Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, dream, falling, grace, poems, poetry on April 20, 2012| 3 Comments »
There is the moment
just before you fall
when you know
there is nothing left
to do except
to fall, to fall,
to fall and say yes
to the falling, to fall
and feel yourself
as you fall, how the stomach
rises where the throat
has been, it’s silent,
then—and it’s fast,
you think, so fast,
you are falling and not
a damn thing to be done
except to fall, to notice
the air rush over the skin,
yes nothing to do but
to fall, to keep falling,
to fall.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, Herbie Hancock, music, poems, poetry, presence, union on April 19, 2012| 3 Comments »
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
—Lenore Kandel
Perhaps
we,
too,
are
more
empty
space
than
note,
our
bodies
like
this
minor
tune—
vast
expanses
of
what
isn’t
here
held
together
by
something
almost
beautiful
that
is.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, being present, love, poems, poetry, relationships, time on April 17, 2012| 2 Comments »
I cannot make
the flowers bloom
any faster
than they are,
but I can
right now
bend
my knees
beside the barren
lilac bush
and notice
how it, too,
is beautiful,
all spindle and gnarl,
its branches not
too small, too big,
can choose
to praise
those tight,
gray fists of buds
for being so tight,
so gray.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, love, poems, poetry on April 16, 2012| 5 Comments »
fresh cut grass—
I imagine some will stick
in our hair
*
open hand—
how much of your weight
I don’t hold there
*
sweet basil—
your buttonhole
could use some green
*
a bigger ass—
all the more likely
to land in your lap
*
sitting naked
on a rock I wonder
why you’re not
*
rising sourdough—
the shape of your hands still blooms
in wild yeast
*
dried cherries—
so much sweeter
the summer in fall
*
light
an open door
lead shoes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, parenting, perspective, poems, poetry, science on April 16, 2012| 3 Comments »
Dad takes out the microscope
from a dusty old suitcase
and sets it up on the kitchen table.
Once again I’m six years old
and we are living near the lake
where he takes me out with a net and a vial
to collect the water together.
He shows me how to make a slide,
how to focus the lens, how to steady
my eye and how to be patient
and wait for the tiny world
to reveal itself.
My son and daughter are with us
today, and he takes them out
to the waterway with the net
and the vial and all their curiosity.
I’d forgotten how miraculous it feels
to look into a droplet and find
a universe with slender strands
and tiny spiraled globs of green
and all the unseen critters seen,
their eyeless, mouthless,
heartless forms nudging
at the algal threads or speeding
across and off the slide.
How big the world seems then,
and how very, very small—
how hard it is to know
where we fit into it all—
this world with its car bombs
and militant groups, adventure
movies and evening news,
Jupiter high in the springtime sky
and under the microscope,
single-celled things zooming
and worming and meandering.
Who could make sense of it?
How simple to be one of these
small creatures I can’t name,
how simple it was to be that girl,
six years old, beside her father
on the microscope bench
dropping beads of water
onto the slides, kneeling on her chair,
mesmerized.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, identification, poems, poetry, release on April 15, 2012| 3 Comments »
We’re human. We hurt each other.
–Wendy Videlock
As wind softens canyons
as water smoothes glass,
the days erode what is sharp
in me and grinds down
these layers of sludge
that have built up on
my shores, all these stories
that I have collected
—even believed—
as portraits of myself.
I remember reading
of a Chinese monk
who decided to rid himself
of worldly possessions.
Instead of giving them away—
for they would become burdens
to someone else—
he set his every thing in a boat
and let it drift to the middle
of the lake, where he sank it.
I would like to sink my stories
this way—heap them
into a heavy box and lock it
tight and drop it in
the deepest lake where
they could do no one else harm.
I’d like to believe
that it could be so easy
to release the burdens of the heart.
But no, it’s this slow,
wearing down, wearing down—
the sloughing of the known.
And who is that wants
to protect someone else?
As if she could control
how the world goes?
Let’s put her and her story
into the boat, push it off
and wish her the best.
Meanwhile
the days do the rest.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, letting go, love, poems, poetry, surrender on April 10, 2012| 7 Comments »
they can stay on,
your clothes, but please take off
everything else
*
blue, blue thoughts—
blackbirds fly
right through them
*
sun and more sun—
still I do not
pray for rain
*
clear spring—
everyone, everything I meet
a lover
*
soft wind—
did it touch
you, too?
*
cloudless night—
we sleep alone
together
*
cattails,
broken open, blown apart—
now the seeds
*
deeper
into the wound—
scent of white lily
*
the moon slips
into my tea—
no sleeping now
*
one cold night—
on every limb
ruined blossoms
*
step outside
I crown you—
billions of stars
*
I keep it
under my tongue—
your name
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, nothing, noticing, poems, poetry, silence on April 9, 2012| 2 Comments »
Still,
still,
and then new leaves
are ruffled by
the morning breeze
and shimmied, trembled,
shaken till they’re
still.
Silent,
silent
till the birds
all trilling through
the trees are heard—
they sing their spirals,
coo and call until they’re
hush shhh.
Quiet,
quiet,
till the bloom
of anger does
what angers do—
riles, outcries
and tells us lies
until we live
it through
and then it’s quiet here
and silent, still,
till something rises
as it will
from nothing—
and how always
we return always
to nothing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poems, poetry, relationships, soul on April 7, 2012| 6 Comments »
The first things to break
are made of glass—
tumblers, vases,
window panes—
then the wood,
how it snaps,
the floors, the counters,
the entire frame,
and even the metal—
the stainless, the iron,
the rings,
it all shatters, collapses,
everything,
and it takes a long time
for the shards and dust,
for the wreckage and the whole ruined lot
to become what it is,
just a heap of stuff,
not what we are made of,
not at all what we are made of.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged freedom, letting go, love, poems, poetry, relationship, Sisyphus on April 3, 2012| 12 Comments »
That rock that we
have been pushing up
the hill—that one
that keeps rolling back down
and we keep pushing
back up—what if
we stopped? We are not
Sisyphus. This rock
is not a punishment.
It’s something we’ve chosen
to push. Who knows why.
I look at all the names
we once carved into
its sedimentary sides.
How important
I thought they were,
those names. How
I’ve clung to labels,
who’s right, who’s wrong,
how I’ve cared about
who’s pushed harder
and who’s been slack.
Now all I want
is to let the rock
roll back to where it belongs,
which is wherever it lands,
and you and I could,
imagine!, walk unencumbered,
all the way to the top and
walk and walk and never stop
except to discover what
our hands might do
if for once they were
receiving.