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Posts Tagged ‘ocean’

Because It’s Hard to Not Know

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 20, 2024| 8 Comments »


                  for P
 
 
All day I imagine my love
is a great ocean that lifts you
on a warm and gentle tide
so all you need to do today
is float. Float and let yourself
be carried. Float and know
that in this hour nothing
need be done. Perhaps
if you are still today, even
for a moment, you can feel
the way these distant waves
are near as your own sweet breath.
The weight of all that scares you
doesn’t change. I know. I imagine
I lift that, too. Lift it all until
you are certain no matter
how much things change,
you are not alone.

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What the Mermaids Sang

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »

            after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
 
Truths are hidden from the surface.
            —motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
 
 
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
 
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.

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Blood, Like Salt Water

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 27, 2023| 10 Comments »


 
 
There is in each of us an ocean
full of secrets strange and luminous,
an ocean with depths we do not understand,
with dark we often fear,
a place almost impossible to visit
and yet it moves with us
everywhere we go,
informs every conversation,
underlies every thought.
There is treasure there,
but it belongs to the depths
the way the heart
belongs to the body.
Everything depends on this.
Lately, I’m learning to think of treasure
only as a verb,
not as a thing to be taken.
I’m learning that to live
is to be an ocean.
 

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Temporal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 20, 2022| 7 Comments »

for Kayleen


As the tide rose and the waves grew nearer,
she took a stick and drew in the sand
a small labyrinth. In the center
she placed a dried tangle of roots,
some sodden gray feathers,
and the broken open shells of oysters.
White stone at the entrance.
Warm sun on our skin.
On the short path, we wrote with a stick
the names of people and places we longed to heal.
All around us the whirling of dark sea birds
seeking higher places to land.
All around us the sound of waves crashing on rocks,
sound of cliffs slowly eroding into sand.

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Having Lost Sight Now of the Shore

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 13, 2021| 7 Comments »


 
 
Wading into the ocean of grief,
I feel how the tides tug
at the story of how I arrived here—
the waves don’t tear my story away,
no, but float its fabric around me
till I wear it more loosely
and meet the raw self inside the story.
 
How many of us are here
in these waters learning
new ways to swim?
Already we’re deeper, deeper in.
Though it is a terrible gift to be here,
I fall in love with us all,
with our common humanity.
How sweet it is to meet each other
with our vulnerability glittering on our skin,
our bodies more buoyant
than we ever dreamed.
 

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Why I Take Deep Breaths

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2021| 6 Comments »




In this deep sea of grief,
it is hard to trust
my own buoyancy—
great waves break on me,
take my breath away,
I’m submerged by loss,
yet with so little effort
I rise. Just by being alive,
I rise. So I splutter.
So I’m graceless.
So I cannot see the shore.
But my friend reminds me,
there’s no way
that I can do this wrong.
So I let myself be carried
by currents unknown,
and each time I breathe—
I feel myself rise.
With so little effort,
I rise.

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The Tide is High

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 4, 2021| 8 Comments » 

lyrics from "The Tide Is High" by John Holt, 1967
           
 
Something about the unsinkable reggae beat,
and in just three notes, I’m again my young self,
dancing alone in my bedroom,
singing as if I am one with the song,
as if it were written just for me,
 
I’m not the kind of girl
who gives up just like that, oh no, oh!
 
And singing it now on a Sunday afternoon,
I’m caught in a surprise riptide of joy
and start to lilt around the room,
though just moments ago I was weeping,
buried beneath the salt of worry,
 
but here I am, dancing alone,
hips rocking, my shoulders a rolling sea,
my voice surfing above the bright swell of trumpets.
 
The tide is high but I’m holding on.
 
Sometimes a song is a lifeline,
not because it pulls me out of the water,
but because it tosses me deeper in,
and I feel I’m no longer trapping myself
in a life the size of a teacup—
 
no, in this moment I am oceanic,
an Atlantic of joy, a Pacific of wonder
vast enough to hold everything,
and the tide is high
and all that salt only makes me more buoyant
as I play in the generous waves.

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One Especially When It Rains

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

 

deep desert canyon of the heart—

it remembers when

it was ocean

 

 

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One Disentanglement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 10, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

casting a broken net—

I catch no fish,

but oh, the pull of the sea

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For My Sister Across the Ocean

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 1, 2015| 4 Comments »

In the empty kitchen I read

your letter out loud,

try to speak in your tones

as if I might trick my ears,

but there are too many waves

in my voice, I can hardly keep my head

above the water, they are deep

the tides between here and there.

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