scent of roasting pumpkins—
all day they carve
my thoughts
Posts Tagged ‘memory’
One Scent Memory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry, pumpkin on October 24, 2019| 4 Comments »
One Week Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, love, memory, poem, poetry on September 16, 2019| 4 Comments »
There are moments I forget she is gone.
Perhaps when I am in the garden. Or painting
rocks. Or making dinner. And then I remember.
She’s gone. I cry less now, but still.
I cry. Of course. Because the cloth I use to wipe
my glass table. Because the vase I slip
marigolds into. Because the necklace
I am wearing. Because out of nowhere
the sound of her voice. Because
the book I am reading. Because
when I think of how much she loved me,
how much I loved her, I gasp and
my nose starts to tingle and my eyes
well, and I know she would tell me
not to cry, but I do. Because it’s a beautiful
and rare gift to love someone. Deeply. Because
she was my gift. Because I was hers.
One Return
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry on June 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
like a book
that always falls open
to my favorite lines—
this memory of your crooked smile,
your open hand
And What Will We Think Twelve Years from N
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, parenting, poem, poetry, teenager on February 15, 2019| 2 Comments »
for Amy Irvine
I didn’t know then we were lucky,
that day when we rode down the hill
on the sleds with our kids. They were cold
and crying and reluctant, and the hill
was small, and the thrill was mostly
missing. And I remember you saying,
“There will be a day we look back on this,
and think how easy we had it, how
silly we were to think this is hard.”
And I remember not quite believing you
as our children continued to scream and
whine, as we dragged them inside and
removed their soggy mittens and boots
and socks that had fallen around their arches,
as we made them hot chocolate and
talked in the kitchen about sleepless nights
and two-hour tantrums and the loss
of time to ourselves. How could I have known
that twelve years later, how sweet that looks,
how innocent, how fun, the kids banging
on the piano, their hands sticky, their faces bright.
Longtime Traveler
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, memory, poem, poetry, song, traveler on September 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Once I knew it by heart,
that song about leaving
the earth and traveling on,
but tonight, I just hum
through the verse I’ve forgotten,
grateful the tune still knows
how to find me, grateful
to still have lips, breath.
Grateful to be a traveler
here, my feet still finding
the road.
Synapse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, connection, memory, neurons, poem, poetry, synapse on August 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »
We are perhaps like neurons
that never touch—
but that doesn’t stop
the chemical buzz,
the lightning charge,
the electric thrill
that leaps the gap—
and in that span
all meaning is made,
long red ropes of memory
twisting and knotting,
braiding, unbraiding,
and nothing
is ever the same.
One Bite of Finland
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Finland, memory, poem, poetry, rye on January 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
One Unforgettable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry on October 24, 2017| 2 Comments »
Touched
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heron, memory, poem, poetry, transformation on April 22, 2017| 2 Comments »
The heron flies away
and its great blue wings
touch the surface of the water.
For a time, after the heron
is gone, the twin concentric wrinkles remain.
If you leaned far enough, you could
see your reflection in ripples,
your image warped by the memory
of flight. The water
returns to its stillness,
your face again your familiar face—
but that is not the way
with all memories.
Sometimes, we
never see ourselves
the same again.
One Return
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry on March 27, 2017| 3 Comments »
like a book
that always falls open
to my favorite lines—
this memory of your crooked smile,
your open hand
One Return
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, poem, poetry on December 1, 2016| 2 Comments »
November 26
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginning, memory, poem, poetry on November 27, 2016| 2 Comments »
No one will remember that this is the day
that my son and I stayed home
and he watched movies and I
met deadlines for work. It was the day
that I didn’t finish drying the apples,
the day I didn’t listen to a single song,
the day no snow fell in the yard.
It was, however, the anniversary
of Howard Carter opening Tutankhamun’s
tomb in Egypt, still virtually intact.
It’s still a few months from the day
he’ll discover the inner burial chamber—
for now, he is still ablaze with the thrill
of beginning, hopeful he’ll find
the sarcophagus. Does he know yet
that it will be made of solid gold?
The world is ripe with beginnings—
even in this season of dying and cold,
there’s always so much left to discover,
so much we do not yet know.
Eventually the movies are over and I finish
my article about Tuscan architecture
and my son and I again begin. No one will
ever remember how this is the day
we spent hours together at a table
with a puzzle fitting the thousand pieces in.
