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Posts Tagged ‘patience’

Amen

Oh green, I miss you,

miss how you used

to flourish in me,

no matter how brittle,

how brown I’d become.

I didn’t know then

I took you for granted.

I miss your softness,

your tenderness,

all the promise inside you,

the sunlight you carry

in your veins.

Some days I remember

what it is to be green.

Some days, when it’s gray,

I tell myself green is possible again.

Some days, when the rain

still doesn’t fall,

I practice how to break.

Some days, I swear I’ll find a way

to become green again,

no matter how unlikely,

how parched this field.

Somedays, though I long since

forgot how to pray,

the prayers find me anyway

and my empty hands

will not come down.

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One Hopeful

 

 

 

late-blooming lilac—

perhaps we, too, have something

marvelous about to flourish

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Extrapolation

 

 

 

Today it’s the hummingbirds that save me.

Not because I see one. Because I don’t.

Every year, the broad-tailed hummingbirds

arrive at our feeders the third week of April.

This year, they’ve yet to arrive.

How many other joys have I been awaiting

that are yet to materialize?

It is hard to spend a life waiting, and yet

this one impatience I meet with trust.

Every year, there are hummingbirds.

They return. And when they come,

we’ll feed them. We’ll admire their furious

wings. We’ll forget they were late.

We’ll delight in their curious hum.

 

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IMG_3399

 

 

Again today, the invitation

to fall in love with the world—

with the gray jay who flits

from empty branch to empty branch,

with the sharp scent of rabbit brush,

with the warm spring wind

and the dark buds on the crabapple

still tight with future bloom.

 

Some days, though the world offers itself,

it’s not so easy to fall in love—

days when heartache twists in the chest

and turns in us like a screw,

leaves us raw and sensitive, until,

too tender to hear any more bad news,

we shutter our hearts, we close our ears.

 

But if we’re lucky, an inner voice

sends us outside into the day,

and though it is gray, the world does

what the world does—

holds us despite our heartache,

holds us the same way it holds

the stubby pink cactus, all prickly and clenched,

the same way it holds last year’s thistles,

all brittle and flat and gray,

the same way it holds the dank scent of river

and the moldering scent of last year’s leaves,

holds us exactly as we are

until we are ready to fall in love again.

 

 

 

 

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Allium Sativum

 

 

 

When everything had died,

but before the ground was frozen,

I planted the garlic in four long rows—

 

dozens of cloves deep enough

in the earth so the frost

couldn’t push them up and out.

 

I think of them now as winter

continues to gather the world

in its white embrace.

 

I think of how, beneath the snow,

they’re preparing to flourish,

to root, to leaf, to grow.

 

It’s not so different, I think,

from the ways you love me—

how, sometimes, when everything

 

seems barren, you’ll plant seeds.

And though we see nothing for a long,

long time, there, like cloves beneath the surface,

 

each seed multiplies into many.

So much of love happens invisibly.

So much of love takes a stretch.

 

When the cloves ripen, some we will consume.

They will mark us with their strength.

Some, like love, we will plant again.

 

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The broccoli was a disappointment this year—

planted from seed, it had finally begun to sport

small knobby green heads when the frost came.

And though the broccoli didn’t die, it stalled.

Perhaps I fear I am like this broccoli—destined

to grow but never to fruit. Perhaps this is why

I feel such urgency, this need to write faster,

heal quicker, mature sooner, love more. Because

what if the freeze comes? What if I die before

doing what I have come here to do?

 

There is a part of me who is patient. A part of me

who says, Sweet One, you could not possibly be

any more you than you are right now. She tells me,

You are exactly enough. And sometimes I believe her.

But sometimes I roll my eyes at her and tell myself,

Hurry up, hurry up. I know myself as barren stalk.

I try to will my own ripening. Not once has it worked,

not once, and still this strange drive:

go faster, do it better, do it now.

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I know that things just don’t grow if you don’t bless them with your patience.

            —Emmylou, First Aid Kit

 

 

watering the sunflowers

it will be months before

even a bud appears—

watering the sunflowers

watering the sunflowers

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One Patience

 

 

 

desperate for shade—

I plant a sapling,

bring it water

 

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I know that things just don’t grow if you don’t bless them with your patience.

