Cool rain is falling through sunshine today
and the canyon’s red walls are radiant
with the contradiction. The world
smells of dry earth mixing with sky,
a rich and generative perfume
that weaves into all that grows.
Witnessing the beauty of this day,
equal parts clear and stormy,
this is how a person might come to trust
the acute aliveness we feel
when we dance with both sorrow
and gladness at the same time,
one partner asking us to crawl, to bow,
the other bidding us raise our arms
to twirl in joyful abandon. In the distance,
thunder. In the foreground, the swallows
are ceaseless in their swirling.
They do not try to avoid the raindrops
nor do they shun the sun.
On the inside, a feeling loops and dives,
swoops and circles back. It says,
This life is not easy. What a gift to be alive.
Posts Tagged ‘paradox’
A Surprising Wholeness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, dance, paradox, rain, sun, swallows, wholeness on August 12, 2026| 10 Comments »
One Breath
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, paradox, trumpet on July 31, 2026| 2 Comments »
from the same trumpet
emerges this song with both legs broken,
this song rising on triumphant wings
Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, clover, connection, moment, movement, paradox, stillness on June 17, 2026| 7 Comments »
The woman sits on the bench
in the field of clover and watches
the bumblebees clamber
from flower to flower. What goes on
goes on all around her. Something
inside her is infinitely still.
It invites her to enter.
In this moment,
everything is door.
She is both clover and bee,
both air and wings.
She is what is still
and all that is moving.
Is one who is sung
and one who sings.
Sometimes When You Don’t Know What to Say
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, ineffable, language, paradox, silence on June 1, 2026| 8 Comments »
It’s because to try to describe this feeling is
to render it instantly dull, flat.
It’s like when you see a rock on the bottom
of the river—all shimmering and bright—
but the moment you bring it to the air
to share it, what seemed precious
becomes cloudy, mundane, a dumb lump,
the stuff of filler in a suburban parking lot.
And so you learn to be quiet, to let your syllables
float away like dry leaves. What is heaviest
stays. Does not wash away. Is polished by friction, years.
Sometimes you meet others in the river. What shines
shines. Together you stare, stunned by the damn beauty.
Maybe you hold hands. Watch the light as it plays.
So Good
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, good, good enough, paradox, poetry reading on March 16, 2026| 6 Comments »
In a world of bests, good is a relief. Best invites an argument; good is just a suggestion.
—Melissa Kirsch, “What’s Good” in The New York Times, March 14, 2026
This morning I slip out of my good bed
into my good green slippers. I drink good coffee
and play a good game of chase with my nephews.
They are good, good boys. I take a good long drive
with my good old friend and we arrive in a town
I have loved for years full of good memories
and good people. There we eat a good dinner
and then spend a night sharing poems.
I’m grateful for the poems that make me ache,
because it’s good to bear what’s bad together.
It’s not easy. But real. Real good. The kind of good
that makes your whole body hum, that makes
your hands clap and your heart stretch wide,
feeling so good, so good, even as you cry.
In Broad Daylight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alex Pretti, beauty, loving the world, paradox, rage on January 26, 2026| 7 Comments »
I take my rage to the river.
A heron flies into the wind.
I let myself be opened
by the great gray wings
and the great gray sky
and the great gray largeness of water,
not to rid myself of rage
but to become a clearer channel
to meet the chest-scouring,
scab-clawing, cell-screaming,
throat-burning fury of rage
and remind my heart I can
know all this rage, can be
feral with rage and still
keep on loving the world.
Once I Wanted Only Openness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged commitment, connection, fence, freedom, paradox, priorities on January 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Every day I tend it again,
this fence around our hearts.
I rebuild it each time I say no
to things that would take me away
from you. I rebuild it each time
I choose to be right here.
I rebuild it and thrill in the rebuilding,
each post of the fence is a love letter,
this fence I once tried to burn.
All This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, heartache, paradox, peace, politics, snow, woods on January 11, 2026| 6 Comments »
after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.
At the End of the Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dancing, erik satie, new year, paradox on January 1, 2026| 10 Comments »
Just after midnight
we stand beside the stove
holding each other,
your thumb slowly relearning
the portal of my spine.
Satie’s first Gymopédie
slips stepwise through the room,
the tune like starlight emerging
after a storm blew down all the trees.
We are almost, but not quite, still.
How little movement it takes,
plus an opening in the mind,
to know the body as dancing.
How little beauty it takes
to know a sad moment
as a moment both sad and beautiful.
And what of a year? What of a life?
How much beauty can we bring
with the days we are given?
How would the years change
if we believed we were not
just moving through them,
but dancing?
On Her Birthday, a Thank You Letter to Emily Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emily dickinson, paradox, weather 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—
One at the Same Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged paradox, sadness, sorrow on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
Strange
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, memory, paradox, quince 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.
Placing Attention
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inside, outside, paradox, waking up 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.
Getting In the Car to Drive to Cortez
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, Colorado, drive, meeting the world, paradox 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.
Sitting in a Circle of Friends
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, laughter, Lisa Issenberg, paradox, togetherness 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.
In a Time of Many Wildfires
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, paradox, wildfire 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.
All at Once
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, fear, night, paradox, worry 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?
Noticing the Noticing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, holding, infinite, language, meditation, paradox 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.