Broken,
bare-hearted
naked in the catastrophe,
I smell it,
the sweet perfume
of apricot blossoms
wafting across
the leafless world.
Posts Tagged ‘paradox’
All of It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossom, paradox, scent, spring, vulnerability on May 15, 2023| 5 Comments »
Long Distance Intimacy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, intimacy, long distance, mother, mother's day, paradox on May 13, 2023| 6 Comments »
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.
Timeless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged opposition, paradox, time on April 29, 2023| 15 Comments »
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.
So Slowly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, life, paradox, water on March 12, 2023| 12 Comments »
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.
Sitting in the Driveway with My Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, mother, music, paradox on February 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
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.
Walking with KC on Christmas Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, conversation, family, heartache, paradox, sharing, walking on December 26, 2022| 4 Comments »
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.
Hour-Long Interview on Living with Paradox
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged interview, opposition, paradox on October 28, 2022| 4 Comments »
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!
One Unmappable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, paradox, snow, stubborn praise on October 27, 2022| 6 Comments »
in the cemetery
new snow—
why does it bring me joy
to see it,
this thin foot path to you
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, loss, opposition, paradox on October 2, 2022| 3 Comments »
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.
Three Lines from Vincent van Gogh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, paradox, roots, Van Gogh on July 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
each line taken separately from his letters or speech
inspired by his unfinished painting “Tree Roots,” which was first hung upside down,
and by Kayleen Asbo’s piano composition “Roots”
you will find beauty everywhere,
the root of everything—
and the sadness will last forever
*
the sadness will last forever,
the root of everything—
and you will find beauty everywhere
*
My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish.
If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account. And we have an anonymous donor who will match all funds donated before July 30!
If you want to engage in the full collaboration–Vincent’s paintings, Kayleen’s music, and my poems–I hope you will join us in “Love Letters to Vincent” on July 29, the day Vincent died, at 11 a.m. mountain time. We will present the entire collaboration, sending love letters back in time to honor this man who changed the way we see beauty. There will also be a chance to participate in a group creative activity, responding to his work, creating a giant love letter for Vincent. Sliding scale. It will be recorded and sent to all who register.
Choosing a Plot at the Cemetery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged burial, cemetery, grief, paradox on May 31, 2022| 10 Comments »
We weave through tombstones,
the spring grass soft beneath our feet.
Thick roar of wind charges the valley.
Our paths braid up the hill
as we feel into where we will bury
the ashes and bone matter
of the boy who no longer breathes.
We all quickly agree on a place.
“It’s beautiful,” I say,
and fall into tears,
broken by the reason we’re here
in this stunning graveyard
rung with aspen and waterfalls,
red cliffs and spruce.
I lie on my back where he will be,
my husband beside me,
our daughter nearby,
above us all blue sky and sun.
The earth is cold and hard,
and the spot feels right to my body,
this body that carried him,
this body still learning
how not to hold.
We cry until we don’t.
Until whatever is unbreakable inside us
rises through the brokenness.
We dust the earth off our clothes
and walk arm in arm out the gate
where our lives go on, devastated and whole,
where the boy is missing,
where the boy is as present
as the wind.
Meeting Your Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grief, love, paradox on March 15, 2022| 8 Comments »
Because there are no clear instructions,
I follow what rises up in me to do.
I fall deeper into love with you.
I look at old pictures.
I don’t look at old pictures.
I talk about you. I say nothing.
I walk. I sit. I lie in the grass
and let the earth hold me.
I lie on the sidewalk, dissolve
into sky. I cry. I don’t cry.
I ask the world to help me stay open.
I ask again, please, let me feel it all.
I fall deeper in love with the people
still living. I fall deeper in love
with the world that is left—
this world with its spring
and its war and its mornings,
this world with its fruits
that ripen and rot and reseed,
this world that insists
we keep our eyes wide,
this world that opens
when our eyes are closed.
Because there are no clear instructions,
I learn to turn toward the love that is here,
though sometimes what is here is what’s not.
There are infinite ways to do this right.
