Memories pile on each other
like leaves in autumn,
each one charged with sweetness
or sorrow or worry or bliss.
Soon, the stack is over my head.
I fall in, the way a child might fall
into the pile—letting gravity take me
with no thought of catching myself
from the fall. What surprises is
that even as I am buried in memories,
I am not crushed by their weight.
Even as I roll in all the feelings they bring,
there is a peace that does not leave,
a peace that stays and asks nothing of me.
I once believed I could only know peace
when there was no tumult, no upheaval.
Now, in the wild chaos of it all,
I feel how peace is also here—
a peace so constant that while I tremble,
while I struggle, it breathes me.
Posts Tagged ‘paradox’
Peace in the Middle of It All
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, feelings, paradox, peace on September 12, 2023| 13 Comments »
Standing Beside the River with Lulu
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, paradox, river, rocks on August 9, 2023| 9 Comments »
Within minutes of weeping,
we are tossing rocks
into the river, the bigger
the splash, the larger
our laugh, and we toss
and we toss in a sweet
and urgent ritual of loss.
Slipping in the mud,
it feels right we should
lose our balance. What is
this life, after all, but a constant
slipping, a constant recalibrating,
a constant learning to find
new paths toward each other?
This life, it turns out,
is likely to pick us up
and throw us into the deep
to see what happens next.
But on this night,
we pick up more stones
and toss and toss and toss.
Not one of them floats.
But we do.
Returning to Stillness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged earth, paradox, perspective, stillness on July 17, 2023| 16 Comments »
I can’t unnotice this fist
that has grabbed my chest
and squeezes it hard, this prickly balloon
that seems to have blown itself up
in my belly. To be still today
is to notice that so much inside me
is writhing, squirming, thrashing.
Hello discomfort. Hello agitation.
Hello wishing that stillness
could be more still.
Eyes closed, I watch myself
as I sit in the middle of the empty room,
sunlight stretching across the floor
in bright and angled shapes.
I zoom out and see the whole house.
Zoom out farther and see the yard, the trees.
Zoom out until I see our small town,
then a blur of green and brown,
then the familiar blue and green curve of the earth.
As it spins and orbits, the earth is anything but still,
and yet such spaciousness surrounds it.
Oh, sweet woman sitting still in your room
with your hand on your heart
and a world of thrust and upheaval
spinning inside you,
right now, it’s like this.
You’re being moved. You’re still.
It’s like this.
*
Um, yeah … so if you read yesterday’s poem, I have to laugh… yesterday being still felt so easy, so simple, so open, so, well yummy. And then today??? Oh friends. This is one of the great gifts of poetry–every day the chance to notice what is here. And every day, the same thing feels so new.
On my daily program “The Poetic Path,” I use the tag “Seeing the same world in a new way … with poems.” If you haven’t checked out this other daily offering, perhaps consider it. It’s an app for your phone, found on the Ritual Wellbeing app. Unlike the daily poems, i curate them … and it’s a chance to hear the poems aloud. I always talk a little about where they came from and how they were written, then read the poem again, and then offer an optional writing/thinking prompt for you. There is a monthly or annual fee for Ritual–and there are MANY other programs available on it. You can try it out for free. If you’re interested, from your phone visit HERE.
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.
A Letter to the Graduates
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, grief, joy, loss, paradox, suicide on June 2, 2023| 12 Comments »
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. |
All of It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossom, paradox, scent, spring, vulnerability on May 15, 2023| 5 Comments »
Broken,
bare-hearted
naked in the catastrophe,
I smell it,
the sweet perfume
of apricot blossoms
wafting across
the leafless world.
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.