            —First Aid Kit, Emmylou

 

 

There are gardens in me

where I have tried

to make things bloom

out of season—

how difficult it can be

to let a seed do

what a seed does

all on its own,

especially in a time

of drought when I fear

the seed may not grow at all

if I don’t help it

grow more quickly.

And so I let soil

be my teacher.

How perfectly

it waits, letting

the world feed it.

How easily it

partners with rain,

with sun, with time.

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They are dead,

the sunflowers,

all petal-less and brown,

and I almost uprooted them

from the garden,

almost tossed aside

their tall brittle stalks,

their heavy bowed heads,

 

but see today how

the small gray birds

flutter amongst the dead

and dive for dark seeds,

how the garden air shimmers

with dozens of wings.

 

Patience, I think,

with whatever we believe

is lost—

so much beauty survives

even after a frost.

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Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Essays and Lectures”

 

 

I believe in ripeness, the wisdom

of waiting. Here on my counter,

the melon sweetens and softens.

The peppers slowly turn from green

to red. The tomatoes become less

like stones and more like kisses.

Terrible to taste an early grape,

the way its sharp juice rucks

the soft lips. Terrible to eat

the berry before it’s earned

its blush. And still, the misery

of waiting—how eagerness

rises up in us, a surge of please,

a tide of want, a rush of now.

Yes, to the wait, the awful wait,

how this trial of patience

brings us closer to ourselves,

how it makes the future inevitable

ever that much sweeter.

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Push again the small dried peas

one inch into the earth. The gaps

in the rows where they did not grow,

do not take these personally.

Not everything comes to fruition,

but that is no reason to stop planting.

In fact there is every reason to believe

that not so long from now

the sweet green song of fresh sweet peas

will serenade your impatient tongue

if only your hands keep doing their work.

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blue heron

in the tree top—

this quickening heart

 

*

 

I draw for myself

a new starting line—

on your open palm

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It is not only that the desert longs for water.
Of course the water longs for desert, too.
Any raindrop can fall and get lost in an ocean,
but to fall where it’s parched, where just
the smallest amount of wet can launch a hundred
hundred blooms, can set ten thousand thousand
seeds into frothy flight, oh. Now that is something
worth falling for. No imaginary desert. The real thing,
all prickle and spine and thorn and barb.
And the petals after. The heat can spend months
holding off just the briefest sprinkle. But then
no one said it was going to be easy, this going
where we’re needed most. Patience is the marriage
of sweetness and sting. To bring life one must also be alive.

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waiting for forgiveness
as if it were a train
and the rails are long gone

*

my heart an apple blossom
afraid it doesn’t know
how to become apple

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One Springling

begging the alium
to open faster—nope,
weeks of foreplay it is …

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a collaborative poem written with Matt Hayes

The poet says there is no hurry.
Time has wasted its soul.
I thought I knew what time was,
a constellation out of space.
We are the constellation
destitute of truth.
I thought I knew what truth was,
but mind and heart cannot contain,
the cage breaks, the bird forgets it has wings,
it drowns in the emptiness of space.
I thought I knew what space was,
but comets gain.
We are the comets,
the goodness of space.
There is no hurry.

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that just happens to be National Wine Day

Again I sip the syrah,
all smoky and black cherryish
and try not to wish
it were sauvignon blanc
all pucker and grass.
But no. Each sip suggests
dark violet. Black hue.
And each sip I think,
well, it’s nice, but
oh for a hint of grapefruit,
nettle, passion fruit.
But the syrah is like
a lover who stands
in the center of the room
and slowly unzips his pants,
then waits. He knows
that thirst is a fact.
He’s ready now, but
the rising heat doesn’t
bother him at all.
He is not in any hurry.

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I grieved
that the rose had stopped blooming
when in fact
it was opening
only very, very, very slowly

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We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop.
—Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind: Be Grateful to Everyone”

See how lucky you are
that I’ve brought you
these baskets of woe.
It is your blessing
that I am stubborn,
that I cannot fix
my own car, that
I would rather write poems
than sweep or dust.
That habit I have
of interrupting you,
that is your benefit.
My aversion to bathing,
your good fortune.
How else would you grow
if I did not break your heart?
But it is not to annoy you
that I am myself. Nor is it
malicious that I am always
the last person to leave
a party. That I stay up
too late. That I lied.
It’s just that you’re lucky,
such fortune, such luck,
all these baskets of woe
I serve you every day.

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