I open the moment as if it were a box
and, shocked by the cruelty I find,
I want to close the lid.
Want to pretend I don’t see the tears,
don’t hear children screaming.
I want to not feel my own heart whacking
like a club inside my chest.
In the myth, Pandora closes the lid
on hope and keeps it locked in.
But more than I want to close the box,
I want to keep it open.
I want to stay with the ache.
I want to be with what is real.
What is real: I keep the box open.
What is real: There is no box.
What is real: Sometimes I fear
there is no hope left. And sometimes
when I am very still with what is,
hope flutters inside me. How?
I don’t know. But its small wings
open like prayer inside my breath.
Posts Tagged ‘pain’
Present
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged box, grace, hope, pain, present on December 7, 2025| 9 Comments »
Sit with the Pain in Your Heart, he said,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged greg kimura, meeting the moment, pain on September 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
and I did. In quiet rooms. In restaurants.
On public benches beside the trash cans.
And sometimes I walked with the pain
in my heart. Through aspen forests and
the shade of tight alleys. On crowded city
streets and on long dirt roads. And I danced
with the pain in my heart—danced in
the kitchen and danced in the park
and danced with no music at all. And
I cooked with the pain and I wrote
with the pain and I gardened,
washed dishes and slept with the pain
and the pain was still pain. It did not
change. It still hasn’t changed.
But I did.
*title from a line from Greg Kimura, “Sacred Wine”
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, heart, holding, pain, pond on September 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The way the shore holds the pond,
that is how I want to hold
the pain in my heart, honoring
how vital it is. How it is home
to things with hard shells and sharp
claws and also to beings with gossamer
wings. To drain it would be to lose
my aliveness. To become barren,
cracked, dry. I can’t say I love
the spider-like skaters that streak
across the top, nor the thick gray muck
that lines the bottom. But I love
the green rushes that rim the edges,
the red-stemmed willows, the wild
iris. It is no easy thing to hold pain,
but I look how vibrant the pond shore is.
This alive is how I want to live.
Six Weeks After I Break My Foot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, pain, stillness, teaching on May 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.
In the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cacti, domes, healing, memory, pain on July 1, 2024| 12 Comments »
for Jen Meyer It was innocent to start, how Jenny and I gathered the dried bits of cacti that had fallen on the trail in the desert dome in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Inside the dome, it was hot; outside, snow, and at eight years old, we had never before seen anything so prickly, raised as we were amongst trillium and violets. Perhaps the docents had told us not to touch. Surely we knew better than to take something we found, but we gathered the strange and spiky rounds like the treasure they were and carried them in our knit hats. Years later, I can’t recall how we were caught. But I remember the sting of thousands of hair-thin spines in my scalp, my skin. That was how I learned something unusual and beautiful could also be cruel, that some things will hurt you simply because that is how they are made. But oh, how I love that girl, the one who wanted so badly to touch and be touched by the world. Keep touching, I want to tell her. Even when it hurts. There is so much you will never know any other way. |
The Tender Gap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arrow, buddhist teaching, gap, pain, self-compassion on May 20, 2024| 8 Comments »
If an arrow strikes you, you feel pain where it enters. If a second arrow strikes the same place, the pain is greatly intensified. The first arrow represents unwelcome events, such as rejection, loss, failure and injury. The second arrow represents our reaction to these events, such as worry, fear, anger, criticism and despair.
—gloss of the Buddhist teaching from the Sallatha Sutta, “The Arrow”
In the moment after the first arrow has hit
is a small gap in which I sit and reel
from the pain of the tip.
How raw I am then, stunned
by the burn, by the sting.
How easy in that moment
to wound myself again
with second arrows
fashioned of shame and blame.
As if it’s wrong to be hurt.
As if I should have evaded being hit.
In that gap before I raise my own bow,
before I nock the arrow,
before the tension builds in my arm
from pulling back the string,
there, I want to build a nest,
a safe and spacious place to rest,
a place where I feel the pain
and treat myself with the same gentleness
I would offer anyone else who is hurting.
I want to weave in blue and green ribbons
of tenderness and let my body feel what it feels.
