At last I am learning it’s okay
to be scared to the marrow
and still show up whole-hearted.
No shame it took so long
to learn this truth,
just giddy relief to finally trust
I can be clenched like a hedgehog
or poised as a snake
and still be open to finding love
at the center of what scares me.
And when I find no sprig of love there,
that is the chance
to offer love to the world
any way I know how—
with a gift, with my time,
with words, with touch,
or with a simple act of kindness.
And if I find I have no love
to muster, then that is the chance
to plant seeds of love in whatever
soil I find. And amend the ground.
And bring light. Bring water.
Posts Tagged ‘love’
What I Didn’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged activism, fear, love, love languages on February 6, 2025| 6 Comments »
What Comes Next
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged diana butler bass, love, political action on February 3, 2025| 16 Comments »
Love relentlessly.
—Diana Butler Bass
Love relentlessly, she said,
and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound
of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes
a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench.
Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave,
how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open
wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
Love relentlessly.
Even saying the words aloud invites
both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous
urgency and willingness. A radical pulsing
of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational
every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising,
upwelling, ongoing, infusion
of love, tide of love, honest love.
One Expanding Awe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awe, beauty, daughter, love, sky on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
for Vivian
when she can’t stop
falling in love with the blush of sky
I can’t stop falling in love with her
Since You’re Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged couch, ekphrasis, heart, love, missing on January 26, 2025| 6 Comments »
My heart is like a well-used couch,
the kind with a dent where your body
once curled in, the cushions threadbare
from years of use; the kind of couch
that remembers every time you gave
it your weight, that recalls every story
that spilled from your mouth,
your words now woven into its upholstery.
Since you’re gone, the picture of me looks
like less like a picture of me and more
like a picture of where you used to be.
Instead of Losing Faith
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged faith, love, madness, purpose, singing on January 25, 2025| 16 Comments »
for K., Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.
After all the hours of dressing up
and combing our hair and trying
to show our best face to the world,
we find ourselves bare, naked,
haunted, and painfully, wondrously clear,
full of visions and limitations, aware
of the great invitation to be kind. And
if we’re lucky, we burn with hope.
It isn’t safe, this life. Don’t let anyone
tell you otherwise. But if you are able,
as you listen to the screaming, sing.
Sing through the walls. Sing of miracles,
healing and light. Sing. Because when
all else is ash, still, we can sing. We can sing.
What It Takes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disconnect, growth, love, separation, wings on January 25, 2025| 2 Comments »
I say I love you, but what I mean is
there is deep sky between us I don’t know
how to travel, and there is no map, no path,
and it’s cold, and I don’t know how
to fly, but when I say I love you, I mean
somehow despite these too solid bones,
a raven-sharp wisdom is clawing through me,
and though it hurts I feel them swelling
beneath my skin, these determined wings.
Tale of Two Moments
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, love, memory, mortality, mother, parenting on January 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
Holding my girl
on the couch,
came a moment
so tender because
I remembered
I will die—
what grace when,
minutes later,
lost in the bliss
of her warmth,
came a moment
so tender because
I forgot.
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, prayer, resistance on January 22, 2025| 17 Comments »
A little context: if you have ever been in a class with me, you likely know I often joke (except I’m not joking) that EVERYTHING has something to teach us … except ticks. So. In these days when I find myself faced with things I really really do not want to turn toward, I have finally done what I swore I would never do. I wrote a poem about ticks. I consider this practice.
*
I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet.
—Mark Nepo, from “In Love with the World”
Not the tick, no.
Surely it is not sacred.
Do not try to tell me so.
Repulsive tiny blood suckers.
I do not wish to be impressed
by their survival, do not want
to respect how they have thrived
since the first flowering plants
arrived on earth over
one hundred million years ago.
I do not want to praise
their hard protective shells, nor how
efficiently they swell,
nor the ease with which they sense
moisture, heat, vibration.
Rather to vilify what disgusts me.
Repulsive little carriers of sickness.
Vile little vectors of disease.
What joy is there in knowing
a tick is so effective and good
at doing what a tick was made to do?
Could it be greater than the perverse joy
I get from my hatred? It is clear
my repulsion does not affect the tick.
Oh, clenched heart. Oh, clenched fist.
Where is the line between what I love
and what I resist?
Is it true there is holiness in everything?
How do I wound myself
when my heart and hand are closed?
Let my prayer not be to fall in love,
but to open to the prayer I do not yet know.
In a Dangerous Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, bones, commitment, love, presidency, ribs, skeleton on January 19, 2025| 12 Comments »
I think of the bones
of the unsung rib cage,
the way they protect
the heart. How bone,
too, is living, how it constantly
renews and remakes itself.
I think of how ribs engage
with other ribs
to expand, to contract,
and because they do
their solid work,
they allow the heart to float.
This is what I want to do:
to be a rib in this body
of our country,
to make a safe space for love.
There is so much now
that needs protection.
I want to be that flexible,
that committed to what’s vital,
that unwilling to yield.
I, Who Did Not Die That Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, death, love, parts, resilience on January 17, 2025| 21 Comments »
“I, who did not die …”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Making a Fist”
I, who did not die that day,
also died. Not all of me,
but part of me: The part
who believed I could change things
beyond my control.
The part who believed
any of us can save someone else.
What a terrible freedom to know
what I cannot do. The part
who did not die is the part
who loves—loves what was,
loves what is now, loves as long
as I am able to love.
The part who did not die
is the part who still thrills to see
the twitchy-nosed bunny
streak across the grass
and the near-full moon that bathes
me in cold blue light. The part
who still lives is not afraid to grieve
and lets herself be turned
toward fear and learns,
learns to meet even heartache
with wonder. Like a tree, I grow
from the soil of all I have lost.
I, who did not die that day,
am still being taught how to touch
the wound and let myself be sung
by the part still wildly alive.