for every desk,
there was a doorway—
the threshold
now your teacher
Posts Tagged ‘learning’
One at Graduation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, learning, school, teacher on May 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Through Her Discipline of Kindness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged discipline, friendship, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, learning, legacy, teacher on January 13, 2026| 12 Comments »
for Kyra
She brought her cello to the desert,
playing long, slow notes to cactus,
canyons, the night, knowing
it matters to bring music
wherever you go. She taught me
to sing in the face of fear,
even when the mountain lion
held her with his amber eyes.
She taught me to plant
a weed in a pot and wait
with great patience to see
what kind of flower might bloom.
To bring something chocolaty and sweet
to share with others wherever you go.
She taught me to share scars,
even when they make others wince.
To use more garlic,
to read poems to strangers,
to dance barefoot in the grass.
I did not want to learn how quickly
a life can go from vibrant to silent
to gone. Did not want to learn
how great a hole one human can leave
in so many lives. But I am grateful
for all that she teaches me still—
the beauty in the ache, how to hear
the missing laughter in the silence,
how to read the letters that
don’t come anymore, how love
is so much bigger than a poem,
how she is no less herself now
than she was when she was here,
how even in her absence
she still teaches me discipline.
The Apprentice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, learning, slowness on December 1, 2024| 18 Comments »
I would like to receive direct training
from my cat in which I learn to move slowly
from room to room in search of pools of sunlight,
learn to immerse myself in a new rhythm
that has everything to do with darkness and warmth
and nothing at all to do with a clock. And purr about it.
Purr because purring feels so good in the body.
I want to restore my connection with silence,
to let something small, like a ribbon, completely
captivate my attention. Want to be utterly
absorbed by the way light moves. I want more skill
in being curious about my own wildness,
to be less civilized, more alive. For her part,
the cat seems disinterested in this new arrangement.
She rubs against my leg before wandering off to nap.
I follow her, letting my shoulder graze the wall.
Can you go slower? I ask myself as I move newly
through space. It feels ancient, this pace.
Nothing like the bustle I normally keep.
I let myself move toward curling in,
toward sleep, and for a dreamy, real moment,
I know slowness as a primitive right,
an invitation to intimacy with the world,
the kind of skill that can’t be rushed.
The cat nuzzles into my side.
And for a moment, some emptiness
I hadn’t known was there is filled.
Spanish 2, Lessons 23, 24, 25
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginnings, endings, learning, Spanish, spring on March 31, 2024| 11 Comments »
The whole time I walk in Spring snow and wind
I am prompted by a lovely man’s voice
to repeat many phrases I’ll need in Spanish.
I learn, for instance, to ask how many blocks
I must walk to get to the bank, only to learn
it is closed on holidays but will open
the day after tomorrow. I learn
how to ask if you are good at playing tennis
and insist you are better at playing than I am
(which is certainly true). I learn to say Wednesday
is impossible, but perhaps we can play tennis
Thursday morning because it is a holiday
and we do not need to go to the office.
And, in the midst of learning how to talk about
what our kids are studying in the university,
the lovely man teaches me to say, Es mejor
terminar una cosa antes de comenzar otra—
and I understand I am like the recalcitrant
child in the Spanish lesson, starting out
to be a musician and then deciding to be
an engineer. So often I do not end something
before beginning another. It is not so easy
in this life to draw clear lines. At least
not for me. It seems I am always saying yes
to something new while in the midst
of something else. Like the fact I’m learning Spanish
while still finishing the introduction and end notes
for my next book. Like planning my garden
while still walking in snow. Like loving this world
while I am in the midst of deep grief.
I don’t know how to say in Spanish
there are so many ways to do it right, this life.
What doesn’t live on in matter or in memory?
Doesn’t everything tendril out to touch every other thing?
Haven’t they proven long after a butterfly wing
is done flapping in China it will affect the weather here?
Is anything ever really finished, I wonder,
as lesson twenty five ends and in the snow
has become rain that even now is finding the roots
of the spruce. And all I see as I look around now
are more and more beginnings.
The Teacher
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, Joi Sharp, learning, student, teacher on February 21, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Joi Sharp
In the garden of wisdom,
she did not step in as head gardener.
Instead, she tended her own planting.
