too tired to wake
too excited to stay in bed—
one bright slant of light
Posts Tagged ‘light’
One Most Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged exhaustion, light, waking on August 26, 2026| 1 Comment »
While Standing in the Field of Fireflies
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, firefly, light on June 25, 2026| 1 Comment »
she felt the gift
of her own darkness
how it uplifts
even the smallest light
as treasure
Homeopathy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle ritual, dark, grief, healing, light on June 22, 2026| 8 Comments »
In the morning,
I light the candles.
With each light,
I say the names.
Each name represents
a blessing that became
a wound that became again
a blessing. This is how
the heart makes of its losses
a salve, touching again
and again the dark
with its own dark, then
adding the smallest of lights
until light is what a heart
does.
So Soon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christmas tree, kindness, light on December 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
An hour after we light the tree,
it’s hard to remember
how the room used to be—
so soon we relax into radiance.
It makes me want to whisper
luminous words, string kindnesses
together like twinkling garland,
hang them wherever it’s dim.
If we all spoke in light,
imagine that glow—how
quickly even the darkest spaces
inside and between us
could become welcoming,
warm, even, imagine, incandescent.
December 14
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, nakedness, sun, survival, warmth, winter solstice on December 15, 2025| 11 Comments »
A week before winter solstice,
we explore in our room a spilling
of low-angled sun, a deep pool
of light the darkness has not
yet devoured. Our bodies,
pale pilgrims traversing the night,
wade in, then dive, surprised
by this warm, naked hour.
Our hearts have been wrecked,
but we yet survive, washed up
like flotsam on this radiant
shore, this place we’ve known
thousands of days before.
But somehow, today,
this bright measure of sun
helps us more truly arrive—
sometimes it’s the unremarkable
gifts that keep us alive.
Walking at Night after the First Big Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, moon, snow, winter on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.
Too Late?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, sunset, time, timing on November 28, 2025| 7 Comments »
By the time we arrive at the cliffside
to watch the sunset, the darkness
has already come. But because
of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands
of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.
And moonlight on the water makes
the blackened surface shine. How often
do I think I’m too late, only to find I have
arrived at just the right moment,
the moment in which there is a beauty
beyond the one I knew to wish for.
Like how, when I thought it was too late
to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its
soft and generous hands. Like how when
I thought I was too late to love, love
bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,
and stayed, the way sunsets never do.
Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,
I came to learn how exquisite, how
lavish, how astonishing, the dark.
Home Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, generosity, home, light, mom, travel on November 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
In a city where we meet,
mom arrives with thin
rye crackers, dill Havarti,
carrots, fresh raspberries,
a tea kettle, and packets
of peppermint tea—all
things she knows I love.
And sipping right now from
the slender, porcelain
pansy mug she wrapped in
clothes and brought in her suitcase,
I listen in the dark of the hotel
to the soft, even luff of her breath
as she sleeps, and inside it
I hear the light of her, the
generous light, the tender light,
a nectary of light, a clear channel
of light that teaches me something
of how to live in these long, cold
volumes of night.
You, the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, hand, light, mother, opening on October 10, 2025| 7 Comments »
I thought the way
to hold you
was by folding
myself around you,
gentle but tight,
the way the hand
wraps around pebble,
acorn, coin,
and now that
you’re not here,
the love no less great,
I stand outside
with my empty,
upturned hands
and understand
opening them
is the only way
to hold light.
How Do I Ever Forget It?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, evening, light, sun on May 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »
That moment that opens
when the evening light
makes the whole field glow
so everything is luminous,
every blade, every leaf, every stone,
even the weeds, even the carcasses,
even the ones who are watching—
not to forget we can also be cruel,
can kill, can lie, can betray,
but oh, we can also be as receptive
as a field in the golden hour,
letting light pour through us until
we, too, are that radiant, that generous,
that willing to be in service to beauty.
