It used to annoy me,
the way my husband
cleans every trail
he walks on, slowing
down to kick off the
smaller rocks,
stopping to pick up
and toss the larger ones.
Every. Single. Rock.
Perhaps it still annoys
the part of me that loves
a heart pumping pace,
but now I honor how
he has chosen this one
small act as one way
he can serve the world.
But if he could, on our daughter’s
paths, pick up all the obstacles,
I don’t think he would.
Such a gift for a father to give:
An open hand and heart that says
I will pick you up if you fall.
An open hand and heart that says
I trust you enough
to let you stumble at all.
Posts Tagged ‘poetry’
Different Paths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, father, Father's Day, hiking, poem, poetry on June 20, 2026| 4 Comments »
While Listening to Others Talk about Poems in Small Groups
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, poetry, pollination, teaching on March 7, 2026| 6 Comments »
Their voices sound
like giddy bees
as phrases swirl
and interweave
and poems open
like peonies—
a hush comes in
like a gentle breeze
as their wonder lands,
wades deeper in
to gather any gold
that sticks,
and though I cannot
hear what any
one voice is saying,
I taste with ears
inside the buzz
all the glorious makings
of honey.
Wonder Woman Writes Back
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poetry, superhero, truth, wonder woman on August 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
That strapless suit, those high heel boots,
those were lures. The invisible plane was, too.
The real story was always the Lasso of Truth,
that golden rope forged by Hephaestus.
Superman has his vision. The Hulk
has his strength, but sweetheart,
there is no power stronger than the truth—
the willingness to want it, the urgency
to find it, the longing to know it,
even when the truth is something
we’d rather not hear. I know you don’t
have the luxury of a lasso, but
you have poems, and they will help you
question everything you know.
Our greatest enemies are always
the ones inside us, especially
when it comes to the truth. Your greatest
gift is your wonder. Let it rope
around you, invite you into
a listening beyond the words.
What is true will always escape.
Still, devote yourself to such listening,
to a practice of circling what is true.
That circling is what will save you.
Reciting Poems to Each Other in a Difficult Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, connection, friendship, poetry, reciting poetry on November 9, 2024| 9 Comments »
It might have looked as if we stayed
in our respective squares—
nine separate rooms made of pixels—
but for an hour the poems we shared leaped
through the screen and into our bloodstream
until all our lines were gloriously blurred
and our wounds were gently tended
by the medicine of Berry’s dayblind stars
and Wellwood’s ferocious dance of no hope,
Hopkins’s shining from shook foil
and Roethke’s wondering Which I is I?
In another time, there would have been
a fire at the center. Someone would play a drum.
But in this time, I felt it inside me, the fire,
as poems blazed to meet the great cold.
I felt it inside me, the human drum,
that reminds me the heart beats
not for itself, but the world.
For an hour we spooned each other
the honey of poetry. Alone now,
I still taste it, unfiltered and raw,
this astonishing sweetness on my lips,
this salt of lyric communion
still feel the warmth of that blaze,
the spark still dazzling in the dark.
On a Day When I’m Sure Words Won’t Make Things Better
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Jane Hilberry, love, poetry, words on October 27, 2023| 10 Comments »
for Jane Hilberry
That is when I arrive at the home
of my college literature professor.
She welcomes me in and serves me fennel tea—
slightly bitter, slightly sweet—
and amidst talk of art and anxiety,
vulnerability and the longing
for a teacher who will stretch us,
she serves me hummus, thin slices of cucumber,
olives and plump green grapes.
She recites by heart a poem about Love
inviting in someone who feels unworthy.
And the table where we sit becomes Love’s table,
and oh, sweet alchemy of syllable and silence,
I’m opened by words written centuries ago.
They slip in my cells and warm me, transform me.
I dog-ear the moment so I can return
when I again forget what words can do.
Why I Read Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, poetry, reading on January 19, 2023| 9 Comments »
It is so little, I think,
what a few words can do,
and yet today,
after reading
a very small poem
my heart opened so wide
a whole life rushed through—
such a current of love,
somehow contained
in the banks
of so few words.
It carried me,
that tiny poem,
as I walked through snow,
carried me as I wept,
carried me as I taught
and planned and paid bills.
It carried me as if
I were a Roman general
in a chariot, carried me
as if I were Venus on a wave,
carried me as if I were me,
a woman grateful to be carried
through a day by a poem,
its words not only
cradling this heart,
but becoming the heart itself.