She showed me how to weed
the stories we tell ourselves,
how inner spaciousness
is the richest soil for growth.
She did not do the tilling for me.
Inquiry became my hoe.
She offered questions free
as rain water.
And when it was time to sow,
from her own rows she gathered seeds.
She did not do the planting.
She handed the seeds to me.
Growing Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circling, god, learning, orbit on March 13, 2023| 14 Comments »
after Rainer Maria Rilke, “I Live My Life in Growing Orbits”
I am circling what is true,
with my arms open I am circling,
with eyes wide I am circling,
I am circling that which has never changed
and that which is always changing.
I circle with eyes full of tears, I circle
as I sing along with voice breaking,
lips praising, I circle with chest
expanding, feet eager, my body
exhausted, my whole being charged,
and the only words on my lips are thank you.
I am circling with the certainty
I can only do this right. I circle
the spaces I’ve circled before
only nothing is the same. I circle
the nothing at the center and the everything
which has come from it. With every step,
I see something new, something
I could not have seen before. With every step
I understand and lose my understanding.
I am circling all that can never be known
and all I long to know. I am circling
in quickening spirals and in lazy
orbits and I circle for the joy
of circling. I am circling you, God,
as Rilke invited me to do, and
still I am learning who you are,
so I circle and I circle and I circle.
Sewing Circle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circle, learning, needle, sewing, thread, women on June 8, 2022| 7 Comments »
It feels right to learn the stem stitch,
to embroider bright floss through the cloth,
to move the needle and watch words emerge
in long and ropy loops.
It feels right to sit at the oblong table
with my daughter and women I’ve only just met,
where the talk is light and we laugh
as bright thread slips through our fingers.
There are so many ways the world
is falling apart. So when the teacher explains,
We step and we float, as a method for moving
from one letter to another, I take notice:
How easy it can be to change, to start something new.
How easy to connect what seems separate.
I look across the table where my daughter
concentrates on her message in lavender and blue.
What a gift to learn these lessons together.
Not too loose. Not too tight. Stay consistent, smooth.
It feels right that I stitch my skirt into the project.
Some things can be undone.
O sweet, the lack of drama, the stakes so low.
How sweet, to share this moment, heads bowed.
Because fear, because sorrow, because hopelessness,
bless these circles where we come together
and make beauty. We step and we float,
step and float, linking one moment to the next,
we step and float, meeting the world
and each other one stitch at a time.
Still Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, butterfly, learning, story on December 9, 2021| 9 Comments »
Tonight when I see a photo
of myself from almost thirty years ago,
I stare at the woman in white lace
the way a butterfly might stare
at that strange nibbling larva—
curious. It doesn’t occur to me
to tell her about what will happen.
I flit by as she stays on the wall.
She’ll learn soon enough. I breathe
into my wings. She’ll learn.
Learner
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amy Irvine, edge, friendship, knowledge, learning, walking on October 28, 2020| 1 Comment »
Just because I don’t see the edge
doesn’t mean the edge isn’t there.
Walking with Amy through the scrub oak woods,
I had no idea that just to my right
was a deep canyon. I could have walked on for miles
believing the world was flat
if she hadn’t suggested we walk off the trail
to see the gaping chasm.
It wasn’t that she was trying to teach me,
she was just doing what she does—
straying from the path to see what else is there.
Now I am looking everywhere for edges—
in every conversation, in every thought.
Now, I am looking at everyone as a teacher.
I have no idea what they see that I don’t.
From the Cottonwood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, cottonwood, learning, tree on August 16, 2020| 4 Comments »
I want to hear the song in the old cottonwood tree
outside my window, the tired xylem, the weary phloem,
the rough hymn of the ancient bark. I want to know
how, despite fatigue, it continues to flourish,
to push new cells through the tips of the twigs,
how it thickens despite long drought.
I want to hear the dark lullaby of the worms
as they move through the loyal roots—
what do they know of persistence?
And the dappld shadow that continues to grow,
what might it teach me of love?
Let me be the student of the limbs
that broke off in the wind. Let me listen
and listen again. There is too much
I think I know. I’ve been singing the same
familiar songs so long I began to believe
they were gospel. Oh, how I’ve loved the psalms of green.
Let me sing them while they last. And then, may I learn
to love the song of emptiness, song of surrender,
song of whatever comes next.
Temple
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged learning, place, present, the moment on August 8, 2020| 2 Comments »
It’s not because anything special happened.
Though I’ve sat in silence in desert canyons
and climbed iron rungs on overhanging cliffs
and sung in cathedrals and sung in snow caves
and hiked naked through juniper and
washed dishes in inner city shelters
and wandered the cobblestones of ancient villages,
today, sitting on the couch in my own house,
I finally understood with my whole body
how life puts us in the places we need to grow.
And so I made tea. And sat a while longer
with the windows open, listening to my longing
as it wove with the sound of the sprinklers and the oven fan
and I said to the moment, what do you ask of me?
Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, learning, life, shadow, tree on July 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today the shadows
teach me to love
what is dim,
the sweet respite
of obscurity
when the sun
is too much
and a tree
yields its shape
so that I might slip
my clumsy heat
out of the bounds
of the vertical world
and find instead
a cool dark pool
on the ground,
as if I’m a boat
that has discovered
at last
a slim calm eddy
in which I might rest.
This is perhaps
the way we start
to meet our deaths—
sliding into the relief
of these dark, quiet
channels.
Still Learning What It Might Mean
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged learning, poem, poetry, skiing, wax on January 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dave drips the hot blue wax onto the ski
and tells me how it will help the ski meet the snow.
“The cold snow is sharp,” he says, “and aggressive.”
Today’s wax will harden the base of the ski.
I think of the world and all its sharpnesses,
all its aggressions. We humans
are not so unlike the snow. I’ve been fooled
so often. Perhaps my soul needs blue wax.
No, I think, what the soul really needs
is more like the scraper he pulls out,
and the brushes of copper, horsehair, and nylon.
What the soul really needs is a scouring.
He explains that the scouring allows
the cuts in the structure to be exposed
so that the skis don’t suction to the snow.
Is that what all these little cuts are for in me?
To keep me from getting stuck? Later,
as I skate in the race and feel my ski glide
across what is cold, I thank Dave
with my visible breath.
There are so many ways to relearn
how it is we meet the world. Today,
the lesson is a ski, a scraper, some wax,
a man with an iron, and acres and acres of snow.
The Fencing Teacher Suggests
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aggression, fencing, learning, love, opposites, poem, poetry on October 16, 2019| Leave a Comment »
You’re hesitating, says John from behind his mask.
Each time I invite you to strike, you wait. And he’s right.
Each time before I extend and lunge, I drop my sword.
It’s crazy. I tell myself not to do it, but every time
he motions to strike, instinct says: drop the sword.
John, I say, I’ve trained myself not to be aggressive.
When people are vulnerable, I do everything I can
to make them feel safe. It helps that John
is gentle. It helps that he beams at me a genuine smile.
Don’t think of it as aggression, he says. If someone
you love gives you the signal to touch them,
aren’t you always ready to meet them then?
And I am. Think of it as an invitation to touch.
I wonder how many stories I’ve hardwired into me.
Thou shalt not hurt. Thou shalt not strike.
Thou shalt not stab another with a sword.
I wonder that I struggle so instinctively now
when this is so clearly a game.
John drops his sword. I extend, I lunge.
I touch his chest through his silver vest
with the tip of my sword, then retreat.
Good, he says. Good. Again. Again.
Is this the way we learn all the rules
we have written for ourselves?
By breaking them. Is this the way
we might choose to meet our opponents?
By loving them.
En Garde
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fencing, learning, poem, poetry, self discovery, unlearning on October 9, 2019| 3 Comments »
Keep distance, the fencing teacher says,
and by this he means, stay close enough
to your opponent that you could, at any time,
extend, lunge and attack with your point.
All my life, I’ve tried not to keep distance.
All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid
the attack—from either side. And now,
with my silver lamé and my one white glove
and my face safe behind metal mesh, I dig
to find the part of me who craves engagement,
who seeks a bout, who wants to threaten
my target and exploit their vulnerability.
Keep distance, he says, and I understand
that this is how I show up for the game.
This is how I meet not only the opponent,
but, perhaps for the first time, myself.
The Big Lesson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, learning, poem, poetry, teaching on August 5, 2019| 14 Comments »
I’m still learning.
