after “Stone” by Charles Simic
I cannot make them out,
these strange writings
on my inner walls.
Each time I feel closer
to deciphering the marks,
it’s as if they rearrange
themselves into new
more mysterious lines.
Some part of me deeply
wants to read them,
to know their secrets.
She takes out her eraser,
her pencil, and begins
the translations again.
Some part of me sits
easily in the midst of all
I do not understand.
She watches the swallows
trace shapes in the air
with the dark inky tips
of their wings.
Posts Tagged ‘language’
Soul Searching
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, soul, swallow, translation, unknowing on July 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Untranslatable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, language, silence on July 8, 2026| 4 Comments »
The language of grief is silence.
—Maggie Anderson, “What Grief Does”
No one can translate the language of grief.
No verbs properly express how it collapses
past, present and future into a single tense
in which all becomes unswimmable wave
and at the same time immovable stone.
No way to explain how in my grief lexicon
the word cello can only be spoken in sob.
How the single word shadow is somehow
an entire prayer, equal parts praise and lament.
How there are as many translations for loss
as there are losses, and each phrase mutates
into infinite local dialects spoken fluently only
by the individual who grieves. So perhaps
it is true, the language of grief is silence—
a mother tongue we are all gifted from birth.
Though sometimes the language of grief is wail.
Sometimes sniffle. Howl. Murmur. Hum.
So different, this language, for everyone.
And every moment, a new nuance unfolds.
It’s a wonder we understand each other at all.
Except we do. We share it, this language
we can’t possibly translate and yet we know its
expressions by heart. For this, we offer each other
our ears, knowing full well we can never
wholly understand, knowing full well it matters
that we listen anyway to gurgle, moan, silence, cry.
The Arrival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hospitality, kindness, language, travel on June 5, 2026| 2 Comments »
After I drove six hours
she welcomed me at the door
of her home
with a pair of slippers
and a glass of water—
there are many languages
I want to learn to speak fluently.
Kindness, most of all.
Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, ineffable, language, paradox, silence on June 1, 2026| 8 Comments »
It’s because to try to describe this feeling is
to render it instantly dull, flat.
It’s like when you see a rock on the bottom
of the river—all shimmering and bright—
but the moment you bring it to the air
to share it, what seemed precious
becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,
the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot.
And so you learn to be quiet, to let your syllables
float away like dry leaves. What is heaviest
stays. Does not wash away. Is polished by friction, years.
Sometimes you meet others in the river. What shines
shines. Together you stare, stunned by the damn beauty.
Maybe you hold hands. Watch the light as it plays.
Shh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, lilac, scent, silence on May 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
So soft and sweet the scent
of this lilac’s first bloom
I stop trying to praise it
and instead breathe it in—
the eager vibration
of hummingbird wings
says everything.
The Reflection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, language, mirror, reflection, tick on March 31, 2026| 6 Comments »
It was late evening. I was sitting on the couch, the purple one my husband made, when I felt the small tickle traveling from my forearm to my wrist. Not wearing my glasses, I held out my arm for my husband to look. “What is it?” I asked. “A tick,” he said, his voice flat, matter of fact. He pinched it in his fingers, then took it to the counter and crushed it with the bottom of a water glass. I had had a good day, listening to a woman speak about how she could still be compassionate toward her mother after years of abuse. I had gone to a dinner in honor of my husband for difficult work well done. I was proud of him and said kind and true things about how I had seen him grow. The skin where the tick had been continued to tickle. In fact, I felt the light prickle of tick legs walking on almost every part of my body. I had to take everything off. I stood in front of the mirror and saw what wasn’t there. No tick. Nor the body I once had. It was not easy to look. I asked my eyes to remember it is possible to say something compassionate, something matter of fact, something true.
One Humbling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humbling, insufficiency, language, writing on August 11, 2025| 6 Comments »
writing for four years
still not able to fully describe
that one moment
Noticing the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, holding, infinite, language, meditation, paradox on June 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
When I am most still,
there is something that holds me—
not a being, but a voice,
no, not a voice, but a transmission.
Not really a transmission, no, but a place
with gradations of color, almost like sky at dawn.
Well, no, not a place. More a placelessness.
A placelessness that holds me.
Yes. A placelessness. That holds me.
Or rather, a placelessness that is me.
And is also all that I’m not.
Oh, these words that try so hard to say something true.
They feel so small as they leave my mouth.
Like I’m tossing out tiny pebbles
into the pool of the infinite.
I stare at the tiny ripples they make,
in awe of their insufficiency.
Which is to say I’m in awe
of all that does not ripple.
With awe comes stillness.
The kind of stillness that invites me.
Invites me to notice how utterly I am held.
Water Speak
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodbye, language, lovers, river, water on April 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
When you say goodbye
fill each syllable with the sound
of the river as it kisses the shore
just beyond our window,
then, no matter what words you say,
I will hear the unending waves,
will smell the musty,
earthy scent on my skin
long after the words are gone.
There is home in the way
your words cling to me
like water beads on my skin.
This is how I remember
where I am from.
Evergreen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, memory, tree on January 12, 2025| 8 Comments »
Skiing up the railroad grade
we pause to catch our breath
and from somewhere in the woods
a tree speaks to us in a spruce language
we can’t interpret,
and I am again a young girl
at the edge of the forest,
believing I understand the trees,
the way they call to me,
primal and true.
How did I ever forget?