for my daughter
When you were a girl
and you’d leave for camp,
I would talk to you
through the sky,
whispering through
blue and star-dappled
dark. The message
was always the same:
I love you. I hope you
are happy. I want to gather
you a jar full of sky
so wherever you are
you can put your ear
to it and hear those simple
words translated into starlight
and sunset, cumulous
and cirrus. Sometimes
it’s easier to trust what
we can hold in our hands.
But if you ever spilled
the contents of the jar,
the love would be no less
present. In fact, you could
hold the empty glass
to your chest and feel
how love is as uncontainable
as wind, as insistent as thunder,
as everywhere as air.
Posts Tagged ‘love’
Sending Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, distance, love, mother, sky on June 12, 2026| 2 Comments »
One Every Morning for Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, loving what is, nature, raven, worm on June 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
the sleek black raven
the feast of thick worms
the falling in love with them both
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, conversation, daughter, forgiveness, knitting, love, mother, naming on June 3, 2026| 4 Comments »
I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks.
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six.
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened,
every time I’ve pushed her away instead
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her
in the sun in the grass while we waited
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too,
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.
While Transplanting Calendula
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fragility, garden, love, marriage on June 2, 2026| 2 Comments »
How gently I move the volunteer sprouts
out of the potato bed and into another row,
careful to gather the fragile roots with a bit
of damp dirt, tamping lightly around the slender stem.
How fragile it all can be. I think of how tenderly
this morning my husband touched my face,
as if too well aware of how a single moment
can change everything. We folded
into each other then like two petals
of a single flower. In the garden,
I stare at the spindly transplants,
a new row of tiny, rounded green leaves.
A delicate ache rises in me, charged with
love for the spare beauty of what is here
and an awareness of how the simplest scrape
can make a whole world disappear.
How the Communication Works Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, grief, invisible, loss, love on May 29, 2026| 4 Comments »
Tonight I can’t see the shape of the moon
behind a cluster of clouds, but I see
the bright radiance seeping through the edges
and know the moon is there—
that is how it is when I speak out loud
to my father and son. Hi Dad, I say.
Hi Finn. I love you. I miss you.
And aren’t you so proud of our girl?
As I walk through the dark, scent of rain
in each breath, I can’t hear the shape
of their words in my ears. But I swear,
I feel it, the shine.
The Moment I Hope to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, exhaustion, graduation, love, mother, ordinary moment on May 28, 2026| 2 Comments »
sitting on the couch,
our bodies lean into each other—
two aspen trees, shared roots
The Day Before Graduation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, framing, graduation, love, parent, story, writing on May 27, 2026| 4 Comments »
for Vivian
Already she knows terrible things happen.
Already she knows the pleasure of scrambling
in the woods at night with friends and singing
too loud and making bad choices that are sometimes
exactly the right choices. She knows sobs and
silliness. She knows how much humans can hurt
each other. She knows how a touch or a tender
word erases nothing but creates its own plot of trust.
There was a time when my job was to protect her,
filling her pages with beauty and courage and honesty.
Now my job is mostly to love her, to give her her own pen.
Because terrible things happen. And she is the one now
who shapes her story. Every writer knows, we write
what we know—and what we can’t ever know.
I pray what emerges is the impossible—an irrational,
deep rooted love for this difficult, glorious world.
Two Thousand Three Hundred Forty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, food, graduation, letting go, love, lunch, mother, school on May 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
That’s how many school lunches
I’ve made her, more or less, since
that first day she held my hand and we
stood on the grass outside the elementary school
before the first bell rang. Her hair was blonde then,
mine not gray. I’m not crying as I make her
lunch this morning. Dilled bean and rice salad.
Fresh blackberries. Pretzel sticks.
Honeycrisp apples sliced into thin rounds
that her friends call “floppy apples.”
Maybe I’m crying.
Me and all the other mothers on the last
day of the last year of school. Thinking of
two thousand three hundred forty bleary mornings
when I woke to pour love into plastic containers
along with dried mango and tofu cubes,
seaweed strips and yogurt tubes.
Okay. So I’m crying. I nibble the squared off core
of the apple to gather every last bit of sweetness.
When it’s gone, I lick the stickiness from my fingers.
The Night I Remembered What Love Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, breathing, heart, heart energy, love, panic attack, unwanted on May 19, 2026| 12 Comments »
What is unwanted still serves.
—Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”
I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe,
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe—
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me,
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared,
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.
Watching My Daughter Before Her Prom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, impossible, love, mother, prom on May 3, 2026| 3 Comments »
More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible.