On this day when I carry fear
like a stone, when it burdens me,
slows me, when I don’t try to
pretend the fear is not there, what a gift
when, after walking for miles
beneath the clear and vast blue sky,
it is not so much that the fear
goes away, it’s more that I feel
gathered up by the blue and
lifted up by sky the way a child
might be lifted by her mother,
as if my weight is no hindrance
and my fear is less boulder,
more pebble. I see more plainly then
how small my life, and how my fear,
though great, could never be big enough
to crush the sky. Sometimes
I need only to walk outside
to remember my place in the scale
of things. There is not one moment
when I am not doing the real work
of being alive. Even in the heaviest,
most frightened moments. Even
in these hours when I’m weightless,
when I swear, even burdened, I could fly.
Posts Tagged ‘nature’
The Real Work
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, humanness, nature, outside, sky, walking on October 27, 2026| 6 Comments »
When You’re Struggling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blm, hiking, jumbo mountain, miracle, nature on October 21, 2026| 1 Comment »
Meet me in autumn on Jumbo Ridge
when the sagebrush is still in muted bloom
and the air smells of juniper and coming rain
and the cottonwoods below form a riotous
golden ring of applause and the miraculous
feels so commonplace that we talk about
weather—or we don’t talk at all—as if life
is always stitched through with the undulating
rhythm of magpies and the sweet call of chickadees,
as if orangish-pink stones are always dotting
our paths, as if life is always as simple
as deciding which trail we want to explore next.
Something Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being held, blessing, mountains, nature on July 9, 2026| 1 Comment »
We wandered through green gentians higher than
our heads. Vast fields of larkspur, monkshood, paintbrush.
Sour scent of hemlock, earthy scent
of osha. Stones upturned by bears in search
of grubs. A hundred times we gasped, enraptured
by the aspen’s greens. And every step,
a blessing. Every step a chance to praise.
Some days we can’t remember what it is
we wish we could forget, rare days when ache
can’t find us, days when we wade deeper in
to splendor, oh the largess of such days
when we know well the frailty of life
but feeling held, forget our helplessness.
A Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, connectedness, fawn, nature on July 7, 2026| 1 Comment »
At the edge of forest
and field, a dappled fawn
wobbles through tall
grass, each step halting,
delicate. Around her,
the sweet clover blooms
in a yellow haze. Ash
sifts, from the nearby wildfire.
Scent of burning, scent
of change. Lyric variations
of the song sparrow
thread the air as if he is
stitching together all
that is here. Not pictured,
but no less present:
You. The sparrow. The flame.
The fawn steps into the open
to walk inside me, weaves
through a sea of shifting greens.
Long after she disappears,
she does not leave.
One Every Morning for Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, loving what is, nature, raven, worm on June 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
the sleek black raven
the feast of thick worms
the falling in love with them both
Portal
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratefulness, holy, lens, nature, pause, thank you on May 15, 2026| 12 Comments »
Not only the golden yellow belly
of the evening grosbeak as he bobs
below the feeder; not only
the rich purple flash of the black-chinned
hummingbird charging the air with iridescence;
it could, in fact, be any gray-winged thing,
even, for instance, a cricket, common as grass,
prehistoric and segmented in its armor, yes,
it could be anything—ant hill, moth dust,
soft moss, ginger—anything at all
that makes you, for a moment, pause
to take in the miracle of what is here, and
the attendant miracle that you are here, too,
as witness, and in this pleat of a pause,
you might find yourself stunned with a gratefulness
you could never hope to name, a thanksgiving
beyond the syllables of prayer, a throbbing
thanksgiving for the utter marvel of this life
that none of us did anything at all to deserve,
yes, gratefulness for the pausing itself,
that portal through which we travel
to find everything, everything is holy,
even the pill bug, even the tick,
even the one who cannot stop stuttering
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, cliff, nature, not doing, nothing, stillnes on March 26, 2026| 10 Comments »
Today, for a time, I am more red rock cliff than river.
I sit and do not do.
Perhaps some part of me crumbles.
I do not resist the crumbling.
I do not resist stillness.
I am weary of resisting.
So weary that today
I promised myself
I would make time for nothingness.
What pleasure I found in not rushing,
not rising, not streaming, not traveling to,
not coming from.
Why have I put off, again and again,
the chance to be intimate
with nothing?
Yesterday, when I heard myself
tell a friend my experience of nothing
is what I think God is,
then I wondered why I fill my hours
with so much everything?
So today I cliff. I rock wall.
I sandstone. I canyon.
I sit still and undo
and meet the great nothing
that holds up everything.
Almost Effortless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, contentment, grace, nature, peacefulness, seeing, tree, walking on January 2, 2026| 4 Comments »
A humble contentment.
Because blue green spruce
by the creek bed.
Because ancient red
of sandstone cliffs.
This almost forgettable moment
not forgotten.
This small seeing.
This ease in being, unearned.
Because the tips of the spruce
are more silver, softer.
Because afternoon mist
somehow mingles it all.
Because sometimes when I try,
I cannot feel the connection.
This moment when trust is.
This sinking of my foot
into slick, wet earth.
This small thing.
This everything.
Call and Response
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, moon, nature on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
for Cindy
Are you there? she said
as she came to my door.
I’m here, I said.
Are you there? she said.
I’m here, I said.
Come, she said,
and we walked to the field
where behind the ridge
the glow of the moon
had begun to appear.
We whispered as we waited
for the moon to rise,
whispered of dreams
and legacies, until, at last,
the fullness had rounded
into the sky,
and we said goodnight,
both of us knowing
we’d witnessed a miracle—
not the miracle of moonrise,
though that, too,
but the alchemy of two hearts
choosing to meet
the world together.
