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Posts Tagged ‘moment’

Because in a year or twenty I won’t remember

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 7, 2024| 10 Comments »

the way this afternoon my daughter
wraps her arms around my shoulders
and hangs for a moment on my frame,
because I won’t remember
the simple curl of her smile
and how our necks bow forward slightly
so our foreheads lightly touch,
because I don’t remember hundreds of millions
of other small and precious slivers,
I let myself fully dwell into these seconds—
the warmth of her skin, the cool air of her room,
her window open even mid-winter—
and I pour myself into this moment
knowing how a liquid takes on the shape
of its container, and oh, how I long
to be shaped by this, even if it’s only for now.

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Falling All the Way In

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 2, 2024| 7 Comments »


Late, and I lie on the couch,
my head in mom’s lap,
eyelids heavy as she pulls
slender fingers through my hair,
and I am more loved
than lost, more soft
than strong, more flesh
than worry, more no self
than self. I am not
thinking of happiness,
which is, perhaps,
the truest kind of happiness.
The moment loses any lines
that might try to define
what a moment is
until all is suffused with eternity
and tenderness is uncontainable.
Her hands move slow
and the room is quiet
and the night is a nest
big enough to hold us all.

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The Miracle of Becoming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 18, 2023| 15 Comments »

Add this to my list of small ecstasies.
            —James Crews
 
 
It’s a small ecstasy when,
strolling through the field,
I see the mottled tip
of the blonde morel
pushing up through bent grass.
And another. And another.
They were not here yesterday,
but now I kneel on the earth
with my blade sharp and true
and slice through the strange
and rubbery stems
and hold the handful of treasure
to my nose and breathe in
the earthy, woodsy scent.
 
So curious to think how they go
from not being here to being here.
Like when I realize I love someone,
but can’t say precisely when love began.
A life is made of such moments—
this wonder that rises
at the miracle of becoming,
this sweet gift of passing through.

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On a Thursday Afternoon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 13, 2023| 7 Comments »

We sit on the carpet in the entry,
and Vivian balances her ring
on the head of the cat and
for a long time we stay like this,
speaking of school and friends
The phone doesn’t ring.
The texts don’t chime.
The afternoon light
seems to hold each thing in its place
like photo corners in a scrapbook
and minutes stretch into forever.
There is a wholeness to the moment
so perfect I almost try to escape it.
Instead I stay and fall deeper
into the pages of this simple story.
A girl. A mother. A cat. An afternoon.
The certainty there’s nowhere else to be.
 

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Real Time in the Uncompahgre River Valley

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 27, 2022| 2 Comments »




An hour means nothing
to this rivulet
unbraided from the stream.
To the towering spruce,
what’s a day?
What know these red cliffs
of a week? A month?
To the deep meadow,
what’s a year?
But for those who give themselves over
to the wind-kissed field,
the quiver of grass,
the great rise of Mount Abrams
and the quieting,
for those who linger on this timeless land,
a moment could mean everything.

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Sunday Morning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 24, 2022| 6 Comments »




A soft poached egg
and a slice of pumpernickel toast,
a cup of English Breakfast
and my oldest friend and I
sitting at the round table a sunlit room
laughing and talking—
there are moments so ordinary
as to be perfect—moments
we feel so completely ourselves
we don’t try to hold on to the minutes.
Such moments don’t try
to put themselves in a picture frame,
don’t pretend to be necessary or grand.
They ask us for nothing except
that we spend them like change,
as if we had a lifetime supply.

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Practical Application

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 16, 2022| 8 Comments »




Knowing now how one moment
rewrites every moment after it;
how in an instant, the heart can trip
over its own beat and need to be retaught
how to love; how irreversible takes
only a second to say and yet
contains all eternity; how quickly our breath
can be claimed by the tides of forever,

for this I buy deep pink tulips for the table.
For this I make Dutch apple pie.
For this I walk through the canyon
in moonlight. I remind myself no guarantees.
For this, I pull you in and hold you. For this,
I stand still in the spruce trees and breathe.

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Perhaps Whole Is Not What I Aspire To

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 16, 2014| 4 Comments »

It had not yet hit the cement floor
and shattered into incalculable smithereens.
I was, of course, in a hurry.
It was, of course, glass.

I can freeze it, the moment
I knew the bottle was going to fall
and there was not a thing
I could do to stop it—

that moment as brief as when
I decided to tell the truth
after he asked the question
I hoped he would never ask.

All those shards—they never
go back to a whole. How the sunlight
gathers in them, thousands of prisms
scattered all over the floor.

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