Dear Gregory Orr,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, gratefulness, grief, loss, poetry on August 22, 2022| 8 Comments »
Like a pale blue ribbon,
soft and lovely,
your words are woven
through the nest that has held me
since the merciless shot of loss.
Your poems meet me again and again
with their open eyes
and their open hands.
They say, Rest here,
sweetheart. I understand.
You, with your pilgrim heart,
your insistence on devotion,
you have cradled me
with your honesty.
Long before I knew
I needed to be saved,
your words found me,
stitched through me with love
as if that is what words are for.
*
Dear friends, here is where you can find out more about the remarkable Gregory Orr.
And here is where you can find one of his poems that has saved me in the past year.
How to Reconnect with a Friend
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, fear, friendship, poetry, wall on March 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Not by writing another poem
about how much you miss them.
No matter how many red-wing blackbirds
you put in it, the poem itself won’t trill.
No matter how many elephants
clomp through the stanzas,
the poem won’t make the earth tremble.
No matter your skill with language
even the ripest metaphoric blood oranges
cannot quench a very real thirst.
Pick up the phone. Press the button.
Call the one you miss.
I know, I skipped the hours
where you worry about how much time
has passed, how every silent day
becomes another thick brick
in a taciturn wall between you.
Perhaps you’ve started to believe it’s impassable.
But a call is like a wrecking ball.
One sincere hello knocks down even a thousand
days of separation with just two syllables.
What happens next will only happen next
if you clear a space for reunion,
if you pick up the phone.
Mulching Leaves with Gerard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, gerard manley hopkins, leaves, poetry on October 19, 2020| 1 Comment »
… by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie, and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall, To a Young Child”
The whole time I ran the lawnmower
through brown cottonwood leaves,
I recited Gerard Manley Hopkins
and waded in intricate cross tied rhymes
that defied the straight green paths
I was making. I hope Gerard doesn’t think it rude
I call him by his first name when I talk to him,
as I often do when walking alone.
He never speaks back, but I’d like to think
I’m better at listening for him.
As today when I repeated again his words
about worlds of wanwood leafmeal,
I swear he rose up
in the dry-honey scent of leaf dust
as if to say, this, this, this.
And while I pushed the red Toro
across the leaf-spangled lawn,
I thrilled to know the world as poem,
to know the ambush of tears as tiny wet poems
to know myself as a tired and ecstatic poem
while all around me the leaves continued to fall.
One Especially When It Rains
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desert, loss, ocean, poem, poetry, rain on January 15, 2020| 2 Comments »
Monday Night: A Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astronaut, dinner, food, poem, poetry, prolepsis, space on January 13, 2020| 5 Comments »
You are not a passive observer in the cosmos. The entire universe is expressing itself through you at this very minute.
—Deepak Chopra
Even as she made the cauliflower soup,
she was a deep space explorer.
No one else in the room seemed to notice
she was floating. No one noticed
how gravity had no hold on her.
No, they only saw she was chopping onions,
noticed how the act made her cry. How was it
did they not hear her laughter, astonished
as she was by her own weightlessness,
by the way she could move in any direction?
Perhaps the novelty explains why
she forgot to turn off the stove,
untethered as she was to anything.
It’s a miracle she sat at the dinner table at all,
what, with the awareness that she was surrounded
by planets, spiral galaxies, black holes, moons. Yes,
miracle, she thought as she tasted the soup,
and noticed deep space not just around,
but inside her: supernovae, constellations,
interstellar dust,
the glorious, immeasurable dark.
Out of Reach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged craving, fruit, longing, poem, poetry, wanting on January 13, 2020| 2 Comments »
The crystal vase on the top shelf,
the one that holds two dozen roses.
The Hallelujah Chorus’s high A.
The perfect word that flutters away.
The name of the man walking toward you.
The card that slips between the seats.
The itch on your back. The dream upon waking.
World peace. Inner peace. Any peace.
In the kitchen, a persimmon
with its stubborn glossy skin. A knife
with its shrewd steel edge. Oh this art
of choosing to want what’s in hand—
sweet honeyed flesh, yielding and soft.
Oh this craving for blood oranges, tart and red.
Still Learning What It Might Mean
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged learning, poem, poetry, skiing, wax on January 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dave drips the hot blue wax onto the ski
and tells me how it will help the ski meet the snow.
“The cold snow is sharp,” he says, “and aggressive.”
Today’s wax will harden the base of the ski.
I think of the world and all its sharpnesses,
all its aggressions. We humans
are not so unlike the snow. I’ve been fooled
so often. Perhaps my soul needs blue wax.