—Michelangelo, on his deathbed
Sometimes I feel as if
I missed something.
Something big. The sermon
that would forge a love affair
with the divine.
The history lesson
that would teach me
how to forgive myself.
The webinar that would train
me in doing the right thing
at the right time. If only
I had read the right book
or met the right coach
or drunk the right tea. If only.
I don’t believe it, not really,
though sometimes
I wish it were as easy
as auditing a class.
Perhaps that is why
I write poems.
I’m taking notes.
Because sometimes
the truth slips into them.
Because it’s surprisingly easy
to forget.
Finn Practices Spanish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growing, learning, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, son, Spanish, tree on November 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And though he struggles to conjugate estar
and though his adjectives precede the nouns,
he’s doing it. He’s telling me about una foto
and all its themes—and though the words
are like strange spices in his mouth—paprika
y cilantro—and though he insists he hates it,
there is a tender sinceridad in his voice, like
a tree seed, perhaps, una semilla, that has
some vague idea of its potential, but is still
so trapped in its seed-ness that it is intimidated
by trees. And whatever part of me that is todavia
una semilla recognizes itself. How frightening
to see all that we do not know, to stand
beneath it like the shade of a giant tree,
to know ourselves as small and still stand straight.
My son finishes his descripción, then smiles
at me, and in his smile, I somehow see
the roots, the greening leaves, the trunk
as it reaches up doing what trunks are made to do.
Circle Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children, circle time, learning, lie, poem, poetry on November 9, 2017| 3 Comments »
The teacher is singing, her voice
a bluegreen moss that softens the room.
I don’t know why I make a fist,
but I let my left hand land
on the back of the boy beside me.
It makes a sweet thump, as if
he is hollow inside. And I like it,
the sound of that thump.
And I do it again. And I do it
again, my fist a warm stamp
on his silence. The teacher
is singing, her voice a leaf
that whirls through the room,
and I hit him again, not
to hurt him, but because
the thump sounds so good.
The teacher stops singing.
She looks at me and the boy
and asks us what is happening.
He is hitting me, I say,
and the boy does not say no.
She sends him to the corner
to sit alone. This is when I learn
to lie. Beside me, the space
on the rug is silent as wool.
Vivian Learns to Ride a Bike
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bicycle, learning, parenting, poem, poetry on July 16, 2015| 5 Comments »
After the training wheels come off
she wobbles and crashes and jumps up
to cry again. She pushes her helmet back
into place and rubs her hands of the gravel.
I force myself not to offer advice. Some
things must come from the center.
Vivian picks up the bike and straightens
the wheels, finds her place on the seat.
The pedals are not too far for her to reach.
She is ripe for this skill, and mostly willing.
She jerks on the handlebars, over rights
herself and falls again. There is such a thing
as too much right. She once told me
that if you do not learn to cartwheel
before you are eight, then you never will.
Something in the vestibular system, I wonder.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know
there are certain windows that close.
An eye that is unused in the first few months
of life will never learn to see, though
its parts are all in working order. Perhaps
there are windows for the heart, too,
so that if by a certain age it does not learn how
to get up and try again after it has fallen,
it will stay down and never learn how
to love beyond itself. Come on, I say under
my breath, you can do it, I say to my daughter.
And then out loud I say, Yes, yes, dear girl,
you are doing it. You are doing it, I say
as she falls, falls again, and gets back up.
No Guarantees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, learning, poem, poetry, unlearning on February 22, 2014| 7 Comments »
It turns out I have loved
learning too much.
Star charts. Yeast. Omega 3s.
Tear fluid osmolarity.
Particle and wave.
I want so much to make sense
of things. Like why we have
so few words for smell.
Why only some birds sing.
Slave to purpose, slave
to the why, slave to the need
to know. I want to compare,
to contrast, to chart, to rank,
to graph, to prove. As if
that might tell me my place
in the world. So I pin down facts
like butterfly wings, splayed
and precise and dead.
Meanwhile the world expands, overflows,
moves beyond all that I think I know.
Let me live on questions. Let
me lose my absolutes. Let me be willing
to abandon my certainty. We are that
which breaks down the walls
of the learned—let me know this,
and unknow it, too.