midnight walk
even my silence
reflects the moonlight
Posts Tagged ‘moon’
One Illumining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, silence on June 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
One Almost Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, moon on February 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
One More Moon Poem (How Many Moon Poems Can One Woman Write??)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, poem, poetry on October 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
amber moon rise—
the heart, as if seeing it for the first time,
gives a standing ovation
Letter to Emily in October
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emily dickinson, moon, place, poem, poetry, sacred on October 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »
They say you left your house just once
in your last fifteen years—
you slipped alone through veil of night
to see a new-built church.
And rumor says the moon was full
when you escaped your walls—
you had no need for candlelight,
the evening led you well.
Tonight round shines the Hunter’s moon—
so dazzling is the dome
that all the world feels like a church
and night itself a poem.
Perhaps that’s what you understood
and lost your need to leave—
each room, each place is holy
and has a gift to give.
Awake at Midnight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, moon, poem, poetry, shoveling, snow, winter on February 20, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The snow was light and the moon was near full,
and the shovels skated across the drive.
The rest of the world was asleep
except for the shoveler and her shovels and the moon.
The snow was light and her thoughts were quiet,
quiet like leafless cottonwood trees
with branches that tangled with the forward moon.
There are nights when though we are alone
we are not alone,
nights when the darkness doesn’t seem so dark,
nights when our work feels not like work
and we step out of our homes, then out of ourselves,
and we are somehow unsurprised
by the way everything shines.
One Stuck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner struggle, moon, poem, poetry on February 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Several Hours Before Dawn: Another Moon Poem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, moon, poem, poetry, wonder on January 3, 2019| 2 Comments »
It appears still, the crescent moon,
but it’s moving at 2,288 miles per hour,
its light reaching us in less than two seconds.
This morning, we marvel at it, as if
we’d never seen moon before, its light
somehow touching us newly.
And though we are dashing down
the highway at fifty-eight miles per hour,
watching the moon, I feel something
in me quiet and still. Years ago, a friend told me
it was time to stop writing moon poems.
How to stop when each time
we see the moon, something new in us rises
to meet it? May we always write moon poems,
whether or not anyone reads them.
May we always marvel at the light
and shadow so far past our reach
and yet travelling with us
every day, every night. May it always feel
important, like hope, impossible to touch
and so real, so true.
One Surrender
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, poem, poetry, surrender on June 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
One Confusion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, poem, poetry on May 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
full moon
in the rear view mirror—
I curse my hands
as they drive
the other direction
One on the Eve of the New Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, new year, poem, poetry, surrender on January 1, 2018| 2 Comments »
One Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, poem, poetry on November 6, 2017| 2 Comments »
Day of the Dead
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, moon, poem, poetry on November 2, 2017| 8 Comments »
for Babette
Out the window, a moonless dark.
Sometimes inside, it is moonless, too.
Then we come to realize
how we rely on things
outside of ourselves to see.
This morning, sitting in the dark
with my eyes closed, I wondered
about the turning year,
and two words came to me.
More love. More love.
Curious now I did not think to ask how.
The words seemed both mantra and map,
both question and answer,
all-encompassing as the dark.
Do you remember that day
we tore out of our clothes
and slipped into the frigid lake
in northern Wisconsin?
How we laughed as we swam
deeper and deeper in.
How dark the water,
how it dripped light from our arms
as we raised them to pull
through the surface.
I am again swimming in the dark.
Sometimes I feel the cold
is too much for me.
It helps now to remember
that it’s possible to find laughter
in cold waters. More love. More love.
Just yesterday, I was thinking
of the way Jesus turned water to wine.
It is no use to ask how.
The invitation is to accept the miracle,
praise the change and drink.
Perhaps in these moonless times,
this is when we learn to make light
out of dark, the way two stones
make a spark. Now, perhaps,
is not the time to ask who we are,
but what we can do.
Now is the time for miracles.
More love. More love.
One Emergence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emergency, hope, moon, poem, poetry on March 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The Serious Moonlight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, poem, poetry on December 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
The Serious Moonlight
It’s just a trick
the owl plays
to fool the ears
of evening prey—
it finds a branch
not too far off,
then calls, first loud,
and then calls soft,
an illusion.
I have no will
to dupe your heart—
to linger close
but play I’m far.
No, I just want
to be where you are
and be caught
in the ravishing moonlight.
How to Eat the Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apology, chief of police, moon, poem, poetry on October 20, 2016| 2 Comments »
“We must move forward together to build a shared understanding. We must forge a path that allows us to move beyond our history and identify common solutions to better protect our communities.”
—Terrence Cunningham, president of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police
With salt, of course,
though there’s the matter of how
to get the salt to stick
without the assist of gravity.
And paired with a slightly chilled sauvignon blank,
preferably from Marlborough, of course,
with its hints of green pepper and grass.
It doesn’t taste like cheese after all,
but then the experts never seem to be right.
It tastes more like, well, hard to say.
