Because it brings her enormous joy,
this pink-petalled flowering quince
that grows just outside
my mother’s back door,
I long to give her a thousand
such quince bushes,
all of them long-blooming,
voluptuous, thornless,
all of them lining her walk.
Though the other part of me
wants to honor how
it takes only one plant
to bring her such elation.
I am instantly stunned
with the wisdom of enoughness,
astonished again at how praise
needs nothing more than a crumb.
Somehow letting go of a thousand
imaginary quince bushes floods me
with a emptiness so great
I fall more wildly in love
with a single pink flower
and the luck-drunk awe of my mother.
Posts Tagged ‘joy’
Lessons from a Small Bush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enough, joy, mom, mother, quince, sufficiency on March 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
What Lives On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, mariachi, memory, music on March 13, 2024| 10 Comments »
It didn’t last, but there was that afternoon
when we were walking side by side
down the middle of the street,
all four of us straddling the center line,
different musicians every few blocks.
It was Father’s Day. The alpine sun
was hot but not unbearable, and we stopped
to listen to the bright brass of the mariachi band.
My kids were not embarrassed when I hummed along
to Guantanamera—or at least they did not tell me so.
We laughed about I don’t remember what, but
I remember the laughter and the light,
easy feeling I had, a full-body certainty
everything was going to be okay.
I remember how our shadows
stretched out on the street in front of us
like a future I could not read.
I fell in love with the shape of our shadows,
not knowing how soon there would be only three.
These moments of gladness—
like notes in the summer air, they don’t stay.
But they stitch themselves into our being,
a goodness that lives and lives,
sometimes hidden for years until
it sings back to life with joy so real
I can almost feel the sun on my back,
can almost hear all of our voices
join the chorus for La Bamba.
Even now, alone in my quiet room,
my smile is as real as the tightness
in my chest, as real as those trumpets,
real, that blue, blue sky.
In Less Than Fifteen Minutes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, joy, nature, outside on March 6, 2024| 5 Comments »
As easy as stepping out the door,
this chance to drop the self who does,
the self who walls and calendars and phones,
the self who dishes and bills and desks
and become the self that becomes—
become whispering field and bright
squawking jay and full silence rising
mid squawks. Become sun-puddled,
sky-muddled, breeze-ruffled
heartbeat, spruce-reaching,
blue-winging, leaf-whirling heartbeat,
snow-melting, cliff-lifting,
grass greening heartbeat, become
heart warmth beat heart breath beat
heart sun beat heart cloud beat
heart heart heart heart
as if this time I’ll never forget.
Loving You No Matter What
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, healing, helplessness, joy, loss, rainbow on March 3, 2024| 10 Comments »
for Dan
Still, this longing to help.
I want to write the impossible poem,
the one that would make what is terrible
less terrible, want to give you
something useful as a tool belt,
practical as long division, hopeful
as the grace that rises out of our losses
as surely as sunshine rises
at the end of our valley.
There was that cold March morning,
years ago, when you grabbed my hand
and pulled me toward the street
to see a rainbow of ice crystals
glowing bright in the east.
An ice rainbow! you shouted,
your joy so feral, so real it became my joy.
God, how I needed it.
That. I want to give you that.
*
One at the Harp & Flute Concert
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged classical music, flute, harp, joy, music on March 2, 2024| 6 Comments »
like honey and sunlight
the music tonight—
my body, a thousand eager mouths
The Broken Heart Goes Dancing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bluegrass, dancing, heartbreak, joy, music on January 26, 2024| 8 Comments »
at The Infamous Stringdusters show
Give me a night made of strings,
a night that is plucked
and strummed and bowed and picked,
a night with a driving, ecstatic music
and nothing to do but be danced
by the night as if each string of dobro
and fiddle and bass is attached
to an arm, a foot, a hip,
to the curling edge of an upper lip—
and even the broken heart is tugged
from its chair by bronze-coated strings
until it’s an open and rhythmic thing
that beats for the bliss of it, beats
for the song of it, beats
for the joy-swaying head-shaking lift
of it, beats because that’s what a heart
is for, and for hours the night
pulls every string, and the heart
beats out more, please, more.
Memory, Like a Passport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, memory, snow on December 27, 2023| 8 Comments »
That winter night you streaked
down the walkway in your undies
and jumped into the snowbank,
I think of it now,
your raucous laughter,
your feral joy
as you emerged frosty and grinning,
I think of how you wore your elation
on the outside,
not hidden up a sleeve,
not tucked in a pocket
where no one could see.
