Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, gratitude, love, self acceptance on September 23, 2020| 4 Comments »
(title after a first line by e.e. cummings)
when you with your nimble
and radiant thoughts
reach into the junkyard of my mind
and there—hiding behind
some old rusty shoulds
and burnt-out what ifs—
you find a small tarnished scrap
of lost perhaps and hold it up
like a treasure, burnish it
with fierce devotion
until even I can see
how it shines.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, good enough, love, motivation, writing on September 21, 2020| 8 Comments »
with thanks to Rebecca Mullen
but what if I can’t do enough
I said, and love said
what if you don’t try?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, diversity, division, love, sister on September 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Over thirty years later
I still return to the night
when my brother and I
stood in the kitchen and argued
the merits of Grape Nuts,
versus Cap’n Crunch.
Potassium, potassium, potassium.
I still hear him chanting
the one nutrient his cereal
had more of than mine.
Breakfast was the least
of our differences,
but it taught us to laugh
as we disagreed
so that later, when the stakes
were higher—
presidential elections
and gun laws—
we could argue till I cried,
then snuggle on the couch.
Though we seldom agree,
though we will forever cancel each other’s votes,
though I will never eat Cap’n Crunch,
I’ll sit with him as he eats it,
laughing, shaking my head,
grateful he teaches me so much
about how I am not.
He will celebrate me and buy me
any damn cereal I want.
Though we disagree about almost everything
except how much we love each other—
we are two threads in a civilization
that would try to makes us believe
we couldn’t be one cloth—
but we are, woven tight, we are.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comfort, love, rest on September 17, 2020| 4 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endurance, heart, love, patience on September 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »
In the middle of my heart
is a meadow with tall golden grass
and a big blue blanket
spread out like an invitation.
I never fold it up.
Not ever.
It is always the right time
to meet you there.
The light is always golden.
The air is always sweet.
Even when I ache.
Even when my heart
ticks in my chest,
not like a clock,
like a bomb.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circus, love on August 12, 2020| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, miracle, morning on August 6, 2020| 6 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, love, strangers on August 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
Everywhere I go, I find them—
people who bring love to the world.
Reading the headlines,
I sometimes think love is dead
and humans are brutes
and we may as well all give up.
But every time I leave home,
I meet pedestrians who wave
and women who give understanding nods,
and men who offer to pay when the person
in front of them is short a few bucks.
People hold doors for each other with a smile
and I’ve seen folks pick up trash
off the sidewalk and go out of their way
to not step on a beetle or a worm.
My friend Wayne says,
We have to love the world
to want to save it,
and sometimes, I think
it just might happen—
though every day unspeakable cruelty
happens on these same streets.
Oh this world.
Even as I feel my guard go up,
I see strangers chatting on the corner
as they wait for the bus,
notice how their laughter
threads through the noise of the day
like a song, like a kite.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, love, sun on July 30, 2020| 4 Comments »
I want to do for you
what the sun does for me—
coax you to come
outside, to breathe in
the golden air.
I want to warm you
and enter you,
fill you with brilliance,
make your muscles melt,
make your mind shush.
I want to prepare for you
luminous paths
that span across deep space,
thaw any part of you
that feels frozen,
find any cracks
and slip shine into them.
I want to intensify
your shadow
so you might better know
your own shape.
I want to encourage you
to open, wider, wider,
want to teach you
to write your name
in light.
Find this poem published in the amazing ONE ART POETRY
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged binary, code, love, math, uncertainty on July 18, 2020| 2 Comments »
inspired by Wayne Muller
I do not love you in 0s and 1s,
some straightforward proposition—
our love, my dear, is gray, is .772,
refuses to be simplified, reduced.
There is maybe in us. And perhaps.
Wouldn’t be easier if love were like math—
a logical answer we could arrive at,
with binary digits to map it all out.
Instead, a word, a tone, a should
makes what is certain slip off its string
and the bits and values keep changing.
Somewhere between the 0 and 1
is a meadow where we might watch the moon,
a garden where outlandish fruits still grow,
a mountain we will never stop climbing.