Shining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple tree, light, long marriage, love, sun on May 16, 2025| 13 Comments »
Have you seen the way the sun
spills only the teensiest fraction
of its light into the crabapple tree
and yet that is enough to transform
the petals from plain flat white
into radiant luminosity? Sometimes
love does this, too—I am thinking
of the way a woman can wake up
beside another human for thirty-some years,
perhaps she thinks she knows that person,
perhaps she really does, and then,
one morning, she sees them anew,
shining, gleaming even—not
just some trick of the light but
some magic love offers us,
the chance to witness how our
partner is changing, to marvel
at their ongoing becoming, to know
afresh just how lucky we are.
One at The Nutcracker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, daughter, light, mother on December 15, 2024| 3 Comments »
so bright the light you carry—
watching you dance
I, too, am glowing
Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grace, healing, light, reiki on December 14, 2024| 9 Comments »
while receiving Reiki, with thanks to T. V.
For a moment,
there appeared a circle
of golden light,
the way sunlight
sometimes streams
through a gap
in the forest canopy
to form a small shining pool
on the ground.
It wasn’t that I
stepped into this light.
More that the light found me,
and for a moment
I knew what it was like
to be found.
This is perhaps
what grace is like—
when we wander
in the dark, cold, lost,
and the light finds us,
not because we deserve it,
not even because
we have asked for it.
It simply arrives,
and it is ours to receive it,
to know gratefulness,
even astonishment,
and to let it inform
what we do next.
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, night, opening, opposition on October 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
I feel it before dawn—
the longing not only for light
but for the vast embrace
of the dark,
the way it links me
to the farthest reachings
of the universe,
the way it holds
each dull planet,
each luminous star,
holds me with no question,
no reservation,
holds all I love
and all I have yet
to learn to love.
With each breath
I bring it into my body,
small sips of dark,
great gulps of dark.
Inside me it swirls
with my love of light,
and this is how the certainties
of the heart are erased—
when I love and ache
in two directions at once—
and what’s left
is so raw, so open,
so alive.
Before Turning Toward Light Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, friendship, healing, light, shadow on September 14, 2024| 6 Comments »
for K
On the altar of healing,
I would place a blade
of grass to represent tonight
lying in the fresh cut lawn.
You in the cooling shade.
Me in the low, warm sun.
The late summer green.
Distant hum of river.
Your tear as it slipped
toward the grass.
Our laughter about
I don’t even know what.
The way the earth held us,
asking nothing in return.
Your knees on my knees
as we curled in for warmth.
Your fear. My fear. Your trust.
My trust. The way we could
say and hear anything—
anything at all—as the world
turned slowly toward dusk.
Yellow Coneflower
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coneflower, flower, light, meadow, metaphor on July 30, 2024| 6 Comments »
If ever I needed
a demonstration
on how to lead
with the heart,
it’s you, coneflower,
that teaches me
how to shine forth
from the center,
how to grow
from the muck.
I am ready to live
the way you do,
wild and abundant,
needing dark and
cold to germinate, but
living to gather light.
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
More
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, pleasure, summer on July 7, 2024| 6 Comments »
Like scratching
an itch
past the point
of satisfaction,
I fall in love
with golden slant
of low-angled light
that floods the field
on this summer night
till every part of me
is raw.
The Promise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, mother, parenting on June 22, 2024| 14 Comments »
We need to be light for one another.
—Parker Palmer
I will be your candle,
your headlamp,
your fireworks, your fire.
Your light bulb,
your lantern, your sunshine,
your flare.
And your lightning strike.
Your neon sign.
Your firefly. Your filament.
Your glowworm. Your star.
Your laser. Your torch.
Your flamethrower. Your spark.
I remember the exact
dark moment I knew
I would devote my life
to being your black light,
your back light,
your flashlight,
your comet, your match.
Your moon. Your ember.
Your pulsar. Your lamp.
Your bioluminescent wave.
Your strobe. Your ember.
Your flame. Your blaze.
Make a Wish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, candle, friendship, kindness, light on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for JS
No cake and no you.
Still, I light a candle
on your birthday
and notice the way
one small flame
changes the feel
of a whole room.
I think of your light
and how many
gather around it,
how quietly you invite
the shadows to dance,
how gently one person
can change the world.