That is the only way.
For When People Ask
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged feelings, grief, joy, paradox, singing on March 13, 2022| 23 Comments »
I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all, all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands the swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze,
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.
*
by the way, friends, if you are aware of a word in another language that means okay/not okay, gosh, I would love to know it
One Made in the Benevolent Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bee, darkness, dream, honey, paradox on February 18, 2022| 6 Comments »
from sweet nectar
and bitter pollen
all the honey
Making the Gingerbread House
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, garden, gingerbread house, grief, kitchen, mother, paradox, rose on January 3, 2022| 4 Comments »
Your sister and I finished
this year’s gingerbread house—
not a duplex this time,
nor two condos connected
by a gingerbread bridge.
It’s a single house with angled walls
like in the Jan Brett illustrations.
How can I be so happy and so sad
at the same time?
It’s like being a rose
that has lost all its petals and yet
is in full petalled bloom.
There is, in every moment,
an opening that appears—
and I find I often stand
in the threshold, one foot
in now and the other
with you in eternity.
Then the kitchen
is not only a kitchen.
but a garden.
And every gardener knows
she must grow first herself.
And the baker knows
everything she makes
is made to disappear
in its prime.
And so it is on this night
of decorating gingerbread,
your sister and I use bright candies
and thin pretzel sticks to make
a one-room house
unlike any we’ve made before.
And we laugh. And I miss you.
My petals drift across the floor.
My petals open into wider bloom.
Made to Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, love, paradox on April 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »
That love is complicated
is no surprise—
consider the human heart
pumps blood to almost
seventy-five trillion cells,
and if we were to stretch
out our blood vessel system,
it would extend over
sixty thousand miles.
Of course, things
get tangled and messy.
And perhaps, love is also
not so complicated.
Perhaps it’s as easy
as waking up in the night
and feeling the darkness hold us.
As effortless as sipping
sweet licorice tea
and letting it warm the body.
As inclusive as the lily’s white perfume
that touches the whole room.
Yes, perhaps loving is as instinctive
as the human heart that beats
over a hundred thousand times a day—
not because we ask it to,
not because we try,
but because that’s what
it was made to do.
Hankering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arugula, bitterness, food, paradox on June 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today again I thank the arugula
for the way it teaches me
that sharpness, too, is what
draws us in, that we come
not just to forgive
but to crave what is bitter,
what bites us back.
Docetaxel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, friendship, healing, paradox, tree on January 28, 2020| 2 Comments »
The yew can live to be over two thousand years old—
a sacred tree that grows large enough for forty people
to stand inside it. Today, its ancient power fits
in a clear plastic bag the size of two fists and it drips
through a clear plastic tube into the chest of my friend.
In three days, she will not want to move. She will not
want to eat. She will wonder if it’s all worth it.
It will last a week. So strange that a plant
that causes death when consumed will help
to save her life. Her hair has been gone for weeks.
But today, on her last day of chemo, I marvel
at how she is being infused with evergreen
in the hopes that she will transmogrify, carry
in her the mystery that grows in the bark of the tree.
When a yew branch touches the ground, it takes root.
Sprouts again. Let her body know this secret. Amen.
Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, hope, loss, paradox, poem, poetry, science on December 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Hope is, perhaps, a quantum thing,
a paradox, like Schrödinger’s cat,
simultaneously alive and dead.
Today, I wandered the snowy field
and the icy banks and the shadowed wood,
calling the name of my sweet gray cat.
If I could find her now, I’d see
she’s either alive or dead.
But in this moment of uncertainty,
she’s both alive and dead to me.
I’m tugged by both possibilities as I wade
through tall dry grass. Oh damn that hope,
and bless it, too, how just a candle-measure
opposes a whole tower of unfounded certainty,
sends me out into the blizzard
calling her name, listening.
Strange Bedmates
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged celebration, death, grief, knitting, paradox, poem, poetry on April 3, 2019| 4 Comments »
grief and celebration
share the same bed—
one keeps stealing the blanket
the other
keeps knitting a beautiful new one