late-blooming lilac—
perhaps we, too, have something
marvelous about to flourish
Posts Tagged ‘patience’
One Hopeful
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, lilac, patience on June 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Extrapolation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hummingbird, patience, waiting on April 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
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.
Patience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, falling in love with the world, heartache, patience on March 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
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.
Allium Sativum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, garlic, love, patience, planting on February 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
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.
End of Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broccoli, gardening, growth, patience, poem, poetry, ripening, self talk on October 18, 2019| 2 Comments »
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.
Yet Another Garden Poem Not About Gardens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, patience, poem, poetry on July 5, 2018| Leave a Comment »
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
One Patience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged patience, poem, poetry, tree on June 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
See How Perfectly It Can Be Done
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, patience, poem, poetry, waiting on May 23, 2018| 3 Comments »
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.
Though It Doesn’t Look Like What I Expected
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, garden, patience, poem, poetry, sunflowers on September 30, 2017| 2 Comments »
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.
Dear Ralph,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged patience, poem, poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ripening, waiting on September 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
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.