Here’s to the eggplant that once made me retch.
I would never have believed I would crave you.
And here’s to skiing. I remember the concussion,
the night train, and now, in my blood, the elation.
Here’s to ranch dressing, which for years I called goop.
And here’s to black licorice, which I now I call bliss.
And here’s the to the night, which once frightened me.
Here’s to fiction. Coffee. Country music.
It feels good tonight to remind myself
how completely things can change.
Like how a woman who thought she could never
wear patterns now wears striped socks
and polka dot gloves. Sometimes what we love
changes so completely we can’t imagine our minds
and hearts were once so small. Tonight I dream
of what else might change. For me. For you. For us all.
Posts Tagged ‘opening’
Love Poem to the Things I Never Dreamt I Could Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, opening on February 15, 2025| 4 Comments »
Unresolution
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, opening, resolution on December 30, 2024| 6 Comments »
Because after all these years
of focusing on the goal as if
happiness is a thing I attain
or a place I might finally reach,
now I thrill when I see through
the myth of arrivals.
I see where I have grasped
and clutched and clawed
and scrabbled to be somewhere
not where I am. Not that I regret it.
The memory of grabbing
helps me feel how beautiful it is
each time the hand opens
like a morning to what is here,
opens as if the opening itself
is what I am here to do.
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.
What the Gardener Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cantaloupe, garden, love, melon, opening on September 5, 2024| 7 Comments »
When I say I love you wholehearted,
I mean the whole cantaloupe, sweetheart.
I mean the strange webby skin and
the sweet, firm flesh and the absolutely
freaking messy center. I mean the way
we have to wait so patiently until it’s ripe.
The way I can smell it across the room.
The way it bruises so easily.
I mean I am speaking of love. I mean
I am well aware there’s no word in the world
as delicious as the sticky juice as it dribbles down
the chin. I mean I understand the potential disaster
in underestimating the need for warmth,
how quickly a frost can end it all.
I mean this is no kohlrabi love, sweetheart,
but I don’t know if you’re the melon
or I’m the melon or we both are, I just know
there’s no way to know what we’ve got
until we both split open and break so
completely there’s no knowing which
goop is mine and which is yours
and this is the way we survive—
not by staying whole, but by opening
wide and giving it all away.
On the Winter Solstice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, light, opening, solstice, sun on December 21, 2023| 9 Comments »
Let’s reach toward each other
with gazes gentle
as midwinter sun—
with a seeing so generous
we can’t help but turn
toward the other
to let ourselves be seen.
There are many reasons
to close, to shut down.
But when we meet
with such light in our eyes,
then we open together
like December dahlias,
soft and many petalled,
open like bird song
after a long, mute night.
Ten-Dollar Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, compassion, feeling it all, grief, opening on September 24, 2023| 12 Comments »
The woman at the farmstand
with the smile in her eyes
sold me a vase with pink dahlias,
pink zinnias, white daisies
and two stems of mint.
Even with all that beauty
waiting for me in the car,
I cried in the grocery store
when the woman I hadn’t seen in years
asked how my son was doing.
When I told her he had chosen
to take his life, she cried, too.
And the stranger who overheard
our conversation cried, too,
and pulled us into her generous arms
and we hugged by the checkout,
laughing and crying in an unlikely
knot of compassion.
I don’t want or need
to be freed from grief—
don’t want to forget the loss
or pretend it didn’t happen.
I want to live in a world
where the broken heart
might meet other broken hearts,
a world where pink dahlias open
in extravagant loveliness,
a world where I, too,
might open, might know beauty,
despite the fact I have been cut.
When It Rains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, opening, prayer, rain, unease on August 27, 2023| 9 Comments »
When a cloud follows me
as if we are tethered,
can I find peace with the shade?
It’s easy to wish it away.
Can I wish it away
and at the same time
tilt my head back,
keep my eyes wide
and breathe?
These are the days
I learn to pray—
pray not for what I want,
but to be opened
by what is here.
What Silence Did Not Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letter, opening, silence on March 4, 2023| 8 Comments »
Silence did not say come sit with me.
Did not say I miss you. Did not wonder
where I have been. Silence did not
call me sweetheart, did not make
me promises, did not scold me
or scorn me or bid me closer in.
The invitation it sent was blank,
the most beautiful letter
ever not written.
I responded right away,
though it was, perhaps some time
before I noticed every part of me
was splaying like a lily, petal soft
and open beyond what the bud of me
dared to dream. And all around me,
the silence did not say good job,
did not say please stay, did not whisper
a word as I opened into it,
wider then wider.
When Donavan Plays Classical Guitar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged guitar, heart, music, opening, spaciousness on January 25, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Donavan Dailey
The heart perhaps thought it was open
until a moment of silence is followed by fingers
flying across nylon strings and then, with no warning,
the heart breaks open as a high alpine meadow in June,
splays wide as a snow-deep cirque midwinter,
is exposed as a woman sitting in the first row
with tears spilling down her cheeks.
The heart does not question why,
it simply opens, wider, lets the secret tango
move through its channels as only
a secret tango can do—dancing the heart
ever closer to the moment until, beating wild,
the heart forgets it could ever be anything
but spontaneous as jazz, honest as the man
being played by his guitar, expansive
as the silence that shimmers in the air
just after the last note rings.
Open Eyed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broken heart, flower, opening on January 5, 2023| 12 Comments »
The more we open our eyes,
the more the heart breaks.
Still, the invitation to open our eyes,
to choose to live broken heartedly,
as on this day when I hear again
of the greed and cruelty of humans
and the heart breaks and breaks
and I feel how it is in the breaking
the heart stays open.
On the windowsill, the amaryllis
has opened two enormous blooms of red
and I am so rich with the gift of it,
as if this one flower is teaching the heart
how to unfurl its lush petals
as it moves from tight bud
to spaciousness, dusting
the world around it with gold.