Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, losing the self, loss of the separate self, night, solstice on December 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And this is the chapter
when it just feels
too much too much
to turn on the light
and so you sit
in the dark.
This is not a myth
in which you are punished,
turned into a tree or a kingfisher—
nor is this the story
in which you discover
your own light.
No, this is the night
in which you are simply
a lifetime of tired
and unable to turn on the light.
And so it’s you
and the night.
It’s you and the night.
And then it’s just the night.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, night, poem, poetry, sky on December 20, 2019| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, walking on November 11, 2019| 6 Comments »
One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?
—Rachel Carson
And so I memorize how it is
that the cheeks nearly freeze
but the body’s so warm,
how the river informs every measure
but the thoughts sift to silence,
how the body thrills
in its ability to swing one foot
in front of the other, how
walking is just another name
for recovering from falling,
how strange it seems now
that I was once afraid of the dark.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, night, poem, poetry on November 2, 2019| 5 Comments »
I wake up happy, as if the happiness
were already seeded before I woke.
As if all I have to do to love the day
is breathe. So I breathe. And love
meets me right where I am.
There are days we know we are lucky—
lucky just to wake. Perhaps it’s because
we have known dismal days when
just rising felt like strike three.
But today,I rise with happiness as present
as the dark before the dawn—not
because I deserve it, but because
it’s as natural as the milky way
spilled across the sky, as
normal as the night itself
stretched out like a blanket
to warm the sleeping world.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, night, poem, poetry, tennessee on October 2, 2019| 4 Comments »
Is not like midnight in Colorado.
It’s dark, of course, same stars.
But the air here has a weight
that holds me—as if it’s been having
a long conversation with me
since before I arrived, as if it knows me.
I have come with my arms too full.
The night asks me to set down
whatever I have brought,
to hold it the way it holds me.
I breathe into the night
only to find it is breathing me.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erik satie, love, night, poem, poetry on August 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
inspired by Erik Satie, Gnossienne 1
let me speak only in starlight
and let me wear only song
teach me to love in a minor key
and let the night
be long
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, questions, silence on May 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I ask the night
teach me to ask bigger questions
it replies
perhaps you could
take the pen away
from the one who wants
to ask questions
and then let her come
walk in the night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, night, parenting, poem, poetry on April 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
some flowers bloom
only at night,
so it is with certain conversations,
that open in the dark,
the whole room
blessed with sweetness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, stars on March 7, 2019| 4 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black, dark, night, painting, poem, poetry on November 2, 2018| 4 Comments »
in part a response to Ferlinghetti’s “Instructions to Painters and Poets”
Teach me to paint the dark, the infinite
shades of the infinite dark, the basis of all
the light that is, the origin, the ink bright spark
that leaps from the great black well,
the darkling spring, the raven luck, the mother
from which the big bang sprang, the womb
of dawn, the only cloak measureless enough
to hold everything, everything in its folds.
Teach me to paint the inner midnight,
the moonless rooms, the lavish corners,
the mighty dark inside the fist, the vastness
of limitless space that links
with no effort the everything that is,
the everything that ever was, the everything
that will ever be. Teach me the song of soil,
the song of deep winter, the pure dark song
of the sea. All the dark that’s been terrorized
by light, and all the dark that’s been pushed away
and all the dark that’s been feared,
teach me its valor, its ferocity, its kindness,
its gentleness, its blinding generosity.