I want to curl into that gap
with all my senses open,
want to let the throb be throb,
let the ache be ache,
and surround it with enough softness
that it can heal.
Such a sacred gap, that moment
in which I choose to let my arms hang by my sides,
choose to put down the arrow
and weave the bowstring
into the nest.
Instead of Turning Off the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting it all in, news, note to self, pain, trees, war on April 29, 2024| 14 Comments »
Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?
How Did I Ever Believe It Would Be Otherwise?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged drought, natural process, pain, rain on November 13, 2023| 15 Comments »
When it’s dry here,
the clay in the soil shrinks,
its particles pulling
more tightly together
until deep cracks form in the earth,
a force so powerful
it can damage foundations.
This makes me wonder
about how we, too,
storied to have come from clay,
can crack in times of drought.
I have felt it, drought of love,
drought of touch, drought of death,
drought of compassion and justice.
And I have known, too, the miracle
of how when the drought is over,
the clay of my soul expands again,
absorbing what it most needs.
Is it strange how much comfort
I take in knowing it’s natural,
that cracking is what we do,
it’s part of the cycle.
Of course, the cracking.
And of course, the healing.
I am awed by its force
and how little it takes,
even a small bit of rain,
for deep healing to begin.
Into the Questions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, conversation, love, love your enemy, pain, tenderness on November 3, 2023| 13 Comments »
I needed today the soft voice of the man
from Bethlehem saying,
Put yourself in the pain of others.
Not in their shoes, but in their pain.
I needed to see his eyes
when he said it is olive picking season
and the families are too afraid
to go to the orchards.
I needed to hear it is the hardest
his life has ever been,
needed to hear his fear, his anger,
his willingness to wonder
again and again,
What does it mean to love your enemy?
I needed to see the open face
of the man in Israel as he listened,
needed to hear his gentle tone
as he rejected the phrase us vs. them.
Needed to hear the resolve in his voice
as he called for creating an us together.
And because in the arms of terror
these two men find ways to love,
I invite a war into my heart
and imagine myself on both sides,
imagine the ache that fuels the rage.
I don’t have to imagine fear, distrust.
It is in all of us, this war,
not somewhere far away.
It is for all of us to ask in every interface,
How do I love my enemy?
How do we become an us?
Sympathetic Resonance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, connection, love, pain, piano, resonance on August 2, 2023| 13 Comments »
All day, I feel the throbbing
of other lives, other pain,
as if I’m a string on the piano
that goes unplayed, and yet
vibrates when the hammer
strikes other strings, and then—
your ache, my ache,
two strings, one song.
Sacred Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, family, grief, loss, pain, paradox, sunflower on June 13, 2023| 7 Comments »
In the mural, the field of sunflowers
is always in bloom, always golden,
always opening to face the world.
How could I, tonight, not remember
another evening two summers ago
when the light was honeyed
and I stood in this very spot with my son,
two daughters and husband,
and we smiled wide as sunflowers,
our stems tall, the petals of my heart
unfurling. The image still sits in a frame
on my shelf—the last photo I have
of my son. Tonight, when I stood before
all that blooming, I broke. God, it hurt,
but I did not resist the breaking.
I stood in the middle of all that beauty,
the beauty as real as the pain,
the pain as real as any beauty,
stood in the middle of all those flowers
and cried, I cried and broke and
felt myself opening, unfolding like a flower,
my petals doing what petals do.
Handling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, pain, softening, time, touch on October 21, 2022| 4 Comments »
After years,
what once
was enormous,
sharp and piercing
now is rounded,
polished,
fits like a marble
in the palm
of my hand.
This is what comes
from touching it,
brushing up against it,
holding it
again and again.
And again.
Once, it cut me.
Now, as I rub it
beneath my fingers,
it soothes me,
reminds me
how I, too,
have been softened,
how I, too,
have been embraced
and held
and nestled
until I am smooth.
Just Not on My Timeline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doctor, healing, miracle, pain, poem, poetry on January 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I went in
expecting a miracle.
I wanted to be healed
when I walked out the door.
Instead, the doctor
told me there was nothing
he could do. Told me
the problem. Told me
the solution. Long and
painful. And then
he said he could help me.
