after a dry spell
the long awaited song of rain—
even my dreams listen
Posts Tagged ‘longing’
One Night of Sustenance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, rain on June 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Dear Heather,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, humanness, longing, loss, parenting, time on December 13, 2022| 11 Comments »
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.
The Song Speaks
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, longing, loss, love, song on March 4, 2021| 4 Comments »
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.
Out of Reach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged craving, fruit, longing, poem, poetry, wanting on January 13, 2020| 2 Comments »
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.
More Intimately
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erik satie, gnossienne 2, longing, poem, poetry, touch on August 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
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
One Trick
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, bird, longing, poem, poetry, tanager on January 29, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Parched Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry on February 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Always Arriving,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, train on December 7, 2016| 1 Comment »
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.
In the Last Flush of Summer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, memory, poem, poetry, rose on September 1, 2015| 1 Comment »
oh but I swear
it smelled so sweet today,
that rose bush
we didn’t plant together
all those years ago
Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, sonnet, wishing on April 19, 2015| 1 Comment »
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 …
On a Night When You Feel Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apricot, longing, poem, poetry, possibility on March 28, 2015| 2 Comments »
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.
Three Recklessnesses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, recklessness on March 22, 2015| 2 Comments »
these crazy thoughts
cross the center line, play chicken
with all other thoughts
*
in the sun glazed pond
not one sandhill crane—
the beauty of wanting
*
just when the bonfire
is too big to control—
throwing in another stick
For all my talk of surrender
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desire, humanness, longing, poem, poetry, surrender on March 15, 2015| 1 Comment »
and saying yes to the world as it is,
my body craves what it craves.
Oh this terrible, beautiful bright stitch of longing
sewn into my breath
with red, red thread,
it pulls, tighter and tighter,
then catches on something
deep in my core,
and some voice,
is it mine? insists,
more, more, I want more.
And Burned My Own Fingers, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry on January 6, 2015| 4 Comments »
how many times
I have burned it
that letter
you never
sent
Dusting the Breasts of the Doris Caesar Statue
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dusting, ekphrasis, longing, poem, poetry on December 8, 2014| 3 Comments »
They are large, the breasts,
more than two handfuls’ worth.
I move the soft cloth over them
slowly, gently, though she is bronze
and does not require tenderness.
I give her tenderness. I touch her
the way I long to be touched,
unhurried, deliberate, leisurely.
Outside the window, the cottonwood trees
are as naked as she is. Last night,
I saw the full moon in their limbs
and my thoughts let fall all their leaves.
I want the full moon to linger on me
the way I linger now on the narrow stretch
of her body, putting a shine on every
inch. She is lovely, God, she is lovely,
with her head flung back and her
arm flung high, staring at the world
with her unchanging eyes.
Through the window, I watch
as no birds fly from tree to tree.
The emptiness between the limbs
is empty. My thoughts grow
faintly green.
Happily Ever After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry, self worth, vision, wholeness on November 21, 2014| 4 Comments »
Your eyes. I used to believe they created me.
One look from you, and I became chalice,
lotus, lioness, crane. Woman. Without your gaze,
I was unformed clay. Your absence, my absence.
It was like some strange twist on what Ptolemy said—
he believed that rays emanate from the eyes,
rays that traverse the air and find the object, allowing
it to be seen. If a woman dances alone in a room,
and you do not see her, is she really dancing?
Does she exist at all?
But Ptolemy was wrong, love, and so was I.
And this is not really the story of photoreceptors
and environmental stimuli. It’s the story
of how we long to be seen—it begins with such
innocence, a longing to please. It’s the story
of how eventually a woman might find herself
dancing for the leaping, whirling pleasure of dancing.
Yet Another Story Problem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humanness, longing, math, poem, poetry, solution, story problem on October 25, 2014| 3 Comments »
It always seems as if it should add up,
except it doesn’t. Not like the story problems
did in school. No. In this equation, x
represents the rate at which sweet peas
climb an orchard’s wire fence, and y
is the speed that snowflakes fall without
accounting for wind. And z is the reason
that all those snowflakes never seem to find
your waiting tongue. Don’t take it personally. It’s statistics.
Then s is the way that the low light at sunrise
makes every other variable shine. Which changes
everything. Until f is the sloth-like velocity
of a deeply held sorrow just starting to mend. And g
is the relative effect of one extended open hand.
And h is a pair of seahorses with their tails
intertwined. Or maybe it’s a flock of seagulls
returning to the land. Or maybe it’s crazy
to try to assign meaning to any of this.
It seems obvious. The heart just wants to love.
But then y is the hole the size of Saturn that
you sometimes feel ringing inside your gut.
And g is the swan-like gracefulness
you thought you’d have once you grew up.
But d is the way you are more like a squirrel.
And j is the value of a sand dollar saved
for twenty years. And p is the sweet scent
of strawberries, ripe. And k is the surfboard
you never bought. And o is the way you often feel
like a sidewinder—edging slyly, slantly along.
You dream of straight lines, of answers that work out
neatly, efficiently, sure of themselves. But already,
x is a starfish, and y is just a homophone, and t is
the way you see yourself sometimes, scribbling away
as if it’s all some kind of test. And s is the sweet compassion
you offer yourself, even now as you watch yourself draw up
a new proof, determined to solve it right this time.
Just Sayin’
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, poem, poetry on July 19, 2014| 2 Comments »
all those stars
not a single one
out of place
but your hand, darling,
belongs right here