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Posts Tagged ‘outside’

The Real Work

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 27, 2026| 10 Comments »


 
 
On this day when I carry fear 
like a stone, when it burdens me, 
slows me, when I don’t try to
pretend the fear is not there, what a gift  
when, after walking for miles 
beneath the clear and vast blue sky, 
it is not so much that the fear
goes away, it’s more that I feel 
gathered up by the blue and
lifted up by sky the way a child 
might be lifted by her mother, 
as if my weight is no hindrance
and my fear is less boulder,
more pebble. I see more plainly then
how small my life, and how my fear,
though great, could never be big enough
to crush the sky. Sometimes 
I need only to walk outside
to remember my place in the scale 
of things. There is not one moment
when I am not doing the real work
of being alive. Even in the heaviest, 
most frightened moments. Even 
in these hours when I’m weightless, 
when I swear, even burdened, I could fly.

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Placing Attention

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 23, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Today it was so clear.
It’s not all about the wounds
but the waking.
I took my broken heart outside
into the autumn air,
inhaled the scent of dying grass
and dying leaves and felt so alive
as the wind ravaged my untied hair.
Outside, I closed my eyes and went in.
In my ears, the roar of galvanized leaves.
On my face, unclouded sun.
And inside, such unnameable vastness
even now I stutter in wonder.

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For This, I Walk Outside

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 8, 2024| 9 Comments »


 
 
Not to escape the world,
but to be more wholly in it.
Sharp cold stings my cheeks—
not like a slap, but like the thrilling burn
of whiskey as it blazes down the throat—
the kind of wild aliveness
that brooks no choice
but to wake up to life,
to champion it, to know life
as the most wondrous thing
even as I steep in the ugliness
we humans commit.
This is what life asks of us.
I walk outside to be more wholly here,
here the way the Stellar’s jay is here.
Even on the coldest day,
its every fluffing, every peck, every head bob,
every flight is in service to life.
It’s never confused about its purpose.
I want to be in service.
Outside, everything is teacher:
the cold, the snow, the bird, the day,
this fallible, fabulous human race,
this improbable, beautiful planet in space.
To serve life, I must inhabit it wholly
and be inhabited by it, too.
As if it all could end tonight.
As if it goes on forever.
 

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In Less Than Fifteen Minutes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 6, 2024| 5 Comments »


 
 
As easy as stepping out the door,
this chance to drop the self who does,
the self who walls and calendars and phones,
the self who dishes and bills and desks
and become the self that becomes—
become whispering field and bright
squawking jay and full silence rising
mid squawks. Become sun-puddled,
sky-muddled, breeze-ruffled
heartbeat, spruce-reaching,
blue-winging, leaf-whirling heartbeat,
snow-melting, cliff-lifting,
grass greening heartbeat, become
heart warmth beat heart breath beat
heart sun beat heart cloud beat
heart   heart   heart   heart
as if this time I’ll never forget.

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Whatever It Means

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 31, 2020| 5 Comments »

Certain I can’t carry

another sadness,

I step outside

and let the shine

of the mid-morning sun

stroke my cheek

like a lover.

And the air has a strange

bright citrus tang,

and I inhale it

again and again.

Whatever it means

to be alive,

it has something

to do with this—

the scent of leaf

and soil and shadow.

The astonishing warmth

of a late October day.

The weight

of loving another,

that weight

without which

I would be nothing.

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One Reason I Like to Go Outside

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

In the field
the ache of brokenness
is less.
Everything here
is broken.
Ground. Stems.
Sound.
I could bear
almost anything
I think
if I sit here long enough
alone
in tall dry grass
with the sun
slung low
and still warm
enough,
the wind
stirring the air
and carrying
my thoughts
some other where
till all that is left
is sky mind
and sky
a field
a winging shadow
passing through
my shadow.

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