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Posts Tagged ‘judgment’

Sometimes When I Catch Myself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 17, 2022| 4 Comments »




Sometimes when I catch myself
judging someone else—
a stranger or perhaps a beloved—

I imagine my son and father watching me,
not looking down from above,
I imagine them looking out from inside me.

I don’t worry I am disappointing them—
I feel certain they would be generous with me.
See how human she is, they might say,

loving me despite my humanness,
because my humanness.
In that moment of imagining,

I feel myself soften,
feel my heart unfurl like a new leaf in spring,
feel how possible it is to be generous

with the humanness of myself and others
and the relief it brings.
In that moment, it is easy to be alive.

Easy to notice my annoyance
and be gentle with the self who gets annoyed.
Easy to touch my palm to my heart

and know it as the palm of my son,
the palm of my father,
reminding me how truly I want to walk it,

this path of compassion.

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One Review

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »

asked to rate my satisfaction

from one to five stars—

trying to submit the milky way

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You Wonder How Long this Can Go On

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 17, 2011| 2 Comments »

Beside the frozen pond
there is not much to say.

The black willows coruscating
seem more satisfactory

than syllables. They do not try
to say, do not try to mean,

they simply catch the fleeting sun
and then lose it all—the ice,

the shine, the crystal gloss.
Though they do not think

of it as loss. You are the one
who decides what is lovelier.

You are the one who is moved
by light. Night, it comes so soon,

but it is nothing personal. Not
a symbol. It is night.

You are the one who longs
for sun. You are the one who

would rather be something gold
than the one shivering

beside the pond, the frozen pond,
where even now the wind

is shaking the willows,
it moves across the ice,

moves through the field
while you stand there, silent,

and it will keep moving
long after you have gone.

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