But I am still ablaze with beginning,
still in the thrill of his youth. I don’t yet know
where our lives will go, but I’m giddy
on laughter that only we two can hear,
the rest of the house quiet, no bells,
no shouts, no hum of the fruit as it dries.
How I Stopped Eating Sugar on my Corn Flakes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, brain, flight, memory, poem, poetry on November 3, 2016| 2 Comments »
Somewhere in the 100 billion cells
of my brain is the memory
of the playground in second grade
when Jenny told me birds could fly
because their bones were hollow,
and, she reasoned, if we could lose
enough weight, we, too,
could have hollow bones, and we, too
could fly.
Surely linked to that memory
are thousands of other neurons
that disprove her claim—
neurons related to air pressure, thrust,
strong breast muscles, osteoporosis—
but there is, perhaps,
still one cell in there somewhere
across the synaptic gap,
that lights up at the memory
of Jenny’s suggestion
as if to say,
wow, that’s cool,
let’s try it.
Dear Rachel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aesthetics, friendship, memory, poem, poetry on September 25, 2016| 2 Comments »
It’s so curious what we choose to frame.
You could, I am sure, with your art degree, explain
to me how aesthetics change. And why.
But I have too much dirt and dust in my home
to want an image of dirt and dust on my wall.
And I don’t relate to women in gowns
parting floral drifts with a white parasol.
I remember the first time I went to your home
and saw in your hall a painting—just one color, red,
you had painted it yourself—and I recall
how easy I found it to stare and stare and get lost
inside. So much of the world is black and white.
On my walls, it’s mostly nudes.
It never seemed strange until my children
asked why there were so many naked women
in our home. I didn’t know what to say
to make it okay. I said, “Because they are beautiful.”
If I could, I would frame the laughter
you left on my answering machine
and hang that on my wall. Or frame
how warm the sun was when we went for a walk.
Or frame the taste of peaches, the scent
of wood smoke and poems in our hair, the easy
silence we sometimes share.
But I would frame, too, the mornings
we speak of our children and weep.
And I’d frame our hurt and our fear
and the nights we’ve fallen apart.
So perhaps that’s not so different
from framing dust and dirt. And those
two women strolling in the sun,
on second thought, they look familiar.
One Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dancing, memory, poem, poetry on June 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Slowly, In Three
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anapest, daughter, generation, grandmother, legacy, memory, waltz on February 11, 2016| 3 Comments »
recite this aloud, please, for Mimi, for Vivi, for me
Mama, she says,
can we waltz?
and we do,
we step one
two, three, one,
two three cross-
ing the room,
and again
I am five
and my grand-
ma and I
are alone
in the house
and my feet
are on hers
and we’re danc-
ing around
and she hums
with the ra-
dio, hums
with low light,
and we waltz,
and we waltz
there’s a blaze
in her eyes
as we one,
two three, oh
how I miss
her tonight.
And Press the Owl’s Song, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eclipse, memory, poem, poetry on September 27, 2015| 1 Comment »
wanting to press it
between pages of a book
like a flower or leaf
so I might marvel again
when it slips out, that blood moon
In the Last Flush of Summer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged longing, memory, poem, poetry, rose on September 1, 2015| 1 Comment »
oh but I swear
it smelled so sweet today,
that rose bush
we didn’t plant together
all those years ago
One Inexplicable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fire, memory, poem, poetry, smoke on August 19, 2015| 2 Comments »
Gooseberry Picking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gooseberry, memory, poem, poetry on July 24, 2015| 3 Comments »
They are not quite ripe, the gooseberries
growing behind Christie’s house,
but I pick them anyway and pop
the prickling pink globes
between my tongue
and the roof of my mouth,
oh sour round rush of surprise,
and I am a girl again, not quite ripe,
living in a country where I don’t speak the language
wandering the edge of the woods of the north
with a family that isn’t my own.
The mother, who later will shun me, shows me
how to pick and eat the gooseberries,
a fruit I have never seen before.
I learn to love them that instant,
something I can immediately translate with my tongue—
the marriage of sweet and terribly tart,
a flavor I know already by heart.
Greedy, greedy, my hands in a hurry,
I pull the gooseberries behind Christie’s house
into my mouth as if feeding the memory
of a longing to understand,
feeding it so I can better untangle its tethers
before the memory disappears again.