Alone, I am too small to meet
the great weight of your pain.
Loving, I want to turn toward you.
Aching, I want to turn away.
But yesterday I rested for a time
on a wide gray rock in an alpine cirque.
In my stillness I felt how surely
I was cradled by the world so much
vaster than I. There, surrounded
by greatness, I invited your pain
into my heart and held you there in me.
I breathed in your ache, my ache,
and felt us both surrounded
by vast fields of wildflowers,
by the deep green shoulders
of sheer gray cliffs. I envisioned
I was breathing out love, but more truly,
I was being breathed by the mountain,
or perhaps by life itself.
The weight of the pain was no less,
but I knew it as a blessing,
a gravitational force magnetizing you and me.
What a gift to hold the weight together,
to know in my whole being
how miraculously we are held.
Posts Tagged ‘mountain’
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, friendship, holding, mountain, tonglen on July 22, 2026| 2 Comments »
Walking Across Snowfields at Tree Line in May
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, husband, mountain, partner, snow, tree line on May 16, 2026| 4 Comments »
for my husband
And we’re scooching on the surface,
and we’re skimming on the surface,
and we’re walking on the crust and
we’re up to our crotches in rotten snow,
sharp crystals scratching our legs,
our shoes drenched, our toes cold,
and we climb out to skim again on the surface
and sink. And skim. Get stuck. Crawl out.
It was, of course, a relief to find
ourselves again on a dry dirt trail,
but it was wonderful, wasn’t it, to flounder
and still find our way, I mean
today, but I mean for thirty two years,
falling in deep and choosing again
to take the next step.
In a Circle of Mountains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, hiking, mountain on August 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
In a circle of mountains
it’s easier to remember
we belong to the mountains,
belong to high-pitched cheep
of pica, belong to the cliffs,
to the path, to the unpath,
belong to the blue,
blue reach of sky.
We belong as much to each other
as we belong to ourselves,
each of us a poem read by strangers
and beloveds in ways only they can read us,
each of us constantly rewriting
our lines, while in the meantime
we are constantly rewritten
by a great and unnamable
is-ness that rhymes us
each to each other.
We belong to the truth
that all belongs, even when we
are most lonely, even when
we would rather push away
from the world.
In a circle of mountains,
it is easier to practice belonging—
easier to notice this math:
your heart equals my heart,
and all this opening, opening, opening
to what we cannot know,
that equals what a life is for.
The Clearing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clearing, corn lilies, giving self to the world, mountain, opening, summer on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
I want to give myself to life
as completely as the corn lilies rising
from the floor of this clearing.
All summer they have practiced
growing from tightness
into an ecstasy of green unfolding.
Where have I yet to unfold?
So often I clench around my fear
so long I no longer notice I’m clenching.
But here at tree line, there is not
one corn lily still trapped in its tightness,
all of them, now unfurled,
beginning their push toward goldening,
toward falling back to the earth,
toward moldering toward nothing.
That utterly, I want to give myself.
Want to become the clearing.
After Difficult News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aftermath, healing, mountain, woods on September 22, 2024| 7 Comments »
It’s enough to wander
alone in the woods
while the aspen
turn their leaves
into shimmering light.
This, too, is aftermath—
the brilliant red
of rose hips,
fat and sweet.
The clean scent
of rain. Holy fluff
that was once
yellow flowers.
The vast gold
field of grass.
Why I Should Hike Every Day No Matter What
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged freedom, hiking, mountain, paradox, stream on July 21, 2024| 10 Comments »
I didn’t know how trapped I was
in my own busyness until,
walking past a quiet lake
and up through a lush spruce forest
I felt how with each step toward tree line
more calendar squares disappeared
and all my lists dissolved until
I was nowhere but wading
through waist-high bluebells
with corn lilies rising above my head.
How still my mind was then, still,
as I traversed creeks and clambered
over fallen trees. Still as I climbed
to the place where the clear water
streams down gray cliffs and yellow
monkey flower flourishes on the banks.
I was bathed with gratefulness.
Is it true that to know this freedom
once is to be able to carry it
like a touchstone in my body?
Will the larkspur have any dominion
tomorrow while I’m trapped in a deadline?
Will the scent of summer’s last wild roses
return when I’m scrambling
for just ten more minutes?
Oh freedom, I long to contain you.
That thought makes me laugh.
Yet it’s true. I long to find myself
mid-hustle still linked to the gurgling stream,
its waters so cold I can’t help but gasp.
Woodsy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, hiking, memory, mountain, spruce, trees on January 18, 2024| 8 Comments »
somewhere above Telluride, Colorado
If you close your eyes and just breathe in,
then it’s sixteen years ago and we’re off the trail
roaming through damp autumn woods.
The duff is soft with needles, moss,
and the air is scented with resinous spruce—
fresh and woodsy, tangy, bright.
Sun filters into the evergreen glade
to kiss the clearing with light. Remember, love?
Whatever dreams we brought in with us,
they, too, came to smell of earth, forest,
musk and shade. The mountains
had their way with us that day.
We said little, but by the time we left,
shadow-drunk and gloriously map-less,
everything had changed.
One Vacation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, mountain, vacation on November 26, 2023| 4 Comments »
joy in the city—
we return home
to sleep like mountains
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, mountain, peace, perspective on October 15, 2023| 13 Comments »
And the mountains rose
and eroded completely
and the great sea flooded all
and the great sea left and
the great sea flooded and left again
and the land was forced up,
and then pulled from both sides
until the center broke
and slid down to create a great rift
and the volcanoes spewed lava
and the ash covered all
and the glaciers scrubbed
and the rocks avalanched
and the earth slumped
and today I sit in the valley
and stare at the mountain
with a dusting of white
on its wide shoulders
light gathering in its clefts
and think, my god,
isn’t it peaceful?
One Fast Track
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, hiking, mountain, time on August 5, 2023| 6 Comments »
glissading down scree fields
each step forward is five steps—
wishing this for your heart