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Posts Tagged ‘paradox’


            Delivered at the Telluride High School Graduation, June 2, 2023
           
 
I don’t know how to make sense of the story
of how Finn is here, although he is not.
How he lives in the deep soil of memory—
still running with you through the playground
your bodies bright streaks of joy,
cartwheeling across the green valley floor
and tap dancing on this stage,
traveling with you to Mesa Verde and Ecuador
and building computers and graphing equations and writing code,
swinging golf clubs and debating politics
and dressing as a skyscraper in the Halloween parade.
Laughing in the hall and crying in his room.
 
I don’t know how it is we can crumple with grief
and still rise with hope, love, celebration.
And yet we do.
At the same time he is missed,
you, friends, grow more fully into yourselves
each one of you a sapling reaching not only toward light
but also reaching with your roots through the dark,
the necessary dark that anchors us, keeps us rooted in what’s real.
 
I don’t know how it is
we come to know our own lives better
because he took his, but we do.
We learn to trust that despite a great wound,
we can thrive, the way a tree grows around a gash,
trunk still strong, though a scar remains,
leaves still unfurling to gather sun.
 
I don’t know how we speak of sadness and joy
in the same breath, but we do.
Joy in coming together.
Joy in knowing heartbreak invites us
to become more spacious, more kind.
Joy in forging new dreams.
Joy in remembering the world as it was
and at the same time growing so bravely,
so beautifully into the world that is.
 

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Broken,
bare-hearted
naked in the catastrophe,
I smell it,
the sweet perfume
of apricot blossoms
wafting across
the leafless world.

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    for my mother
 
 
Far away, she pulls beetles from the roses.
She prunes the bushes to encourage the blooms.
Far away, she finds ways to feed the hungry,
She visits those who are alone,
and she sings to them.
How is it, half a country away, I feel her
pulling from me what doesn’t serve,
pruning so I might grow,
feeding me with intention and tenderness,
her song the song I have known since birth,
the song that never leaves me,
the love song I sing back to the world.

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Timeless

after Ruth Stone, “Train Ride”

There are not enough hours to walk by the river,
not enough hours to work and make soup
and dream and sit and do nothing at all.
Is it true there is not enough time?
There is time for every word
you have written, every petunia you’ve planted,
for every path you have walked,
for every lover you’ve kissed
and kissed and kissed there is enough time.
No. Not enough. Not enough time for reading
the tall stack of books on the desk.
Not enough time for making the pie crust
from scratch. Not enough time for wandering
in the forest with the soft green hanging moss
until you, too, remember you are a tree.
And yet you have read tall stacks of books.
Many, many tall stacks.
You have made cherry pies and rhubarb pies
and pumpkin pies from scratch.
You have wandered for hours through dappled glades
and draped your hair with moss.
There is enough time for everything you have ever done
and for every moment spent doing nothing at all.
How is it you feel such lack?
Here is the moment. Open it.

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So Slowly


 I don’t know how refusal
melts away like ice in the sun,
how resistance evaporates
like a puddle, or perhaps,
let’s be honest, like a sea.
I only know that since I stopped
fighting you, grief,
there is peace in me,
even when I am weeping,
even when everything I am
feels bruised with loss,
even when I burn.
I only know since I stopped
swimming against the undertow,
I have been carried
to the most astonishing places
and I did not die.
I was given new life.
It is the only
way I can live.
 

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You share with me the song
that makes you cry.
Oh strange alchemy
of connection—
as I tune my heart to yours
what at first seemed dark
and moonless
begins to reveal
its tender light.

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This, too, is Christmas, the quiet
walk on the quiet road in the quiet air.
The only carol here—
unending verses of river.
The only gifts we brought—
our attention, our trust.
This feast is for the heart.
There is a generosity to the sunshine
no candle could equal.
It’s a deep sweetness
to be wrapped in blue sky,
a deep sweetness
to share heartache, exhaustion—
something I would never wish for anyone,
and yet, this Christmas day,
the sharing of it,
such a beautiful present.

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I am so grateful to Naomi Horii for inviting me to be her first guest on Heart Speak on Bold Brave TV. We spend an hour reading poems, talking about practical and poetic ways to live (and thrive) in the middle of opposition–joy and sadness, love and loss, fear and courage, devastation and beauty. We even wrote a collaborative poem near the end with those present … a real joy to be a part of this program!

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One Unmappable

 
in the cemetery
new snow—
why does it bring me joy
to see it,
this thin foot path to you

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How



How do we live at the traumatic center of death and life?
            —Rabbi Irwin Kula, Original Thinkers Festival 2022


A single moment contains
the scent of warm pumpkin pie
and the gravedigger’s spade,
the splatter of blood
and the smooth honeyed flesh of mango.
Did we ever believe we would live
this life unscathed?
Oh, the stab of loss
and the clean, mineral perfume of rain.
Oh, the ache of loss
and the deep golden sunflowered yes.
Oh, the carving of loss
and the sweet subtle tang of apples in fall.
Oh, the ache, bless the ache,
oh, the beauty, the loss,
oh, the beauty, the loss, oh, the beauty.

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