What’s Really at Stake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cascade Mountains, mountains, nature, pine, scent, trees on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.
One Unpronounceable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, nature, river on February 7, 2025| 4 Comments »
the river decides
it’s discovered me,
renames me after itself
For This, I Walk Outside
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged life, nature, outside, service, stellar's jay on November 8, 2024| 9 Comments »
Not to escape the world,
but to be more wholly in it.
Sharp cold stings my cheeks—
not like a slap, but like the thrilling burn
of whiskey as it blazes down the throat—
the kind of wild aliveness
that brooks no choice
but to wake up to life,
to champion it, to know life
as the most wondrous thing
even as I steep in the ugliness
we humans commit.
This is what life asks of us.
I walk outside to be more wholly here,
here the way the Stellar’s jay is here.
Even on the coldest day,
its every fluffing, every peck, every head bob,
every flight is in service to life.
It’s never confused about its purpose.
I want to be in service.
Outside, everything is teacher:
the cold, the snow, the bird, the day,
this fallible, fabulous human race,
this improbable, beautiful planet in space.
To serve life, I must inhabit it wholly
and be inhabited by it, too.
As if it all could end tonight.
As if it goes on forever.
We Are Told to Make Our Own Way
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brooke McNamara, follower, friendship, leader, nature, path on September 18, 2024| 10 Comments »
But also, I consider the importance
of following, as today
when Brooke guided me
through dense plots of homes,
past tall dead trees
where red-tailed hawks
like to land, then down
through the shrubs
on the thin dirt path
to where we crossed the creek
on three rough stones
only to climb into a park
of manicured grass,
and I was aware of how good it is
to be led by someone I trust,
to see paths I would never
have found, to wander in fields
full of someone else’s stories.
How grateful I am
for all who have led me
through the fields of their hearts,
beneath the branches of their losses,
into the alleys of their wonder.
How grateful I am for the times
the journey was made possible
because someone extended their hand
and led me toward exactly what
I could not have known
I longed to move toward.
for Brooke McNamara
In Common
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dusk, friendship, nature on August 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for Holiday and Christie
In golden light we walk
beneath the slippery elm
and the hackberry tree,
and the air is warm
and thick with the hum
of winged things. If our lives
are made of a collection
of moments, it thrills me
that we are now all three
made of this: the slant light
of summer, the lavish green,
the thick warm air, our honest
laughter, and the brightness
that gathers to greatness
and flares just before the night.
Self-Portrait as Sedge Meadow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, nature, water, wetlands on June 28, 2024| 4 Comments »
After years, grief now grows in me
as honestly as sedges grow
in the wetlands. As necessary
and as benign as fresh water.
As generous as the scent
of rain. I would not wish grief
away any more than I would
wish away the blue heron,
which is to say I now see
grief is an essential part of my biome,
how without it, other parts of me
would perish, how natural it is
to be saturated as I am by tears,
how abundant grief is, how alive.
Recess, Second Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, childhood, grass, inner child, nature on April 28, 2024| 13 Comments »
Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?
Between Calls
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, outdoors, quiet, silence on April 23, 2024| 4 Comments »
I walk out the door and
lie on the ground and
let the earth hold me,
let the sun soak me
let breath do
what breath does.
And if there is any
part of me that doesn’t know
it is part of everything,
it is lost in the vast peace
that fills me when
everything warms
and the kingfisher flies
over my silence
with his clackclackclack
and the air smells of river
and greening grass.
It doesn’t last,
but for this small eternity,
I am what a wind is,
only more, only less.
Bringing You with Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, Earth Day, eduardo rey brummel, kindness, nature on April 22, 2024| 14 Comments »
for Eduardo Rey Brummel, on Earth Day
I walk on the long dirt road
with fat bumblebees
and dark red rocks,
not to distract myself
from you in your death room,
but to bring you with me
into this miraculous day
with it wild iris just beginning
to push through the earth
like curious green tongues
and its patch of buttercups
blooming right through me
all waxy and yellow and bright.
Far away, your heart is erratic
and your breath is slowing.
Far away you are becoming
less flesh and more mystery,
less the man who wrote
uplifting quotes on the lunch board
and more whatever it is
that drives the willows to blush,
whatever it is that causes the crows
to caw, then hush, then caw again.
You who called me Hermana,
you showed me how to be more kind,
and now you grow within me,
an essential part of my biome.
What gift more precious
do we have to offer than kindness?
I don’t know how it happens,
but the day is more beautiful
because I carry you with me—
even the thorns seem
to call for my honest attention,
even the leafless oaks,
even the dry stream bed
waiting for rain.
Dear friends,
If you know my friend Eduardo and did not yet know about his stroke and his recent blood infection, I know this is not easy news to receive. He responded to almost all of my poems here on this blog with such thoughtfulness and support. One of the most kind, generous people I have ever met.
If you would like more information, you can find it on his caring bridge.
In Less Than Fifteen Minutes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, joy, nature, outside on March 6, 2024| 5 Comments »
As easy as stepping out the door,
this chance to drop the self who does,
the self who walls and calendars and phones,
the self who dishes and bills and desks
and become the self that becomes—
become whispering field and bright
squawking jay and full silence rising
mid squawks. Become sun-puddled,
sky-muddled, breeze-ruffled
heartbeat, spruce-reaching,
blue-winging, leaf-whirling heartbeat,
snow-melting, cliff-lifting,
grass greening heartbeat, become
heart warmth beat heart breath beat
heart sun beat heart cloud beat
heart heart heart heart
as if this time I’ll never forget.