I left feeling hopeless.
Frustrated. Spent. And still
in so much pain.
I went in expecting a miracle.
I think that’s what
he gave you,
my friend later said.
Still Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, pain, poem, poetry on January 6, 2014| 1 Comment »
The earth itself is a magnet.
Surely I knew this once,
but reading it today,
it was as if I had never known this before.
How many things have I forgotten?
And learned again only to forget again?
So many stains of emptiness.
Is it wrong to not think this is a bad thing?
This morning I woke with a now familiar pain.
Someday perhaps I will forget
these months of ache, the throb
that makes itself known whenever I am still.
Will I also forget the surprise today, was it thrill,
when I recognized each throb in my leg
as the beating of my heart.
The Daughter of the Biologist Supposes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biologist, control, daughter, father, pain, poem, poetry on June 17, 2013| 5 Comments »
In the dirt crawl space
under the yellow house
my brother and I
would play among dad’s jars—
dozens of jars
filled with clear greenish liquid,
all of them holding
dead white fish,
their colors
long since faded.
Every black-capped container
was labeled with typewritten
lettering, but we could not yet read.
Mostly we stared
at their clouded scales,
their pale fins,
their useless eyes.
We did not question
why they were there,
stacked beside the winter coats
and boxes of dishes we seldom used.
Dad finally threw them away
when we moved,
though he did not want to let them go.
He cared about those fish in jars.
Not the bodies themselves,
I suppose. Perhaps
because he had been
so alive with the catching
and naming of them.
Perhaps because
there are so many things
that cannot be caught
nor labeled nor set aside.
Like the pain that
even then was beginning
to reach for his joints, grabbing
his shoulders, hips and knees.
Like his father’s anger
that he always carried—
something pale, many scaled,
something vital that died.
When I Told Her What I Told Her
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hurt, love, pain, poem, poetry, relationships on January 20, 2013| 2 Comments »
She said it to me in her kitchen, she said it,
the water rushing from the tap into the pot
for tea, she said, You know what people do,
she said, we hurt each other. She said it
with no snarl on her tongue, her face lit
by the sun spilling in through her window.
Her shoulders were soft, though her eyes
were ablaze. She said it as if she were saying,
It’s Tuesday. Or, The salt shaker’s empty.
Or any other careless fact that has no ability
to shatter a world. I did not want to believe
her, but as she spoke the words, I knew them
as glass, and I swallowed them whole and they
cut every surface they touched. I tasted in my throat
not just my own blood, but yours.
If I Needed You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kisses, love, pain, poem, poetry on December 6, 2012| 2 Comments »
Would you come for me and ease my pain? –Townes Van Zandt
And if you say,
shall I kiss it,
then I shall say
yes, please, and
lead your lips
to the paper cut
on my right ring
finger. And if you
say, shall I kiss
it, I shall say
yes, please, and lead
your lips to the hollow
in my back where
the wings would be,
the place where
sometimes I collapse
and the pain shoots
into my wrist, my neck.
There’d be a whole trail
then for kissing.
The pain, it’s elusive,
it shifts every day.
And if you say,
shall I kiss it, I shall
say yes, and guide your
lips to my jaw
tight from clenching.
And if you say shall I
then I shall say please,
though the places
that hurt the most,
they are ones
that defy the word
here. But here, I shall say,
and here, I shall say.
And here. Please. And here.
Crawdadding with Finn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged crawdad, letting go, love, nature, pain, parenting, poem, poetry on September 18, 2012| 3 Comments »
All objects in existence are wildly in love.
—Meister Eckhart
Always, they claw at the world.
They can’t help it. They were given
two pincers and hard, hard shells.
They ripen into harder shells,
their clasp become more powerful.
They hurt more the larger they are.
This does not look to me like love.
I think of Eckhart’s saying as I stand beside the pond.
But my boy, he holds them in his open palm,
lets them pinch his thumb, his eyes
widen in pain, and he gently extracts them,
throws them back. And does it again.
This, now this looks like love, I think,
watching the water for the skitter,
the settling, the mirror of the pond as it stills.