Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, family, grief, loss, poem, poetry, sister on June 1, 2018| 3 Comments »
There was a time when I’d pull his hair out
if he sat too close to me on the couch.
Now, I curl into his right side,
lean my head on his shoulder,
feel the trembling of his chest
as he weeps. How good it feels
to be close to him as we grieve.
How familiar, the shape of his head,
the heft of his hand as he reaches for mine.
How deeply right, this leaning
into sorrow together.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, poem, poetry, tears on May 16, 2018| 3 Comments »
Longing is the hardest thing to give up.
—Jim Tipton, “What is This Place I Have Come To?”
Some days can’t end soon enough,
when the heart, so full of love,
breaks and breaks again—
for beauty, for loss.
And the eyes can’t cry
another damn tear
but they do anyway,
I would rather not
cry anymore, but God,
thank you for letting me
be one of the ones
who can’t help but weep,
whose house is built
too close to the water.
What a gift to feel this horrible ache
like a lantern, golden
and soft, guiding us
deeper and deeper
into our humanness,
leading us closer
to each other, even
though we have never felt
farther away,
and though the stars
are out and at last,
thank god, it is night,
we have never
been more awake.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, death, emptiness, loss, poem, poetry on October 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, poem, poetry on March 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Like milk kept in the fridge too long—
the carton beginning to bloat,
what was healthy, nourishing, wholesome,
now yellowed and curdled and sour.
It wasn’t on purpose, this spoiling,
but forgetting is its own kind
of aggression, and what
to do with it now,
this promise that can’t be kept.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, moon, parenting, poem, poetry, Siberia on September 29, 2015| 3 Comments »
The Mother Remembers
One thing you must never do is call a girl standing in or near the water by name, for that is like delivering a written invitation to the water king to steal your loved one.
—from “The Maiden Rescued by the Moon,” a Siberian myth, in The World’s Greatest Nature Myths by Gary Ferguson
I didn’t mean to call her name so loud.
Of course I was angry. The girl
was always so slow about her chores
and there was always so much to do.
Our wooden pail was emptied of water again
and the sun had nearly disappeared
beneath the Arctic Ocean waves.
Oh I wanted to smack her with that ladle,
I did, but I handed it to her instead.
“Now go, daughter, go get the water,” I said,
“and mind you come back soon.”
She always was a dreamy thing,
staring off into the surf
as if there were another place
that she would rather be.
On that last night we were together,
I had just finished stitching her
a new wool dress, blue as the deepest swells.
I wanted to give it to her by the fire.
Why did she stay so long by the shore
before coming back with the bucket full?
It was in anger, yes, when I called her name
to bring her out of her reverie,
but there was more. The water king took no time
to snag her from the shore with his long,
cold arms. “The ladle, daughter, the ladle!”
I cried, and she reached
it as high as she could and caught it
on a bush on the moon.
How strangely beautiful she looked, dangling there
as the moon made its trek toward the heavens.
On clear nights I can see her in the sky,
the ladle still in her hand.
How alone I am with this blue dress.
I stare at it now so long sometimes
it might be hours before I move
to fill the bucket with water.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, blessing, losing the self, loss, poem, poetry on September 9, 2015| 1 Comment »
after William Stafford
When the leaves are about to yellow and fall
ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,
how I thought perhaps I was different,
how everything I thought I knew about gold
turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like
to fall then. Sometimes the world becomes invisible
and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes
the only words that can find our lips are thank you,
though the gifts look nothing like anything
we ever thought we wanted.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erasure, loss, poem, poetry, wind on August 2, 2015| 4 Comments »
(an erasure poem written by deleting most of the words in the article, “The Magnetic Nature of Disk Accretion onto Black Holes,” written by Jon Miller, John Raymond, Andy Fabian, Danny Steeghs, Jeroen Homan, Chris Reynolds, Michiel van der Klis and Rudy Wijnands in Nature, Volume 44, 22 June 2006. The words in this poem were taken from their article in this exact order. No words not found in the article were were added.)
Here we report that it is common to decompose,
strength taken from our figures.
This is the nature of wind.
We are scattering and scattering,
a luminous dilution.
Where is our value?
In our loss—
luminous instability.
O the wind to infinity,
the wind remarkably driven,
the wind that is difficult.
The wind to infinity,
clear wind, rare and crucial,
the wind, driving wind,
ubiquitous, illuminated,
accelerating wind.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged deer, loss, parenting, poem, poetry on May 31, 2015| 2 Comments »
The fawn has lost its mother.
The doe, she was spooked.
She swam across the river this morning
and has not returned.
The fawn was turned back to our bank,
the current too strong.
This evening my daughter
squeals with delight
to see the fawn alone in the field.
She laughs as it sproings
along the edge of the grass,
all four of its legs up at once.
I do not tell her the story
of how the mother has left.
Is it my own fear I project?
The fawn, it vanishes
into the woods. I watch my daughter
watch it disappear.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, love, moon, poem, poetry, projection on January 17, 2015| 3 Comments »
Just before
it disappears
it’s ten times
brighter,
the moon—
oh love
is it any wonder
our shine
sometimes
frightens me?