No, I think, what the soul really needs
is more like the scraper he pulls out,
and the brushes of copper, horsehair, and nylon.
What the soul really needs is a scouring.
He explains that the scouring allows
the cuts in the structure to be exposed
so that the skis don’t suction to the snow.
Is that what all these little cuts are for in me?
To keep me from getting stuck? Later,
as I skate in the race and feel my ski glide
across what is cold, I thank Dave
with my visible breath.
There are so many ways to relearn
how it is we meet the world. Today,
the lesson is a ski, a scraper, some wax,
a man with an iron, and acres and acres of snow.
The Vendor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged becoming, map, poem, poetry, uncertainty on January 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And if there were a map
for the path of my own becoming,
I wouldn’t buy it.
I tried. I marched up to the vendor
of maps, took out my coin,
and held it out for the exchange,
but was startled by an inner revolt—
not an angry crowd but a quiet, insistent no.
I put the coin back in my pocket
and walked away, wildly aware
I had no idea what step came next.
The Girl Who Sat and Read in the Weeping Willow Tree
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, becoming, poem, poetry, reading, tree on January 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Even then she was becoming
a dreamer, a lover of bark,
a student of solitude. Even then
she noticed how there were places
and moods that words couldn’t touch—
even then she felt the joy in trying anyway.
Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, poem, poetry, presence, tree, wind on January 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The day dares me to become a tree,
dares me to root, to stay in one place,
to choose this here, to plant myself in this now,
to stretch down even as I reach up.
But there are gusts in me, and wild squalls,
whirling impulses that swirl and spin
and whisper to me to be current, be flow.
Winds in me that says go, darling, go.
And the day says stay to me. The day
says, find evergreen in the moment.
The day offers me its ground, its generous soil.
After Jack Sends Me the Definition of Black Hole
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astrology, black hole, god, poem, poetry, science on January 7, 2020| 2 Comments »
A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.
—Wikipedia
Perhaps black hole is just another word
for God—a force that pulls in everything,
regardless of how that everything looks or prays or votes.
A cup that runneth—not over, but ever in. A shepherd
so adept at shepherding that nothing—
no sheep, no man, no star, no dust—
could ever be lost in its spacetime pasture.
It creates communion, obliterates separateness.
In pictures, it’s a vision of still water.
In truth, it’s unable to be known.
A force that overwhelms all other forces.
It devours some, and in others spurs growth.
And what isn’t, I suppose, another word
for God: Ledger. Valley. Garden. Death.
Rhubarb. Rod. Human. Staff.
There is this gift to see the divine in everything.
There is this force that pulls the everything in.
Every particle. Every everything. Even (my god) the light.
Darn Lucky
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, gratitude, luck, poem, poetry, surprise on January 7, 2020| 7 Comments »
It happens, you know—the day opens itself
like a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someone
who amazes you with their willingness
to be a thousand percent alive, someone
who makes you feel grateful to be you.
And it’s as if life has been keeping a beautiful
secret from you—like the fact that they make
elderberry flowers into wine. Like muscadine.
Like the yellow-green floral scent of quince.
Like the perfect knot for tying your shoes.
And it turns out life does have wonderful
secrets waiting for you. Even when the news
makes you cry. Even when some old pain returns,
that’s when you will meet this new friend.
Someone wholly themselves. Someone
who makes you smile in the kitchen, a smile so real
that when you go out, the whole world notices.
It’s enough to make you want to wake up in the morning.
To go into the day. To be unguarded as a tulip, petals
falling open. You never know who you might meet.
One More Reason to Practice Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, practice, quiet, silence on January 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
I want to be quiet enough
to absorb the shouting,
still enough to subsume
the uproar, silent enough
to diminish the din. I want
to calm not just the air
but the hurt that drives
the shouts, calm the hurt
that drives the hurt.
Like bringing an ocean
to put out a candle—that’s
how bizarrely effective
I want this quiet to be—
the kind of quiet that touches
everything, tenderly,
like Persian perfume, and
invites it to feel how sweet
the communion of silence.
I want to know quiet
like a fine silken blanket
big enough to cover us all. Quiet,
like a bottle of wine that no matter
how much we pour and share
we find it miraculously always full.
Unresolved
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happy ending, hero, minor key, poem, poetry on January 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The hero in me
wants only a happy ending,
but tonight at the concert
every song I loved best
ended in a minor key
that lingered in the air
like a half formed rainbow,
like the scent of soil
after a punishing rain.
How do I teach that hero
to love the dissonance,
to settle into the discord
to shed her raincoat
and stand in the mess
and say ahhhhh?