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.
Posts Tagged ‘joy’
What Lives On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, mariachi, memory, music on March 13, 2024| 10 Comments »
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.