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.
Posts Tagged ‘poetry’
How to Reconnect with a Friend
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, fear, friendship, poetry, wall on March 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »
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.