A bookmark is a kind of promise.
You can go back, it says,
I will mark this place
where you have been,
this place where you
will want to return.
I want a bookmark
for every moment of your life.
Want to mark, for instance,
the day when we walked the streets
and listened to music.
The day when you held your sister
as she cried. The countless nights
when I sat at your bed and sang.
Days picking cherries.
Hours swimming the river.
Lighting fireworks year after year.
I notice what a bookmark is not.
Not eraser. Not pen.
Not a chance to change the story
or to live it again.
It simply invites us to resee
how not one bit of life is ordinary,
invites us to look back and marvel
at the treasure of each moment,
even as the pages keep turning.
Posts Tagged ‘life’
The Grieving Mother Bookmarks Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, bookmark, grief, life, loss, mother, time on July 3, 2022| 4 Comments »
Revelation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, death, freedom, life, skate skiing on March 27, 2022| 10 Comments »
After skate skiing on groomed track for months,
following only the preset path, today
I wake early enough to ski on the hardened crust
of spring morning snow. Suddenly,
the whole valley is a playground. And
it’s freedom. Freedom to move in any
direction. Freedom to loop or climb or follow
the river. Freedom that seeps into breath, into smile,
into my understanding of what it means to be alive.
And the whole time I skate and pole
and propel myself over snow
I hear an inner refrain from Romans:
And death shall have no dominion.
Not a still small voice, but a resonant boom.
And I, so alive in this sweet slip of time,
know that though my son has died
and my father has died, here I am,
carrying their love, and alive. Alive!
Alive through the winter.
Alive though I grieve. Alive. Alive as I skate
through willows and aspen and wide open white.
Lungs burning, legs striding, heart beating
hard in my chest. I know myself as breath
and return to the wholeness that never left.
Skating across the frozen world, the sparkling crust,
I live into this life that so wants to be lived,
this life that asks everything, everything of us.
On a Clear Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hold, life, nature, shadow, trust on March 1, 2022| 6 Comments »
The way the field holds
the shadow of the cottonwood,
this is how life holds me.
Holds me, no matter my shape.
Holds me with no effort.
Holds my darkness and knows it
as weightless, as transient,
as something that will shift,
disappear, return, and shift again.
It never says no to me.
I am still learning to trust life, to trust
no matter how I show up, I will be held.
Trust that my life is not a problem.
Trust that as much as I am the shadow,
I am also the field.
Revival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, Mirabai Starr, mother, son on December 14, 2021| 12 Comments »
The day your son died, the person you were died, too.
—Mirabai Starr
Death came to her
as a blue sky day,
as a feral scream,
as an ambulance
with no need
for its siren.
Death came to her
saying, “Ma’am,
you don’t want
to see your son
this way.” Death
knew what it
was doing when
it erased everything
she’d thought
about how to meet
a day, when it scraped
her of who
she had been
and left her barren.
It was habit
that made her
brush her teeth,
routine that helped
her drive the car.
But it was life itself
that inspirited
her, slipping
like starlight
into her every
dark cell, life itself
that whispered
to her death-bent heart,
You are not done
yet with your
loving.
*
this poem has been published in ONE ART
Two Days After I Left the Museum of Modern Art
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, ekphrasis, klimt, life on December 6, 2021| 8 Comments »
after Hope II by Gustav Klimt
I am still thinking of the pregnant woman
on the fifth floor in room five hundred four
in a gold and jewel-toned Byzantine gown
with her eyes closed and her head bowed
down toward her swollen belly. Has she
glimpsed the gray skull attached to her womb?
Is this why her eyes are closed? Did she
somehow guess at what I now know—
that to say yes to a birth is to also say yes
to the death of that child—how the end
is in every one of us from the beginning.
It is right the soon-to-be mother
is nearly naked. This is what birth
and death do to us—no matter how
rich our clothes, we are utterly exposed—
not a damn thing to protect us
from our impermanence. I have fallen
in love with her, this mother to be—
in love with the curl of her fingers,
in love with the flex of her wrist,
in love with her flat and ornate robe,
in love with her delicate face,
and in love with her ripening shape—
this is how the human story goes.
Death hides in all our robes.
It’s the only way to live.
Instead of Shutting Down
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, death, grief, life, recovery, small things on November 24, 2021| 10 Comments »
Cast your lot with all small things.
—Sharon Corcoran, from her new poetry collection The Two Worlds
Today I cast my lot
with the tiny tea leaves
giving their all to hot water.
I cast in with the light touch
of my brother’s hand on my shoulder
and the slight whimper my mother makes
when she finds in the closet the gift
my father had bought them for Christmas.
This, the first full day of life
without my father,
a loss so big
that all I can meet
are the smallest things—
candle flame, scrap of song,
orange butterfly wing.
They lead me like crumbs
toward courage, toward life—
and so I join in with the teeny blue flowers
still blooming on the rosemary bush.
