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Posts Tagged ‘miracle’

In the same breath that I curse the world
I praise it. It is impossible not to see
what a mess we’ve made, and yet … how
relentlessly beautiful the rabbit brush
blooms in the ditch, all yellow and vigorous,
growing out of the busted up asphalt
and Marlboro boxes and twisted beer cans.
It’s no miracle, you might say. It’s just a weed.
But I know a miracle when I see one.
It looks a lot like whatever is happening
outside the window right now.

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Not even a gust
tonight
and for no
apparent reason
the heart
blows open
and just
like that
innumerable stars
rush in
not to mention
all the space
between them

of course it’s
miraculous,
and on the other,
well, after marveling
there’s nothing to do
but invite the universe
in for a cup
of decaf chai
then tuck us
all in
for a good night’s
rest

who knows
what could happen
tomorrow.

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I went in
expecting a miracle.

I wanted to be healed
when I walked out the door.

Instead, the doctor
told me there was nothing

he could do. Told me
the problem. Told me

the solution. Long and
painful. And then

he said he could help me.
I left feeling hopeless.

Frustrated. Spent. And still
in so much pain.

I went in expecting a miracle.
I think that’s what

he gave you,
my friend later said.

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Ice walls marbled blue and mud
line the river’s wintry banks
where yesterday’s ice floe scraped
a new landscape. Again. Always
something letting go, says
the heart, remembering
how it too not so long ago
was violently, swiftly rearranged,
and how, when hope was flushed
and hope was gone that’s when
in silence and out of nothing
with the moon not listening and
the river off course, that’s when
the miracles were really easy
to notice, so much debris that was
just, where did it go? gone.

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Corrupt, of course,
what all of them did,
bartering with daughters,
promising too big,

expecting too much,
skipping out on the bill,
wanting more than they needed,
telling tall tales,

but there’s one thing I learned
about gold being spun
out of straw, though strange,
it can be done.

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in the tiny seed
the scent
of marigold

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Sitting alone in warm water
with the sun doing what the sun does
when given a clear, clear sky,
everything seems possible.

Imagine, the earth heats this water
before it enters the rounded stone pool
and this seems miracle enough
to make me think that whatever is sacred

in this life might be very, very simple.
Simple as it is, I don’t understand
how it works—just as I do not understand
the heart with its longing to love.

Doesn’t it remember the hurt?
Doesn’t it remember the walls crashing down,
the rubble, the wreckage, the stench?
Doesn’t it remember the long, slow

blossoming of ache? How it unfurled
like the chokecherry tree in the yard—
tiny buds, tiny buds, tiny buds,
larger buds, then bloom! A riot of bloom!

I recently read about frogs, how
if they jump into a pot of boiling water
they immediately will jump out
and survive. But if they are put

in a pot of cold water and the fire
is lit and the temperature increase
is slow, then they will stay in the pot
even though it is getting uncomfortable,

even though it is more and more hot,
they will stay until they are boiled.
And dead. Does the heart learn from this?
Apparently not.

Here I am sitting alone
in warm, warm water, the sun
burning red the skin on my chest,
and all I can think is how good it feels

to be naked, to be warm, to be alive,
and to let the heart love, to love despite.
Oh foolish woman. Oh pleasure
in being a fool, how it burns.

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It would take weeks
to walk to your house, still
our hearts so close.

*

This morning I ski
into the woods—forty years
later I ski out.

*

The snow did not stop
when I said stop, but it did
not fall forever.

*

Across the lake
invisible in the trees,
the crow in my ear.

*

That ripple
never travels and it is
always new water.

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To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
—Walt Whitman

Balanced against morning frost
I do not see
the great blue heron
wading in the river
so I put it there

*

Meredith mentions
a student who insists
on painting
into the foreground
a rock

*

“All she needs is a darker color,”
Meredith says, “and a value
like a triangle
and the canvas
would be full of light”

*

You do not have
to be talented—even
my three year old girl
knows how to paint
something that makes her smile

*

It is not a painting,
this life, still
there was a heron here not
long ago, standing in frost
it was so beautiful

*

Here and not here,
light and dark,
so many years spent
debating the two—this morning
I see it, the river chimed in frost

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