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Posts Tagged ‘paradox’

On Her Birthday, a Thank You Letter to Emily Dickinson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 11, 2025| 9 Comments »


Dec. 10, 1830-May 15, 1886
 
 
Dear Emily, your words expressed
the weather of the soul—
the hailstorm no less right than sun—
the heart has room for all—
 
you understood how anguish
is what opens best the heart—
the sadder our circumstance,
the more we speak with stars.
 
And as I am a wanderer,
your poems are the pasture—
they help me ground myself on earth
but nod to something vaster—

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One at the Same Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
 
  

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Strange

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 8, 2025| 9 Comments »

So darn ugly, the quince,
pockmarked and shriveling,
lumpy and mottled,
sloughing their thin gray fuzz,
but from across the room,
I smell them, intensely sweet,
exotic and milky, rose-like,
honeyed, apple-ish.
They’re like a bowl of painful
memories I’d rather not look at
and yet find myself nose-deep
in them by choice, astonished
at how complex it all is.
Ache. Beauty. Repulsion.
Desire. What most moves us
is seldom simple. Or perhaps
it is simple as this: The world
is full of the strangest gifts.
Like the scent of the quince
floral and tart. Like that
memory I once ran from
that now is treasure
to my heart.

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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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When Feeling Alone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
If there is a door in aloneness,
I want to be brave enough
to stand in aloneness and not
try to walk through that door
in a fruitless attempt to escape
the discomfort of feeling alone.
How many times have I rushed
to try to make things feel okay
instead of staying with the ache?
If there is a door in aloneness,
perhaps it is fashioned
from being vulnerable enough
to feel alone, to surrender to this,
and then it’s not so much
that the door opens, more
that aloneness itself becomes
the key to encountering
an infinite communion.
All along there was nothing
to do and no one to be.
All along, everything was here.
 

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Getting In the Car to Drive to Cortez

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
I bring with me the face of the mother I saw on the news,
the one whose shoulders shuddered as a friend
led her from the scene. I bring the ugliness
of the words I read on Facebook, black letters
on a red screen preaching rage and retaliation.
I bring the hollow cheeked boy wearing blue
greasy clothes and the smudged white body bag,
and together we drive through the canyon
where the river is swollen from last night’s rain
and the tops of cottonwoods are just beginning
to turn golden. We don’t say anything as we rise
into the valley to see mountain peaks sleeved in white.
A small bear stands on the side of the road
on his back legs, dragging acorns into his mouth
with both upper paws. A slate blue cloud
smudges the distant sky and every branch, every
rock, every bumper, every porch sparkles
in morning sun. How do we metabolize it all?
Oh body, great receptor, portal for wonder and pain.
Who am I when I step out of the car? Changed.

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Sitting in a Circle of Friends

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 20, 2025| 2 Comments »


                 
 
We are laughing, and the sound
is sweet as honeysuckle—
the way it clings to the air—
and even as I laugh,
I’m aware of the many wounds
each of these women
have endured, imagining
how often we have wept,
sometimes with each other,
sometimes alone. Knowing
the ache somehow makes
the laughter all the more sweet—
and the joy of it stitches into me
like a golden thread.
I welcome the pierce
as I feel it connect us,
knowing if I tug on this strand
twenty years from now,
it will bring me back to this night
with its warm summer air
and low summer light,
this radiant night sparkling
with a laughter we nourished
for years by loving each other
through all those tears.

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In a Time of Many Wildfires

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 11, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Geranium leaves
covered in fine white ash—
how many ghosts of tall pine trees
visit today in my garden—
and still, with such delicacy
the new flowers open.

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All at Once

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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?

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Noticing the Noticing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 17, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
When I am most still,
there is something that holds me—
not a being, but a voice,
no, not a voice, but a transmission.
Not really a transmission, no, but a place
with gradations of color, almost like sky at dawn.
Well, no, not a place. More a placelessness.
A placelessness that holds me.
Yes. A placelessness. That holds me.
Or rather, a placelessness that is me.
And is also all that I’m not.
Oh, these words that try so hard to say something true.
They feel so small as they leave my mouth.
Like I’m tossing out tiny pebbles
into the pool of the infinite.
I stare at the tiny ripples they make,
in awe of their insufficiency.
Which is to say I’m in awe
of all that does not ripple.
With awe comes stillness.
The kind of stillness that invites me.
Invites me to notice how utterly I am held.

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