I cast my lot with the thin creak of hope
heard only when tears are falling,
with the faintest gleam of love
only able to be seen in the darkness.
Porosity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, dream, life, porous, soil on October 19, 2021| 10 Comments »
And so I learn I am porous—
learn I am not just dust,
but soil. Everything
moves through me.
I am not the container
I believed myself to be,
but a portion of earth
more other than self.
In a dream, I was told,
The body is permeable
to life and to death.
I want to remember
that voice. I want to remember
how it feels to be earth,
to know the self as both living
and dead.
I want to remember how absence
has never felt more holy,
how its sacredness is rivaled
only by the holiness of what’s here.
No separation, said the voice.
Remember.
I want to remember
the infinite dark inside
each infinite moment,
how both soil and time
are planted with stars.
Oh sweet teachings
that I cannot understand,
how they spiral out
like galaxies inside me,
how they slip
like loose soil through my hands.
Digging Potatoes, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged changing, garden, life, love, parenting, potatoes, son on October 3, 2021| 10 Comments »
Dear friends,
It has been seven weeks since I sent you a poem–seven weeks since my son chose to take his life. Thank you for all the ways you’ve supported me in this time–prayers, emails, letters, gifts. Though I have been unable to respond to all your kindness with personal notes, please accept my enormous gratitude. Thank you. Thank you for all the love and kindness I have felt surrounding and infusing me–I have never felt alone. I am so grateful for you.
I think I am ready to continue the daily sharing. We’ll see how it goes.
with love,
Rosemerry
Digging Potatoes, 2021
I am not the woman I was
a year ago when my son and I
harvested potatoes. Today
I must look like her—
bare hands in the dirt,
sunhat on. But she did not know
the deep loss of losing a son.
Perhaps she’d imagined it.
That is why she did everything
she could to keep such a loss
from happening. But the woman
I am today knows all too well
what I cannot control.
I plunge my fingers
into the cold earth
and talk to my son
as if he can hear me.
I miss you, I say. And I reminisce
about all the other years
we did this together. I ooh
at the size of the potatoes,
hold them up as if he can see.
What does love care of absence?
Love grows, despite death—
it roots in each cell and insists
on tendrilling, touching everything.
In the middle of the night,
a voice commanded me to remember:
Life needs us to live it.
All day I puzzle over the message.
All day I lean into the words.
I say them out loud as I pull out
potatoes, ask my son what he thinks
it might mean. No reply. He has become
one with life now in a way
I cannot yet understand.
And so I breathe into it, this chapter
of loss, this life needing me to live it.
All around me, inside me,
I notice how so much is changing, notice
in each moment, a new invitation.
With the Stars All Around
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, control, dream, letting go, life, sleep, trust on August 4, 2021| 5 Comments »
I wish you the peace of sleep,
your breath a canoe
that carries you
toward the next moment
without any need
for you to touch the oars.
How easily you arrive.
Oh, to trust the world like that—
trust you will be carried,
not just in sleep,
but in waking dreams,
trust no matter how high the waves,
the skiff of grace
has a seat for you.
And oh, to let go of the oars—
there is no steering
toward what comes next.
One Lifetime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, death, life, red wing blackbird, spring on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the way to the graveyard
taking a few detours through spring—
trill of red wing blackbirds
The Woman Who Wears Only Solids Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, clothes, life, youth on February 12, 2021| 2 Comments »
That was the year I only bought clothes imported from Bali—
baggy pants in a geometric black-and-white print,
long swishy flowery skirts in bright blues
and thin dresses with intricate knot designs.
I don’t know what became of them all—
Good Will, I suppose. Not that I want them back,
but I miss the girl who felt like a treasure in them,
who wore them lightly, who danced and ran in them,
who twirled in the middle of a field
so the fabric would ripple out and would fall down
in the grass and not worry about the stains.
I miss the girl who shrugged out of those clothes
every time she was near an alpine lake,
slipping nakedly into the icy clear water.
I miss how she wore her life back then,
like something exotic, something beautiful,
something new she couldn’t wait to try on.
One Stuck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, life, stuck on February 9, 2021| 2 Comments »
Forecast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, loss, Neruda on October 11, 2020| 6 Comments »
Nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
—Pablo Neruda, “October Fullness,” trans. Alistair Reid
And if we can keep nothing of what we have
then let us love more right now. Naked as sunlight
and unapologetic as ripe apples. Let’s invent
new compassions and conjure new kindnesses
out of what seems to be dust.
And if life is only a borrowing of bones,
then let us use them well while we may.
Just today I ran through the corn maze
and marveled at the joy of being lost.
Bless these borrowed femurs and spines.
Bless these borrowed skulls.
And let us love more right now.
Though the forecast is for loss.
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.