It didn’t save you, your wild joy—
perhaps that’s not what joy is for—
but some nights it saves me.
I still smell the clean sharp cold of it,
hear the glee-giddy,
mirth-ringing choruses of it
like an anthem to a country
that has changed its borders
and still, somehow, lets me in.
One Almost Impossible, And Yet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, joy, kindness, plum on July 31, 2023| 1 Comment »
at the end of a day
crowded with kindness and joy
one perfect, ripe plum
At the Aladdin’s Lamp Cabin on Molas Pass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camping, joy, singing on July 3, 2023| 4 Comments »
Let me remember this night
dancing in the deep woods—
the patio our stage
the stars like sequins
the full moon a spotlight
and every song a love song
when sung with love
and my god, did we sing,
after all that talk of heartache,
yes, until our voices were near gone,
did we sing.
A Letter to the Graduates
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, grief, joy, loss, paradox, suicide on June 2, 2023| 12 Comments »
Delivered at the Telluride High School Graduation, June 2, 2023 I don’t know how to make sense of the story of how Finn is here, although he is not. How he lives in the deep soil of memory— still running with you through the playground your bodies bright streaks of joy, cartwheeling across the green valley floor and tap dancing on this stage, traveling with you to Mesa Verde and Ecuador and building computers and graphing equations and writing code, swinging golf clubs and debating politics and dressing as a skyscraper in the Halloween parade. Laughing in the hall and crying in his room. I don’t know how it is we can crumple with grief and still rise with hope, love, celebration. And yet we do. At the same time he is missed, you, friends, grow more fully into yourselves each one of you a sapling reaching not only toward light but also reaching with your roots through the dark, the necessary dark that anchors us, keeps us rooted in what’s real. I don’t know how it is we come to know our own lives better because he took his, but we do. We learn to trust that despite a great wound, we can thrive, the way a tree grows around a gash, trunk still strong, though a scar remains, leaves still unfurling to gather sun. I don’t know how we speak of sadness and joy in the same breath, but we do. Joy in coming together. Joy in knowing heartbreak invites us to become more spacious, more kind. Joy in forging new dreams. Joy in remembering the world as it was and at the same time growing so bravely, so beautifully into the world that is. |
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, geese, innocence, joy, spring on May 17, 2023| 18 Comments »
All fluff and down,
the goslings bumble
in the damp green grass
and whatever was hard
in me softens and whatever
was clenched becomes loose
and I give in to the unruly joy
of watching baby geese
just learning to move.
How many other small moments
of triumph do I miss?
Oh heart, remember this.
Evidence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flower, hope, joy, orchid, patience on March 9, 2023| 15 Comments »
After almost two years
of growing only leaves,
the orchid that sat
on the back windowsill,
the one I have dutifully
watered and whispered to,
the one I had finally
resolved to throw away,
sent up a single spiraling stem,
shiny and darksome green,
and I who have needed
years to hide, to heal,
felt such joy rise in me
at the site of tight buds,
the kind of irrational joy
one feels when something
thought dead is found alive,
not only alive, but on the edge
of exploding into beauty,
and now it doesn’t seem
so foolish after all, does it,
this insistent bent toward hope.
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breakfast, dream, grief, joy, mess, mother on February 18, 2023| 17 Comments »
Before I woke, my son and I
were eating breakfast—
a beautiful brown-crusted boule,
warm from the oven,
and he was slicing it and making
a giant mess of it,
the bread tearing and smushing,
and we were laughing—
his head was thrown back
with the joy of making a mess,
carefree and goofy and foolish.
Crumbs everywhere.
God, how I loved him
as he smashed a hardboiled egg
onto the uneven slice.
How I loved him
as he stuffed his mouth
with the botched bread and egg.
How I loved him as we laughed
and laughed and laughed.
How I loved him when I woke
and he was dead,
his absence making the love
no less beautiful, no less true,
our laughter no less mirthful
in the empty room.
By Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, joy, loss, photograph, sunset on December 9, 2022| 11 Comments »
So familiar, how the dusky pink sunset
glows above snow-covered mountains,
The color blesses me as I walk alone
while Eva Cassidy sings in my ear,
I know you by heart,
I know you by heart.
My son has been dead
for over year, and now by heart
is the only way I know him.
No longer by touch, by sound, by scent.
Eva sings about how old joy
lives on and on,
and I breathe into the truth of it.
