Sometimes the worst doesn’t happen.
The flash flood doesn’t flow through the first floor
of your home. The bear doesn’t tear into your tent.
But sometimes the train comes around a bend,
hits a rockfall and comes off the track. Sometimes
the rocket explodes in roiling orange fireball of methane fuel.
Sometimes the car launches from the highway into the air
and crashes, skids, takes out a tree, a bush,
then launches again, only to roll and roll.
When the worst happens, it doesn’t take long
before the inner narrator spins tale after tale
of how much worse it could be. It can always
be worse. Knowing this, what a gift today
to drive up to the front door, the house still intact,
to walk into the home and greet both cats,
to water the succulents on the kitchen shelf,
reheat the soup from the night before, pour
hot water over the mint tea, hold hands
with beloveds, say I love you, say grace.
Posts Tagged ‘perspective’
Not the Worst
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged narrator, optimism, perspective, the worst on May 30, 2026| 2 Comments »
Seeing Through the Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged otter, perspective, story on April 27, 2026| 5 Comments »
What I wanted was to snuggle.
What I wanted was to greet
the morning wrapped in warmth.
What was here was coolness.
I spooled myself in a gloomy story wondering
what I’d done wrong to find myself alone.
Two days before, when I was radiant
with joy in a circle of friends,
I pulled an otter card from a deck
and felt wildly attuned with the otter’s spirit
of contentment and “unobstructed joy.”
The wisdom of otter says stop making
“silly excuses.” The wisdom of otter
says “celebrate.” It was only after
I rose from the bed and walked into
the damp chill of a misty spring morning—
the air alive with the song of chickadees,
the harsh calls of the jays, the rapid twittering
of the violet green swallows—
it was only then I felt the possibility of reverence
and celebration. And then, how silly I felt, somehow
seeing through the layer of story I added
to the morning, as if waking alone
was some kind of problem. How easy
it was then to celebrate walking alone
in the soft green of spring, my feet wet
in the grass, chill bumps on my arms.
Sweet woman, it’s okay you forgot
the chance for reverence was always here.
It is always the time for waking.
See now what was truly here this morning:
the room so quiet, the sheets so cool,
the soft gray light streaming in.
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, field, perspective, scarecrow, widen the lens on July 30, 2025| 10 Comments »
If anger is a scarecrow
then let me be a field
that sprawls across the roads
and beyond the hills.
Sure, the scarecrow
is frightening. But it belongs.
And the field, look, it goes
on and on and on.
One When I Least Expect It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, pause, perspective, Wild Rose on July 9, 2025| 1 Comment »
kneeling in front of the wild rose
nose buried in pink petals,
the whole world fitsinto one wild rose
Perception: A Sonnet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, perspective, sonnet, walking on February 11, 2025| 8 Comments »
I take a walk with my whirling thoughts
and the near-full moon and the dark,
and for a time, all that seemed large
in me is no less large, but it’s also a dot,
a blip when compared to the whole
of the night, as if the entirety of my life
and the life of my country and the life
of the earth could all fit in a fourteen-line poem
with two lines left blank. Because nothing I write
seems to touch how vast, how sublime it is—
the snow moon rising above red cliffs—
only space can convey how humbling it is, the night.
.
Widening the Vision
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, multitudes, perspective, rabbit, vision on February 10, 2025| 12 Comments »
Almost by accident
I saw through the blaze
of my anger and fear
to the bunny in the yard,
his sweet brown body
so still and attentive
in the short brown grass,
and it’s not that I
became any less angry,
but when I let myself be held
by his steady brown eye,
I was touched by gentleness
and remembered what else
I am capable of. Oh self, this
is how you stay whole hearted—
by keeping your eyes wide open.
Immensity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged immensity, las vegas, moon, perspective on November 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
Just past Circus Circus,
I see it down a side street,
the half moon low on the horizon,
nowhere near as bright or big
as the giant clown smiling above me.
I thrill in my certainty the moon
has grown no smaller.
But how real it seems in this moment,
this moment when the moon looks
littler than a soup bowl
for a giant neon clown
on the Las Vegas strip.
It’s enough to make me think
that other things that seem
so large are not. Enough
to make me long to be a student
of perspective. How quickly
the world changes when
we change the way we see it.
How powerful the invitation
to want to see what is true.
New Eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, change, perspective, temple on October 27, 2024| 4 Comments »
If the body is a temple,
then I want to remind myself
the grotto, too, is a temple,
a holy chamber carved
by nature and time,
a sanctuary
where song echoes and rises
in a place that’s been scoured,
ravaged, worn.
The meadow, too, is a temple,
with a giant blue dome of sky
made more holy by its expansiveness.
Let my prayer be not to change my body
but to change the way I see it.
Let me look in the mirror and see there
a grotto, a meadow, a temple,
a being who is learning new prayers
as she’s shaped and reshaped
by the world.
One Big Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, perspective, sky on February 11, 2024| 2 Comments »
a day so blue
even my greatest fears
are dissolved into sky
New Eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, paradox, perspective, sadness on February 2, 2024| 4 Comments »
But I’m sad, I said.
And the world
was unrelentingly
filled with good.
Weaving into the ache
and loss and dread
was the moon as it rose
in fuzzy white gauze,
luminous behind thin clouds.
Was the woman
who made of her body a circle
to embrace with her love my pain.
Was the laugh of my girl
in the other room.
Was the paperwhite
blooming on the kitchen counter
like an intimate constellation.
But I’m sad, I said,
and the world did not try
to convince me my sadness
was not also true.
And I felt myself open
like a daffodil in spring,
grateful to be touched
by sun, by chill. And
I felt myself open,
naked as a winter tree,
tender as a woman
just learning to see
how everything invites us
to meet what is holy.