After Hearing the Heartbreaking News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, sadness, shoes on May 8, 2020| 15 Comments »
Tonight, life wears me like
an old pair of shoes. The kind
it can slip its feet into
without untying the laces.
The kind of shoes a mother
would probably throw out
thinking of the act as a favor.
Life is tired, tonight,
of running. Doesn’t want
to dress to impress. It just
wants to know that it goes on,
especially tonight when
events seem to point
to the contrary. And so
though I am down at the heel
and shabby, life slips into me
as if life depended on it.
And we walk in the moonlight,
cry. And howl. Then take another step.
And then another.
Making Apple Turnovers with my Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, directions, life, parenting, time on April 30, 2020| 4 Comments »
My own fault for not reading all the directions
on how to make puff pastry from scratch—
how after the shaggy dough phase, you shape
and then chill. And then roll and fold and roll
and shape the dough. And chill. And then roll
and fold and roll and fold. And chill. Then roll
and slice. And chill. And fill. And chill. So often,
mid project, I find myself thinking I would never
have started this project had I known
how long it would take. Flour on my pants,
on the floor, on the table.
Six hours later, nearly midnight, my daughter
and I baste the chilled triangles with water,
sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar,
then put them in the oven at last. We are tired,
but the house fills with the sweet scent
of baking apple, the home-rich scent of crust.
What is life, but a big project we are in the middle of?
A project I’m in no hurry to finish.
In fact, these days are like puff pastry dough,
guiding me to take it slow, slower, to rest
between steps. I haven’t read all the directions.
For now I am laughing. It’s so much more
than I thought I was in for. But I’m here,
hands ready. I’m willing to work, to clean up the mess.
- photo by Finn Trommer
Re-Seeing the Obvious
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, life, miracle, poem, poetry, pregnancy, what is living this life on November 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
When pregnant, it was clear
I was along for the ride with a miracle.
Sure, I could eat organic broccoli,
walk and eschew caffeine,
but that was just taking care
of the vessel. Life itself
was doing the real work.
Imagine my surprise today
to realize I’m still along for the ride.
How did I ever kid myself
that I was in charge?
And oh, the bliss today
to notice anew these hands,
these eyes, these feet!
What joy to see them again
as the miracle they are,
to offer them in service to life.
They Say It’s the Best Bloom in Ten Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bluebonnets, death, flower, friendship, life, love, poem, poetry, wildflowers on March 29, 2019| 6 Comments »
She wants to go see the bluebonnets, she says.
This is after she tells me they’ve said she has three months to live.
And I want to find her vast fields of bluebonnets,
acres and acres of white-tipped blue bloom.
And I want to send her more springs to see them in,
more days to live one day at a time. I want to remove
the pain in her belly, the pain that aggressively grows.
I want to make deals with the universe. Want to say no
to the way things are. I want to tell death to wait.
I want to tell life to find a way. I want to hug her
until she believes she’s beloved. I want to give her
the pen that will write every brave thing
that she’s been unable to say. There are days
when we feel how uncompromising it is, the truth.
How human we are. There are days when the bluebonnets
stretch as far as the eye can see. There are days
we know nothing is more important than going to see them,
a billion blue petals all nodding in the wind, teaching us to say yes.
Details
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, gratitude, life, loss, poem, poetry on March 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I fell in love, today, with the black
and blue marker stains on the table
made by the two-year-old boy—
he colored in the circles he’d drawn
with so much enthusiasm that the ink
seeped through the paper
and into the lemon cream paint on the table
where no amount of scrubbing could remove it.
It wasn’t so much the stain though, no,
and it wasn’t the color. What I fell in love with
was the way his mother didn’t see
that the table was ruined. She saw
that he did such a fine, precise job,
that he took so much pleasure in the coloring.
And when I apologized for bringing markers
that didn’t easily wash, she looked at me
with so much surrender and said,
“On a day like today,
who could worry about a table?”
It was yesterday they found the dog
waiting beside the car.
It was this morning the skier’s body was found
in a massive snow slide.
It was all day, through the stupor of loss,
I fell in love with the shape of empty branches,
the scent of black tea, the sound
of my son’s voice, fell in love
with the grace in the way my friend shrugged
when she saw the table, the way she hugged
her son. She offered me chocolate from London.
We ate the squares slowly. All day the gray edge
of grief made every little thing
more precious, more sweet.
The Diagnosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being present, death, doctor, life, poem, poetry on January 5, 2019| 3 Comments »
Well, he said, I’ve seen it before.
You have all the symptoms.
Fairly common, actually.
You have life. It’s terminal.
I will give you, oh, about
forty years to live. Some people
really pull through, make the most
out of what they have left.
As he walked away, I listened
to his footsteps until all I could hear
was the sound of my own breathing.
God, it was beautiful, a tide, a river.
And that plant in the corner, have you
ever seen anything so delicate, so green?