Try another bite.
You never thought you’d be here, did you,
sampling these bits of reflected light.
Almost as unexpected as the apology
earlier tonight from the man in the suit
so blue it looked black.
Maybe not a white. A red.
A cab. Dark fruit. Full body.
One that’s needed time to evolve.
Its complex woody tones compliment
the moon’s impressive density.
What was it he said? “While
we obviously cannot change
the past, it is clear that we
must change the future.”
Toast to the future
and raise your glass
and take another nibble of moon.
Notice how dark it is, really,
about the color of asphalt, worn down.
It’s only because space itself is so dark
that the moon seems comparatively light.
All along you thought it was white.
Where else have you been wrong?
Perhaps between sips
and forkfuls you’ll find an apology
ripening there on your own startled tongue.
At the moment, anything seems possible.
The night makes its rounds.
Two Marvelings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, gratitude, love, moon, poem, poetry, river on April 21, 2016| 2 Comments »
just another full moon rise—
is it any wonder
I can’t stop bowing?
*
how, I said,
to the river bed
do you make
of yourself a home?
I let the flow shape me,
the river bed said—
flood, current,
shimmer, stone
Almost Sad in their Fantastic Costumes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged debussy, failure, moon, piano, poem, poetry, suite bergamasque on February 23, 2016| 1 Comment »
Votre âme est un paysage choisi / Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques / Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi / Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
—Paul Verlaine, “Claire de Lune”
I hate the way my fingers stumble
through the prelude—in my ear,
it is beautiful, the phrases open
and flowing, and I hum sincerely, as if
with song I could make my hands
more nimble. There are fields,
golden, inside the arpeggios,
and they part as if the wind has blown
a place for a path, and then
a thousand thousand birds
take flight just before night—
or at least that is what I
want to hear. But I am clumsy,
an oxen trampling in the field
who trips in every irrigation ditch.
I have read that by the time
the suite was published, Debussy
hated the sound of it, deplored
his earlier style. I try to imagine him
here in the living room, his thin moustache,
his thick black bangs, oh how
he would cringe, revile my lack
of sensitivity. And how I would hate
to disappoint him. Both of us
miserable, both of us abhorring
what we hear—I would stop playing,
I would, and walk over to him
as he scoffed, and I would say,
Look, look Claude,
how the moon is full, so large there
on the horizon. And we’d step
out onto the porch.
There would be no birds,
no wind to part the field,
and he would slip his hand
toward the moon, and say,
There, there, that is what I was trying to say.
And I would let my empty hands
play.
The Mother Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, moon, parenting, poem, poetry, Siberia on September 29, 2015| 3 Comments »
The Mother Remembers
One thing you must never do is call a girl standing in or near the water by name, for that is like delivering a written invitation to the water king to steal your loved one.
—from “The Maiden Rescued by the Moon,” a Siberian myth, in The World’s Greatest Nature Myths by Gary Ferguson
I didn’t mean to call her name so loud.
Of course I was angry. The girl
was always so slow about her chores
and there was always so much to do.
Our wooden pail was emptied of water again
and the sun had nearly disappeared
beneath the Arctic Ocean waves.
Oh I wanted to smack her with that ladle,
I did, but I handed it to her instead.
“Now go, daughter, go get the water,” I said,
“and mind you come back soon.”
She always was a dreamy thing,
staring off into the surf
as if there were another place
that she would rather be.
On that last night we were together,
I had just finished stitching her
a new wool dress, blue as the deepest swells.
I wanted to give it to her by the fire.
Why did she stay so long by the shore
before coming back with the bucket full?
It was in anger, yes, when I called her name
to bring her out of her reverie,
but there was more. The water king took no time
to snag her from the shore with his long,
cold arms. “The ladle, daughter, the ladle!”
I cried, and she reached
it as high as she could and caught it
on a bush on the moon.
How strangely beautiful she looked, dangling there
as the moon made its trek toward the heavens.
On clear nights I can see her in the sky,
the ladle still in her hand.
How alone I am with this blue dress.
I stare at it now so long sometimes
it might be hours before I move
to fill the bucket with water.
Driving Through the Canyon at Dusk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, moon, poem, poetry on September 26, 2015| 4 Comments »
For over an hour,
I watched the near-full moon
rise and set and rise and set
and rise and set and rise again.
Around each curve,
another chance to praise the moon
in its rising, another chance
to mark the dark of its loss.
How could I not think
of love then, and how
through all the twists
and bends, love
has seemed to disappear,
then has risen again,
and again, enormous
and shining, then lost.
There is something in us
that longs for meaning,
that wants to know ourselves
as we might know the car,
the canyon, the curves,
the moon and the sky that holds it.
Though I knew I was not coming
any closer to the moon, it felt that way,
and I drove as fast
as the road would allow.
There is something in us
that longs to know what it is to rise
full with another’s light
and share that light with the world.
Every time the moon rose tonight,
I remembered I was driving
toward you.