Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?
Posts Tagged ‘news’
Instead of Turning Off the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting it all in, news, note to self, pain, trees, war on April 29, 2024| 14 Comments »
News of the War
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, ice, news, ukraine, war, winter on February 25, 2022| 7 Comments »
The newscaster speaks
and beneath you
the floor becomes ice
and the world
is speeding
on balding tires
and the moment
is the highway
and all is fishtail
and the brakes
are useless now—
and the cliff so close
and you brace
against nothing
and the only way
to correct a slide
is to turn
into the slide—
Another Reason to Be Kinder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, news, tenderness, war on May 17, 2021| 2 Comments »
Somewhere I’ve never been
reaches across the ocean
and wrenches my thoughts.
I don’t try to push it away.
I let the ache in,
let sorrow do its terrible
work. It slices in
deeper than I want it to,
but I do not resist.
All day I think of the small child
being pulled from the rubble.
All day I think of the many hands
reaching for the small frightened body.
All day, I am softened by
grief, ravaged into tenderness.
Thanking the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, hope, news, plants on December 29, 2020| 7 Comments »
Tonight, for a moment,
my world shrinks to the size
of the Christmas cactus,
which, despite the storm
that even now blusters outside,
has opened dozens of voluptuous
red blooms, as if to say,
Here I am, blooming midwinter,
and you can do it, too.
There are days when
the news makes me doubt
the value of blooming—
when the headlines alone
twist hope into a crumpled,
unrecognizable heap.
But then some snippet
of beauty finds me—
a scarlet flower,
a handwritten letter—
and breaks any scale
I would use to interpret
the world. It’s not that the terror
goes away, no. But for a few
moments, I am blessed
with the certainty
that even the smallest beauty matters
and that it is my job
to meet life however it appears—
petal, bomb, sweetness, pain—
grateful for my humanness,
vulnerable and tenuous
though it is.
Proxy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, despair, news, writing on July 13, 2020| 9 Comments »
The woman who knows what to write
did not show up today. Perhaps she’s gone
hiking amongst the blue larkspur, or
maybe she’s pulling weeds in the garden.
Perhaps she got a job as a counselor or a priest,
or decided to run for political office.
I wish she’d show up again. Sometimes
it’s not easy to face the blank, to believe
there are any words worth writing. Like today,
when I read about how the abandoned fracking wells
are leaking pollutants. How today will be
the first federal execution in seventeen years.
How there are still children at the border
still crying, “¡Mami!” and “¡Papá!”
Perhaps she was simply so sad
that she went to sit in a corner, quietly,
not to forget, but to find the strength to meet it.
Perhaps she is, even now, trying to conjure
the words that might actually make a difference.
Until We’re All Away from the Edge
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black lives matter, choices, community, human nature, kindness, news on June 6, 2020| 5 Comments »
for J Unterberg
In the picture on the news,
the little black girl holds a sign
that says, I’m your next president.
And in the grocery store,
the clerk smiles at me from behind her mask
and compliments my dress.
Consumed as I’ve been
with a sorrow so great
it swallowed our country whole,
I had thought it would take an energy
equally great and opposite
to pull me away from the bleak edge.
But then a stranger walked up to my car
where I was parked on the side of the road
to make sure I was okay. And just like that
I felt myself backing away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit.
It can be so small, what reminds us
who we are—a people who want
to thrive, to live in peace,
a people who are kind to each other
not because we have earned it, but
because kindness is in our nature.
I want to vote for that little girl,
want to help create the just world she rises in.
I want to help someone else
back away from the edge,
just a bit, just a bit, another bit.
The News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, Corona Virus, fear, geese, news, pond, wilderness on March 16, 2020| 6 Comments »
Just as I had settled into doom,
I heard the wild call of the first geese of spring
come screeching through the window.
I leapt up like a woman desperate
for good news—leapt up and ran to the window
in time to see a pair land on the pond,
splashing against the water. They quieted
immediately after alighting. And then,
there was only the sound of me watching them.
How graceful they were in the pond,
the water wrinkled behind them, as if their arrival
were the only news, the only news worth telling.
Especially When It Seems Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, news, poem, poetry, praise on November 14, 2019| 5 Comments »
Try to praise the mutilated world
—Adam Zagajewski
The cratered earth
and the blood stained shirts
and the men with guns
and the hate sharp words
and the sour rooms
that never see sun
and the rashes, the cancers
the blackened lungs
and still, there are paths
in Ohio woods
where upended trees
show elaborate roots
and the water seeps
in the ancient gorge,
and dead leaves fuel
whole dominions of soil
and though beauty
can be hard to reconcile,
worse to ignore it,
worse to look away,
worse in this mutilated world
to pretend we don’t have
ten thousand times ten thousand
reasons to praise.
Such Luck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disasters, luck, news, poem, poetry on August 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Once again the flash flood
misses the house. And the cats
are not found by the mountain lion—
even now they curl on the chair.
The forests around the house
are not claimed by wildfire.
And though my right inner arm
bears a dozen red bites,
none of the mosquitos seem
to be carrying zica.
Yes, it’s a marvelous night,
just think how many things
are going right. Not one
broken bone. No earthquake.
No angry bear. It’s enough to
make you think you’re lucky
no matter what that letter said.
Just look at those stars
and that clear night sky
without even a chance of hurricane,
no tornado, no drought.
Why Every Act of Kindness Matters
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, horse, kindness, mother, news, poem, poetry, truth on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she said, is it true? And it wasn’t
that I’d tried to keep the truth from her,
it just never came into conversation,
old horses are sometimes used for glue.
Yes, I said, wishing I could soften the message. It’s true.
She knew its truth already, but don’t we all
sometimes long to be wrong? New tears dammed
in her eyes before they fell. Is that really
the world I belong to? she rued, then buried
her face in the couch. Two hours later,
I thought her same thought as I read the news:
Anti-Semitism. Bribery. Child sexual abuse.
I wanted to hear the stories weren’t true.
Oh world, so broken, still, unglued, I choose you.