for Vivian on her 18th birthday
like six thousand five hundred seventy notes
springing out of the steps of the scales
into new surprising arrangements
she is becoming
her own ecstatic soundtrack
Posts Tagged ‘mother’
And I Can’t Stop Listening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, daughter, growing up, mother, parenting on July 14, 2026| 2 Comments »
Keep Going
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, grief, love, mother, night, Telluride on July 11, 2026| 3 Comments »
The sky is already past deep rose
verging on bruised plum by the time
we enter the cemetery gates
and walk up the hill to the grave
where the ashes of the boy I love are buried.
I’ve never been here so late.
Didn’t know the flag pole was lit
from below so it looks like a candle,
a tall slender flame, flaring up at the end
of a long, dark canyon. Didn’t know
how the night itself makes a quiet cocoon
for meeting the dead past the limits
of light, a shadow so generous it makes
equal room for sorrow and love to move in.
It’s not a voice, but it is, that says,
You can never lose me.
It’s not a touch, but it is, the invisible hand
that leads me back toward home.
Sending Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, distance, love, mother, sky on June 12, 2026| 2 Comments »
for my daughter
When you were a girl
and you’d leave for camp,
I would talk to you
through the sky,
whispering through
blue and star-dappled
dark. The message
was always the same:
I love you. I hope you
are happy. I want to gather
you a jar full of sky
so wherever you are
you can put your ear
to it and hear those simple
words translated into starlight
and sunset, cumulous
and cirrus. Sometimes
it’s easier to trust what
we can hold in our hands.
But if you ever spilled
the contents of the jar,
the love would be no less
present. In fact, you could
hold the empty glass
to your chest and feel
how love is as uncontainable
as wind, as insistent as thunder,
as everywhere as air.
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, conversation, daughter, forgiveness, knitting, love, mother, naming on June 3, 2026| 4 Comments »
I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks.
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six.
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened,
every time I’ve pushed her away instead
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her
in the sun in the grass while we waited
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too,
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.
Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bindweed, legacy, mother, service, weeding on June 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
With a white plastic five-gallon bucket
as a stool, she sits in the middle
of my garden’s gravel path and wrestles
the long notched rod through the stones.
She moves her arm slowly,
her back hunched over her task.
I see in her body her father’s body,
how he, too, would toil in the gardens
of others for hours, tool in hand, patient
and thorough. I watch as mom dangles
a slender white root in the air
to marvel at its twisted length.
I hear her triumphant ha!
as she adds it to the small but
growing pile of roots and leaves.
The bindweed will grow back
with admirable speed, but she makes
an enduring mark—not in the rows,
but in the heart of this daughter,
teaching me again how it is we find joy
offering ourselves in service to each other.
The Moment I Hope to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, exhaustion, graduation, love, mother, ordinary moment on May 28, 2026| 2 Comments »
sitting on the couch,
our bodies lean into each other—
two aspen trees, shared roots
What Goes On
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bindweed, daughter, garden, mother on May 25, 2026| 5 Comments »
Knowing it will grow back tomorrow
does not stop me from pulling
the bindweed today. Once I pulled
bindweed as if the goal was to clear it
from the garden. Now, I pull bindweed
as if the goal is to love this act of being
alive, this ritual of pulling bindweed, my
daughter beside me, soft easy chatter
rising between us. There is no blessing
or disaster yet that has ended this
communion of tugging on the long white
roots. Somehow, in this season of
endings, the bindweed seems to promise
tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Two Thousand Three Hundred Forty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, food, graduation, letting go, love, lunch, mother, school on May 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
That’s how many school lunches
I’ve made her, more or less, since
that first day she held my hand and we
stood on the grass outside the elementary school
before the first bell rang. Her hair was blonde then,
mine not gray. I’m not crying as I make her
lunch this morning. Dilled bean and rice salad.
Fresh blackberries. Pretzel sticks.
Honeycrisp apples sliced into thin rounds
that her friends call “floppy apples.”
Maybe I’m crying.
Me and all the other mothers on the last
day of the last year of school. Thinking of
two thousand three hundred forty bleary mornings
when I woke to pour love into plastic containers
along with dried mango and tofu cubes,
seaweed strips and yogurt tubes.
Okay. So I’m crying. I nibble the squared off core
of the apple to gather every last bit of sweetness.
When it’s gone, I lick the stickiness from my fingers.
A Small Lesson in Infinity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, mother's day on May 10, 2026| 10 Comments »
after “Flower in a Field” by Dario Cvencek
A mother is still a mother
even in an empty house,
even when there’s not a child
hanging on her hip or leg,
she’s still a mother even when
the floors are clean, devoid
of Legos and Monopoly houses.
Even when silence
fills the spaces where once
rang laughter, crying, singing,
even when the cake stays exactly
where she left it in the fridge,
when her car doesn’t leave the drive
for days because no one needs
to be taken to school or to dance.
Even then, she’s a mother,
when the phone doesn’t ring,
when her child can no longer
walk in the room, can’t say hello,
can’t even breathe, even then,
even then when there is no damn way
she can care for her child, that sad
fact does not change the fact
that she’s a mother, just as a tree
in the field is no less tree when the saplings
that came from its seeds are cut down,
just as a happy memory might still
make you happy even if it arrives
amongst tears. She is no less a mother
when the only thing that fills her arms
is tenderness for other mothers with
empty arms, when instead of holding
anyone, she lets herself be held.
Watching My Daughter Before Her Prom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, impossible, love, mother, prom on May 3, 2026| 3 Comments »
More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible.