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Posts Tagged ‘love’

Two Days Before Mother’s Day I Visit Your Grave

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 11, 2024| 6 Comments »

They are faded, the pink roses
made of fabric someone left
at your grave, and the leaves,
once green, are faint shades
of yellow, and I love them,
these petals that are so much more
than frayed polyester,
transformed as they are
into remembrance. Someone
else misses you, too.
Why does this move me so?
I, too, am fraying. Fading.
Being unmade. I do not mind
the undoing, the new way of being
less interested in perfection.
It’s what happens,
the price for choosing
to show up in all weather
to honor who we love.
I weep for a while beside
the granite with your name in it.
As always, you’re still with me
when I go.

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In Hand

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 9, 2024| 12 Comments »


Each night before dinner
I slide my hand, palm up,
across the table toward yours,
and always, you rest your hand on mine,
the way a petal might land on a leaf,
the way a leaf might land on grass.
So gentle your hand
that is equally at home in my hand
as it is in the engine of an old Toyota truck
or tightening a valve on the irrigation pump,
wielding a chainsaw or dripping hot wax
onto a ski before scraping it off.
 
So many ways I don’t know your hands—
how they fidgeted when you were a child,
how they fumbled when you first tied a shoe,
what they clutched when you felt alone.
But now, they are nearly as familiar to me
as my own hands—how your hands
flutter up to press to your lips,
how they cup each other to create
a small cave you breathe into when thinking,
how they pull through my hair
when I lay my head in your lap,
how they help me to know my own shape,
how one hand of yours will rest
against one hand of mine
to tether us even in sleep.

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You Belong

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2024| 6 Comments »

The way grass belongs to the meadow—
how without it, the meadow
would not be meadow—
this is the way you belong in my heart.
Not that I’ve made a space for you here,
more that you’ve helped make my heart what it is,
and without you, my heart is not my heart.

I cradle you here as in a nest of wheat—
soft home, humble home, ever rewoven
to fit the changing shape of you.
It’s not true our hearts are our own—
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Who am I? Who am I?
You, my sun, my grass, my wind.

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When My Mother Makes Me Tea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 30, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
It is kindness that moves her hand
to flip the switch on the hot pot,
and somehow a movement
that’s merely a flick is transformed
into an act of great love. It is kindness
that helps her choose the mug
she thinks I’d like the most—
not too small, not too big,
not too clunky. Perhaps the one
with pansies. Perhaps the one
that was dad’s. There is kindness
in the way she unwraps the tea bag,
my favorite earl gray, the bergamot
floral and strong. Kindness in the way
she pours in the soy milk,
the kind I like best, organic,
unsweetened, something she would
never drink herself but will always
have on hand for me. And so when
I wake in her bed and she tells me,
I’ve made you a cup of tea,
I know she is also saying
you are so precious to me.
I taste it in every sip, how warm it is,
how generous, the black tea so bright,
the milk so creamy, so smooth. 
even with no sugar, so sweet.

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Making Space

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 27, 2024| 10 Comments »


 
 
My heart is an unfinished poem
I begin scribbling every morning.
By noon, I sign my name.
By night, the whole page is erased.
I used to lament the erasing.
Now I love the blank more
than any scribbles I could make.
To love you is to lose my story.
Sometimes, when I am brave,
the hand doing the erasing
is my own.

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One Reason I Keep Reaching Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

she pushes everyone away
while wanting to be loved—
clear sky pretending it isn’t blue

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Growing Trust

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2024| 2 Comments »




Inside this silence
with its hum of life
and shush of wind
is another silence,
a pure silence
I have never heard
but trust is here—
the foundation
of all sound—
just as I trust that
inside my imperfect
love with its pride
and its pain is another
love—a pure and
generous love.
Sometimes when
the voices of hate
in and around me
are loudest, I feel
my understanding
of what trust is adjust—
the way trees in winter
continually adapt to keep
their vital cells alive,
the way animals deep
in the dark of the ocean
keep evolving
to make their own light.

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One Listening to Dvorak

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »


 
with such fierce tenderness
the bow urges strains from the cello
like that, love, play me

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After the Nightmare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 10, 2024| 2 Comments »

As if the whole world depended on it
I nestled deeper into your warmth,
made myself soft as morning light,
soft as a lullaby, softer than that,
as if wars could be stopped and
peace achieved if only I could 
make of my flesh a place so safe
you could sleep. 
 

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Still Breaking Open

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 15, 2024| 4 Comments »



Surely you know. Surely,
whatever happens to the soul
after we die is capable of feeling
the love of those still living,
can attune to it like a bell.
Tonight, alone, I relish
the chance to miss you—
to miss you so much
I crawl into the missing
the way you once crawled
into my lap and held to me
until the world was nothing
and the holding was everything.
I want to crawl into the love
that still burns in me
and disappear in it,
let it take me completely
until there is nothing left
to burn. I want it
and I don’t want it.
I love this world too much
to want to leave and yet
I want to be so in service to love
that there is nothing left of me
but rampant, self-shattering love.
I want everything but love
to burn to ash. Want everything
but love to be blown away
like dross, like chaff.
Want all that is left of me
to be this feral heart
still opening, though
it seems it couldn’t possibly
break open any more,
yet I marvel as it opens again, again
into, how is it possible?
more love.

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