for Vivian
Just today, you asked me
to hold the front door open,
your own hands too full
with a peach smoothie,
a cup of tea, your backpack
and dance bag and lunch box.
It gave me such joy,
this small act of service,
though now I also see it
as practice in letting you go.
I followed you out the door
into the frost-limned world,
yellow leaves falling before
the sun had yet risen.
It would be easy to forget
this moment with you.
We didn’t even pause
to enjoy it, just inhaled
the chill morning air,
both of us mumbling
how glorious it was
before you walked to the car
and I walked back inside.
Now, I see they’re everything,
these slim moments we share,
for a day is slim and a
year is slim, and soon your whole
childhood will also seem
slim. I hold them to me
like treasure, these slender
chapters, charged as they are
with beauty, hold them to me
even as I practice letting you go.
Posts Tagged ‘morning’
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daily, daughter, holding, letting go, moment, morning, mother on October 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
A Humble Aliveness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daily, humble, morning, ordinary, simple on March 21, 2024| 10 Comments »
Someday I will miss a morning like this,
when I rise in the dark to slice apples
and scrape ice from the windshield
so I can drive my daughter to school.
My husband in the kitchen making toast.
My tea warm. Raisins sweet.
The backyard geese a riotous racket
and a black-haired cat who wants nothing
more than to nudge my chin with her chin.
A morning so ordinary it would never dream
of flaunting its gold—no, it just spends it
on the light that streams in through the window
to land on my shoulder as if tapping me
to say, this is it. This. This.
Tinder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, fire, language, morning on January 8, 2024| 8 Comments »
Sometimes, long before the sun rises,
you whisper good morning,
and it’s as if you’ve built a small fire
in the hearth of predawn,
each syllable a small flame
leaping up in the dark,
a welcome kindling.
It takes so little to fill the room
with warmth, with light.
Some Mornings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bud, morning, sleep, waking on June 1, 2023| 6 Comments »
Before the eyes are open
but after the body wakes,
there is that gentle interlude
when the scent of the dream
lingers like lavender incense
and light enters the body
through the skin and there is
enough awareness to fall in love
with this moment but not enough
agency to stay in or to leave—
I imagine it’s what it’s like to be a bud,
to remain folded in on the darkling magic
until, like soft petals, the eyelids
can’t help but unfold
and the irises sip at the light
and half of the soul angles back
toward the dreamworld,
the other half opens toward life.
May Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, bird, morning, red-winged blackbird on May 18, 2022| 12 Comments »
Just after sunrise,
I hear it, the bright airy trill
of the red-winged blackbird—
and before my eyes
are even open,
I feel a wild resonance
with the waking world,
the certainty I belong
to this day with its rising sun
and scent of green grass,
its breeze reaching in
through the screens;
I belong to this day
with my creature heart
that already this morning
longs to hold what it cannot,
longs to comfort others,
even knowing how
sorrow must be felt.
I belong to the song
of the red-winged blackbird
as it calls out again,
belong to the silence
as he waits for an answer.
And waits. And waits.
I belong to the spring
every bit as much
as I belong to winter.
This is perhaps
the conundrum of love,
no matter how strong the ache,
we still belong
to the world of beauty,
this world that calls to us
even in our sleep,
wakes us with a promise
strung like audible garland
across the dawn—
you belong, you belong.
A Gentle Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dissolution, grief, morning on April 20, 2022| 7 Comments »
Thin clouds smear against clear sky
like questions in white chalk being erased
or like streaks of tears
just before they have evaporated.
On this sun-glorious morning,
steeped in blue, I am crying.
Is it strange grief does not bother me?
The river is higher again today
as the snow from high peaks starts to melt.
I stare at the spot on the bank
where we used to stand and throw rocks,
squealing with pleasure
as the water splashed and formed rings.
The kingfisher clicks as he follows the shoreline,
his beak a needle stitching this moment
to the past. I, too, am melting,
melting into this generous morning,
forgetting who I am, then remembering again,
everything blurs, oh this beautiful dissolution,
the tears almost cool, the sun so warm.
Things to Know When Waking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, morning, pep talk on October 27, 2021| 4 Comments »
There will be weather.
There will be some measure of light.
The earth will not pause, will not stop
in its spinning. The morning
will stretch into night.
And whatever I feel,
I won’t feel it forever.
And whatever I love
will someday be lost—
no matter how well I love it,
no matter my hopes,
no matter how tightly I grasp.
But the love itself, love
can continue to grow
in ways that defy
what I think I know—
if only I tend it, meet it.
And the mountains around me
are falling down.
Somewhere else,
mountains are being made.
Our Milky Way Galaxy,
sure in its course, will collide
with Andromeda Galaxy someday.
That someday will not be today.
Today there will be thousands of chances
to choose to be generous.
I am what I give.
I have a love light to carry.
Gravity wins.
Today is the day to live.
Amnesia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgetting, morning, waking up on May 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »
So lucky sometimes,
like today, to wake
and say to the world
I love you.
On these mornings,
almost impossible
to remember it is ever
any other way—
impossible to believe
I could wake and say
anything besides
thank you, I am grateful,
good morning blue sky,
good morning old limbs.
Making the Most of Peace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chickadee, holiday mathis, morning, peace, waking on February 9, 2021| 5 Comments »
Make the most of peace.
—Holiday Mathis, horoscope February 9, 2021
This morning I wake to notice
that nothing hurts. I notice
I am warm beneath the comforter
and the air in the house is cool on my face
and the only sound is a chickadee at dawn
singing its two-note “sweetie” song.
There are mornings I wake already stunned
by the pain of the broken world,
but this morning, I lie for a while
in quiet and savor the thin trace of first light
as it develops grays in the room, savor
the rhythmic rise and fall of my own chest,
savor the feel of my palm on my belly,
welcome its slight weight, its small warmth.
One Every Day from the World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generosity, light, morning on September 26, 2020| 2 Comments »