter on October 4, 2024| 8 Comments »
At the edge
of the field
was the bank
where the boy
used to stand
and throw rocks
for the joy
of the splash
and now
his mom
stands there
alone
sometimes
she throws
a rock,
surprised
each time
when the joy
of the splash
is still there.
Falling Asleep to the Sound of My Daughter Giggling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, joy, laughter on July 31, 2024| 6 Comments »
Whatever in me feels sodden,
soiled, weighty, it slips from
my body, as if her laughter
is rain until all that is left in me
is sky.
There Is This Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, home, joy, music on June 20, 2024| 12 Comments »
with the full moon rising
and a large bird of prey
gliding spirals in the sky
and my husband on my right
my sweet friend on my left
and the two-person band
transforming sorrow into joy
just by singing it in harmony
and giving the song their everything,
and maybe that’s what is ours to do—
to give ourselves wholly to a moment
as if we are the singers and life the song,
so I give myself to the low summer sun
and the dust on my feet,
to the pucker of lime
and the tears of my friend,
give myself to the ache that never leaves
and the relentless beauty that ever arrives,
and the more I give myself to the world,
the more the world rushes in
and says home, home, home,
you are home.
For Easter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, dawn, easter, eggs, happiness, joy on March 31, 2024| 4 Comments »
We drop six small,
bright-colored tabs
into six glass cups.
Add vinegar. Water.
And my girl and I
make plaid eggs
and striped eggs
and eggs painted
with feathery strokes.
We sing along to country
songs, and joy colors me
like dawn colors sky,
a beauty so fleeting,
but while it lasts,
it lights the whole world.