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Posts Tagged ‘performance’

Blessing for Those Who Are Willing to Be Vulnerable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 8, 2026| 6 Comments »


                  with gratefulness for all the bees
 
 
When you are soft, when you lay bare
your innerness and unfold your layers
for the world like a voluptuous, purpling
O’Keefe iris, it is true, there will be some 
so threatened by your opening they will attack, 
will sow fear and hatred into the warm field
of the gentle night. When it happens, may you 
be surprised by how others rise to protect you
like a humming, swarming swirl of bees 
that baptize the air with a wild and fierce 
aliveness, a rousing acrobatic vocalizing 
that shields you from that which would trample 
you or cut you down. May you be astonished
by the power of the hive as they surround you. 
Even as fear ripples through you, may you 
be so enthralled by the buzz of their joy 
that you don’t snap shut like a fist, like a trap.
And in honor of the gift you’ve received,
the gift of belonging, may you stay open. 
May you be so stunned with gratefulness 
that every word that falls from your mouth 
tastes of truth, raw praise and dark, secret honey.
 

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The Night the Piano Fell Apart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 23, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
listening to Trio Duende play Allegro con Brio, from Piano Trio 1 in B Major
 
 
Once, on a rainy night, I sat in the home
of a family I did not know and listened
to a trio playing Brahms. Though
it is only hours later, I unwrap
the memory as if it is tied with silk ribbons
and wrapped in gold tissue—something
precious as a time-smoothed stone
on the banks of a slender river. Unlike
a museum piece, this memory wants
to be opened, to be held, to be touched,
to be cradled by bare hands. Wants
my finger prints all over it—
the memory of how beauty swells in us
 
and then breaks us, breaks us
the way the piano itself broke apart tonight—
the pedal rods clattering to the ground
mid-movement. Beauty bids us play on
as the pianist did tonight. Play on.
Though broken. Though we know
the work eventually ends in a minor key.
Play on, as if we trust the line of beauty
will not be broken. No matter how intense
it gets. Even if the world explodes.

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The Poet Reads for the First Time Since Her Son Died

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2022| 16 Comments »



with a line from Charles Simic, “The Prodigal”


Glade of light on the empty stage.
She steps into it, eyes blinded.
Someone in the audience
clears a throat. Someone
scuffs a sole. Many invisible
someones make no sound at all.
She has faith they are there.
She is holding a stack of papers.
Her chest contracts, rises.
So much that happens goes unseen,
a secret cinema.
She opens her mouth
and the words fall out like leaves
releasing themselves from a tree.
With each sentence she is more bare
until only her trunk remains.
She is an aspen arriving in January,
skeleton exposed.
What no one can see
are the roots. What no one can see
is she is standing on trust.
It has taken her fifty-two years
of bursting into color and
wildly waving her branches
to finally learn how 
to stand still.
The other trees stand with her,
and though it is winter,
their roots grow wider, deeper.

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One on the Ride Home

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 20, 2018| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

after the curtain call

the mind still rehearsing

how to shine

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