Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘longing’

Dear Heather,

on William’s birthday

There was a time before we lost our sons,
a time before the long walks in the frozen woods,
a full-bellied time when we cherished how they grew.

Today the snow came again, at last,
though it was more sifting than deep drift.
I notice I want more.

It’s so human to want more, I tell myself.
More snow, more time, more love,
more memories of making fires in winter,

tasting summer s’mores, feeding hummingbirds,
making cookies, speaking silly languages,
skinny dipping in the river, singing to Rusted Root.

It feels right their birthdays should feel heavy—
heavy as the snow that didn’t fall today,
heavy as the bodies they didn’t grow into.

Oh, the weight of love—light as the sunshine
that slanted through the room between squalls,
substantial as the tractors our boys are not driving.

I think of how much we’ve grown in their absence—
which is to say how much we’ve grown
in the company of heartache, the company of love,

how powerfully loss has stretched us.
Somehow, these boys linger in our being.
They arrive through song, through silence.

In this after time, we feed them with memories—
some true, some more than true.
Each time we say their names, they grow.

It’s so human to want more, no matter
how reconciled we are to what is. Oh,
for more time, somehow, between forever and now.

Read Full Post »

The Song Speaks

Lyrics from “Golden Slumbers” by Paul McCartney and John Lennon


 
I love when my lyric
slips into your thoughts,
when I float from your lips
for hours. Once there was a way
to get back homeward.
Sometimes I even believe
my own lines.
Once there was a way
to get back home.
Sometimes when you sing me,
I have faith in home.
Please pretty darling do not cry.
And yet you do cry
and make me want to forget
I am a song about longing,
a song of loss.
I want to be the song of finding,
song of arriving together,
song of coming home.
I want to be the song
that lies down to sleep
beside your heart each night.
I will sing a lullaby.
I want to be the song
that that makes you breakfast.
The song that dances with you
in the living room.
The song that always stays.
 

Read Full Post »

Out of Reach

 

 

The crystal vase on the top shelf,

the one that holds two dozen roses.

The Hallelujah Chorus’s high A.

The perfect word that flutters away.

The name of the man walking toward you.

The card that slips between the seats.

The itch on your back. The dream upon waking.

World peace. Inner peace. Any peace.

 

In the kitchen, a persimmon

with its stubborn glossy skin. A knife

with its shrewd steel edge. Oh this art

of choosing to want what’s in hand—

sweet honeyed flesh, yielding and soft.

Oh this craving for blood oranges, tart and red.

Read Full Post »

from Erik Satie’s Gnossienne 2

 

like an almost breeze

like sunshine slanting through

afternoon clouds—

touch me like that

like the rain I’m not sure is there

Read Full Post »

One Trick

 

 

seeing them on the branch

the bright yellow tanagers

gone until summer

Read Full Post »

Parched Heart

 

 

 

all day the gray scent

of distant rain—

ripe apple just out of reach

Read Full Post »

Always Arriving,

 

 

 

the train

just around

the long curve,

with its cars full

of velvet-lined songs

and sparkling tomorrows.

I stand at the edge of the rails

my good arm always already raised

and waving, afraid that when the train

finally arrives, the conductor will smile and

wave back as the train trundles merrily

along the track, afraid he’ll mistake

my gesture for a greeting, not

seeing I’m trying to wave

the engine down. I have

songs in my pockets. I

learn the joy of

spending them

on the curve.

 

Read Full Post »

In the Last Flush of Summer

oh but I swear

it smelled so sweet today,

that rose bush

we didn’t plant together

all those years ago

Read Full Post »

Sonnet

I’m tired of wishing longing’s hold would soften,
tired, I’m tired of wishing I could steer.
Though what’s the use in steering when so often
after steering wishward, I’m still here,
yes, here again, same face, same empty pocket,
same despair. But not hysterical—
too tired to rail. Exhaustion’s tourniquet
is good for that, at least. No oracle
worth reading here. They never forecast what
I wish to see. No shaman, no, no priest
worth heeding. They just tell me I should cut
my wishing, and that’s never helped the least.
Of course I wish to shelf these wishes, shelf
the shelf. But everywhere I turn, myself.

This sonnet was inspired by an exercise I did yesterday on the plane on the way home … I saw my good friend Karen Glenn had suggested in her weekly poem email that we might want to write a sonnet with 14 line end words that she gave us … so I did!

You might want to do the same thing … just take the last words off each line and write your way into them. She had a poem about aging vampires … and mine turned out in another voice, too … funny to see what happens when certain words are given to you …

Read Full Post »

I would like to find you
in the shade of an apricot tree
with rounded white petals
caught in your hair
and the hypnotic humming
of bees in our ears,
and we would lie there
draped in the scent
of warm sage and sweet bloom
and stare up at the blue
through the flowering limbs
and forget who we are
for just long enough, perhaps,
that anything could happen.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »

%d bloggers like this: