Eyes still closed, the world
still dark, in my mind
I name my beloveds
no longer here
and my thoughts
become an altar.
I imagine each of their faces,
each of their voices,
surround them with snapdragons
and calendula, smooth stones
and white feathers.
Eventually dawn slips in
as if to light inner candles.
How does it do that, the light?
How does it enter me even
when the eyes are closed?
The dead, too, seem
to find their way in.
I linger with them.
It is beautiful.
When I finally open my eyes
the salt from the altar
has spilled all over my pillow.
Posts Tagged ‘love’
Baking Cherry Chocolate Cake with Jack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, love, nephew on September 29, 2024| 6 Comments »
It takes five times longer to bake
a cake with my nephew, and I love
every minute of helping him clean up
the mess of the egg which is somehow
splattered across the counter, love
how excited he is to scrape the sides
of the bowl, how somehow he turns
buttering the pan into a game.
“That was fun!” he shouts as he leaves
the kitchen, his mop of blonde hair
flopping as he lopes away, and
I feel the great squeeze of ache
that comes from loving someone
so much we almost can’t bear the loving,
and yet it’s the only thing we want.
Y-Linked Inheritance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, father, football, legacy, love on September 29, 2024| 4 Comments »
My brother paces the length of the football field,
following the play, unable to sit. I watch him
pause in the end zone, hands in his pockets,
eyes focused to the game, chin up, body tense.
How many times did I watch my father watch him
the same way he now watches his own son play?
“Hold your blocks,” he yells, his voice hoarse
and deep, full of certainty from his own days
in cleats. “Come on, Defense,” he growls,
half admonishment, all encouragement,
and I fall in love all over again with my father,
now dead, and my brother, so alive, how they give love
as if every moment is a goal line, as if they will never
ever stop cheering as loud as they can for family. For love.
One Ongoing Dance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, love, sunflower on September 27, 2024| 6 Comments »
in a field of dried weeds
you the golden sunflower
I the bee
What the Gardener Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cantaloupe, garden, love, melon, opening on September 5, 2024| 7 Comments »
When I say I love you wholehearted,
I mean the whole cantaloupe, sweetheart.
I mean the strange webby skin and
the sweet, firm flesh and the absolutely
freaking messy center. I mean the way
we have to wait so patiently until it’s ripe.
The way I can smell it across the room.
The way it bruises so easily.
I mean I am speaking of love. I mean
I am well aware there’s no word in the world
as delicious as the sticky juice as it dribbles down
the chin. I mean I understand the potential disaster
in underestimating the need for warmth,
how quickly a frost can end it all.
I mean this is no kohlrabi love, sweetheart,
but I don’t know if you’re the melon
or I’m the melon or we both are, I just know
there’s no way to know what we’ve got
until we both split open and break so
completely there’s no knowing which
goop is mine and which is yours
and this is the way we survive—
not by staying whole, but by opening
wide and giving it all away.
Freezing the Peaches
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, memory, peaches on August 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »
For hours today, I hold
the sweet weight
of ripe peaches
in my palm, and
with the other hand,
I slice into the fruit,
the golden juice streaming
between my fingers,
sticky, delicious,
before I drop the slices
into the bags for the freezer.
What is it in the body
that knows to gather
what is ripe and preserve it
for a time in the future
when the world is barren?
I have tried to do this
with love. Sometimes,
midwinter, I pull out
a memory. I swear
sometimes it’s even
sweeter, but sometimes
it leaves me
ravenous.
Bowing at the Feet of the Ordinary
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, blessing, car, daughter, love, mother, self blessing on August 25, 2024| 9 Comments »
Bowing at the Feet of the Ordinary
May I remember this day
with its two-hundred twenty two
miles of pavement and my
daughter beside me and both
of us singing her favorite songs.
Remember this day not because
it was special but because
it was the way it always is,
with us laughing and talking
and sitting in easy silence.
With a stop at the car wash
and her grumbling about vacuuming,
then doing it anyway. With
a stop at the coffee shop
and me grumbling about
cake pops, then buying one
anyway. With the sweetness
of ripe Cresthaven peaches
we bought at the roadside stand—
how the juice dripped down our chins.
With the rich green of late summer
a blur out the window. The day
so infused with commonplace
love I never once doubted
I belonged with my girl, in that car,
in the world, in the universe,
the days getting shorter
but still so luminous, so warm.
What a Friendship Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, connection, daughter, friendship, love, mother on August 18, 2024| 7 Comments »
for V, L, C and M
They know they are beautiful.
The way late-summer snapdragons
know they are beautiful, whether
they’re budded or blossoming
or making new seed. The way
the sky knows it’s beautiful whether
it’s wearing the pink silks of dawn,
the deep blue shift of midday or
the soft black drapes of night.
They walk down the street and
a wake of laughter follows them.
Even their shadows, joined
by the hip, are beautiful.
Everywhere they go, the world
seems to open. They are not beautiful
the way cruelty is sometimes beautiful—
shiny, powerful, seductive.
They are beautiful the way only
love is beautiful—as if there is
a golden thread that connects them
to each other, to everything they touch.
Poem & thank you
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, death anniversary, love, mother, walking on August 14, 2024| 26 Comments »
Dear Friends,
Three years ago today I wrote a letter saying that a terrible tragedy had happened to our family. Two weeks after, I shared this letter about the death of our son. Since that day, I have felt so much love, so much support, so much kindness, so much compassion from you. And today I can see so so clearly how you carried me through this most difficult time with your love, prayers, letters. Thank you. Thank you. I am so grateful for every one of you that has sent love, silence, words, thoughtfulness. It has meant so much to me. I thank you. I honor you. I wish you deep peace. Thank you. Thank you.
Love,
Rosemerry
*
On the Anniversary of Your Death
Your dad and I walked. Walked
for hours. Walked through deep woods.
Walked to tree line. Walked higher
than that to the place where larkspur
still bloom late summer, where
the paintbrush are still dusky pink
and creamy white, where marmots
sit atop tall rocks and squeak. We walked
and I could not not see the beauty.
Everywhere, the deep purple gentian
unfolding. Everywhere, the melted snow
flowing. Everywhere, beauty, so much beauty.
As I walked, I invited the past to join me.
Memories of tears, police and silence waded
with me through wildflowers up to my shoulders
and skinny-dipped beside purple penstemon
in the high alpine stream. Memories
of you as newborn, you as a boy, you
as a teen, they all joined me in eating
wild raspberries more tart than sweet.
Memories of how your sisters and father
and I have stayed alive hiked with me
beneath waterfalls and along sheer cliffs.
And so it is your death is always
here and not here. I saw myself
a gentian, opening, though frost
is coming soon. I saw myself a rivulet
that flows through it all. I saw myself
as mother, and marveled how you
are all ages at once to me now.
And when I cried, I kept walking.
Except when I stopped to cry.
All day, I put one foot in front of the other.
There is no wonder in this, and yet,
all day, the ache of it, the wonder.