Two years ago I sent my son photographs
of this same dusky pink sunset
over snow-covered mountains—
there was joy in sharing it with him
and I feel that joy now as I talk to him,
my words coming out as visible air
as I speak to what cannot be seen.
Eva sings it again, a descending line,
I know you by heart.
I am grateful for the certainty
that rings through me in song.
He is here. As is joy.
Though he is gone.
One Unexpected
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, joy, trust, unexpected, wings on October 25, 2022| 3 Comments »
at the edge of understanding
growing wings—
now, the leap a joy
Ripening Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, joy, persmimmon on October 15, 2022| 10 Comments »
Joy grows, sometimes, like a persimmon.
A moment might begin like a lifeless-looking stick
shoved in the ground and ignored and, somehow—
perhaps through the fine soil of friendship—
perhaps just through luck,
it becomes a giant tree with branches
laden with the bright orange, honey-ish fruit,
so much fruit you have to scrape sweetness
from your feet just to walk in the door.
No way, you think, can joy can go from barren
to bountiful so quickly. But just today, I woke
with an ache and within an hour found myself
with friends under a tall persimmon tree
picking ripe, warm fruits.
We gathered the globes with our hands,
those reddening ambassadors of joy,
pulled the lusciousness to our mouths,
laughed with our good fortune,
and bit into the jam-like flesh—so delicate,
so unashamed of the fact it wasn’t always this way.
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, loss, opposition, paradox on October 2, 2022| 3 Comments »
How do we live at the traumatic center of death and life?
—Rabbi Irwin Kula, Original Thinkers Festival 2022
A single moment contains
the scent of warm pumpkin pie
and the gravedigger’s spade,
the splatter of blood
and the smooth honeyed flesh of mango.
Did we ever believe we would live
this life unscathed?
Oh, the stab of loss
and the clean, mineral perfume of rain.
Oh, the ache of loss
and the deep golden sunflowered yes.
Oh, the carving of loss
and the sweet subtle tang of apples in fall.
Oh, the ache, bless the ache,
oh, the beauty, the loss,
oh, the beauty, the loss, oh, the beauty.
Remembering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, mother, river, rock, the thing itself on September 12, 2022| 7 Comments »
for Finn (9/11/04-8/14/21)
I threw rocks in the river today.
Not because I thrill to throw rocks,
but because I love to remember
how you thrilled to throw rocks.
How you squealed at the spray
and clapped your hands at the sound
of the quiescent surface being broken.
Your joy was the pure joy of life itself,
life that knows itself through tossing,
through splattering, through squealing,
life that longs to stand on the bank
and throw rock after rock after rock.
Joy was never in the rock itself,
it wasn’t even in the splash,
nor is there joy in the rocks today.
But there is joy in feeling close to you here.
Joy in the memory of you being so alive.
Joy in remembering your smile,
your hands flying up in delight.
Joy, even, in the longing for you.
I throw rock after rock. I remember.
Small Stuff
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, nature, small things on June 21, 2022| 8 Comments »
It can be so small, what saves me.
Like the crow that arrives every day
in the same green spot in the yard.
Like the baby bunny that lives
beneath our porch who locks eyes
with me every morning.
Like skinny dipping with Corinne
in a frigid alpine lake. Bite of radish
just picked from the garden.
Scent of wild roses on the trail.
It does not make sense that pleasures
so small could somehow stand up
to a ransacked heart, and yet
when I hear the whir of hummingbird wings
or see the tiny purple of a Lady Slipper
rising out of the dirt,
I notice the dogged joy in me,
how it glimmers against the dark
like the shooting star I saw tonight,
long and brilliant and red,
or like the owl in the spruce trees
that with only a handful
of low and sonorous notes,
redefines the night with song.
Contact Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, marriage, skiing, work on April 1, 2022| 10 Comments »
He cleans the base of the skis
with a fine, steel brush to remove
the old wax, his body swaying
above the ski, tip to tail, tip to tail,
so the micro hairs on the base
will lay down in the direction of travel
on snow. A fine copper brush
cleans it more. His movements
are quick, precise, a dance
that now comes naturally.
The only music is the sound
of the brushes, the sound
of his breath. There is no
laughter, no joking,
not even a smile, but
sometimes on winter nights
I walk toward the light
in the garage and watch
his body intent on its work,
and I feel the quiet joy
he finds in preparation
and the work of foundation,
and his joy seeps into me,
soft as the darkness
that holds the garage,
deep as the space
that holds us all.