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.
Posts Tagged ‘night’
Keep Going
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, grief, love, mother, night, Telluride on July 11, 2026| 3 Comments »
Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged constellations, family, love, night, trust on March 13, 2026| 6 Comments »
We lay on the porch in the dark
marveling up at the sky, Orion’s
belt at our feet, Jupiter just up
to the left. We chatted of satellites
and the soft milky way glow; we
named the constellations we could.
And when young Winston laid his head
on my chest and I felt the gentle ease
in his small warm weight, I was equal
parts universe and human—
astonished again by how, in this vast,
cold, expanding world, we have been given
the capacity to trust. And no matter
how bleak it sometimes gets on earth,
there are also moments such as this,
when we come together to gaze into the night
and, lingering in immensity, we feel it,
side by side by side by side by side by
side by side, the gift of loving each other,
dark though it may be.
Sitting on the Porch at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged isness, night, silence, sitting on August 30, 2025| 6 Comments »
A blue cup. Lemon tea.
Scent of rain.
A drove of stars.
A silence so vast
the mind forgets
to reach for meaning
or purpose and
for a moment
each thing is
exactly what it is.
A cup. Lemon tea.
Scent of rain.
A woman who
does not remember
if she’s a woman
or a star.
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, fear, night, paradox, worry on June 18, 2025| 8 Comments »
Walking alone into the dark,
my fear comes with me.
I feel it small and hard
in my belly like a tiny grenade
the mind has conjured
in case I need protection.
Meanwhile, all around me
the night is peaceful.
The dark spills its generous ink
into every open space.
Crickets rub their legs in bright music.
The misty rain makes no sound.
But the mind is not convinced
the night is safe. It clenches tighter
around its fear. It does no good
to tell the mind not to worry.
Hello, tiny grenade.
I carry it with me as I walk
through a field of fireflies—
and I’m laid bare by the beauty
I find there—thousands of glittering sparks.
Isn’t it a marvel how a person
can be both clenching and opening
at the very same time
while moving alone through the dark?
Perception: A Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, perspective, sonnet, walking on February 11, 2025| 8 Comments »
I take a walk with my whirling thoughts
and the near-full moon and the dark,
and for a time, all that seemed large
in me is no less large, but it’s also a dot,
a blip when compared to the whole
of the night, as if the entirety of my life
and the life of my country and the life
of the earth could all fit in a fourteen-line poem
with two lines left blank. Because nothing I write
seems to touch how vast, how sublime it is—
the snow moon rising above red cliffs—
only space can convey how humbling it is, the night.
.
Before Winter Solstice, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, night, solstice on December 17, 2024| 5 Comments »
This, too, is what we are born for,
this waking in darkness, unable
to see, but still able to hear the shush
of wind in bare branches, able to feel
the charge of our heartbeat, the swell
of our belly as it fills with borrowed air.
I have spent my life learning to love
these shapeless hours before the light
finds us, these shadowsome nights when
my whole being seems to stretch beyond
the bed, beyond the room, beyond the home,
beyond the valley, beyond even the globe,
as if I rhyme with the dark all around us,
the dark that holds us, the dark that surrounds
this whole swirling spiral of galaxy.
Sometimes, I feel how that infinite darkness
calls to the darkness inside me as if to say,
remember, remember where you come from,
remember what you are. And the darkness
inside me sings back.
Driving Across Utah in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, night, time, utah on November 22, 2024| 2 Comments »
Perhaps a valley. Surely desert.
Perhaps a mountain range over there.
Perhaps a whole rhythm of ranges.
Slot canyons, too. And a ribbon
of trees along where a river might be,
the leaves not yet yellow,
the limbs not yet bare.
But all I see beyond pavement
and white and yellow lines,
is thick black night and
a memory of years ago,
driving this same highway,
falling in love with the way light
and shadow played across the vastness.
Somehow I am alive both now and then.
As we wind and climb and curve
through the dark,
I carry that old light with me.
The Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, night, opening, opposition on October 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
I feel it before dawn—
the longing not only for light
but for the vast embrace
of the dark,
the way it links me
to the farthest reachings
of the universe,
the way it holds
each dull planet,
each luminous star,
holds me with no question,
no reservation,
holds all I love
and all I have yet
to learn to love.
With each breath
I bring it into my body,
small sips of dark,
great gulps of dark.
Inside me it swirls
with my love of light,
and this is how the certainties
of the heart are erased—
when I love and ache
in two directions at once—
and what’s left
is so raw, so open,
so alive.
One Wondering About All that Goes Unheard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, night, sleep, temple on September 30, 2024| 4 Comments »
in the temple of night
the only audible benediction
sweet hymn of your breath
Dark Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, solstice on December 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
The long night slips into the room.
It swirls around the dinner table
Night wraps around the light
of the candles. There is nothing
in the home it does not touch.
Even the bright music.
Even the scent
of cinnamon and cloves.
Even the ache.
It travels into our hands,
our dreams, our speech,
our song, our toes.
It becomes us,
becomes the reason we pray,
the reason we learn how to sing.