The way the shore holds the pond,
that is how I want to hold
the pain in my heart, honoring
how vital it is. How it is home
to things with hard shells and sharp
claws and also to beings with gossamer
wings. To drain it would be to lose
my aliveness. To become barren,
cracked, dry. I can’t say I love
the spider-like skaters that streak
across the top, nor the thick gray muck
that lines the bottom. But I love
the green rushes that rim the edges,
the red-stemmed willows, the wild
iris. It is no easy thing to hold pain,
but I look how vibrant the pond shore is.
This alive is how I want to live.
Posts Tagged ‘pond’
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, heart, holding, pain, pond on September 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
When Worry Showed Up Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged pond, presence, worry on September 7, 2025| 6 Comments »
It slithered in snakelike, the worry,
and hissed in a sinister whisper,
What if you said too much?
Why can’t you just be quiet?
I felt its eyes measure my long, bare throat,
felt its fangs against my skin.
Doubt in my safety flooded in.
But I did not speak back.
Instead, on instinct, my body
took me to the noon-bright pond
to float like a leaf on my back.
I felt the water lifting me.
Felt the summer-warm kiss of sun.
Listened to dragonflies moving
the reeds as they landed
and took off again. Listened to trees
rustled by wind. The more present
I was in my body, the less strangled
by worry I felt. The more I could see
how worry wasn’t everything,
the easier I could breathe.
Hours later, I marvel how the body,
knew just what to do,
an ancient wisdom moving through.
Of course the snake didn’t disappear.
I still hear its disturbing, insistent hiss:
What if, it insinuates. What if, what if …
But it’s harder now to believe the snake
when I feel more aligned with what’s here.
What’s here? The heart ever learning
to open, to trust. The wonder of having
a voice at all. The wondering what I am
here to learn. Dozens of dragonflies.
Reeds. A slender snake of worry. Trees.
Sun. Pond. Wind.
Commingling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, desire, floating, pleasure, pond, sensuality, sun on January 22, 2025| 14 Comments »
What if our flesh commingled became the mother of light and sound, the vast word, the ocean forgotten at birth?
—James Tipton, “What If, When We Held Each Other”
I love it when I float on the pond in summer
like a human water lily,
the top of me sun-drunk and heat-buzzed,
seduced by shine, blossoming into blaze,
the rest of me held by the cool and swoony dark.
It’s like having two lovers at once—
one playful, one taciturn—
both of them tracing the shape of me
in the way only they know how,
both of them enticing me to fall in love
with having a form that shivers and stipples
and craves and longs to be found.
I desire them both,
the one that invites me deeper in,
the one that bids me rise.
The one that caresses with liquid tongues,
the one that strokes me hot and bright.
How I love to have a body then,
nakedly alive, enticed by sky,
embraced by the deep,
blissed and beguiled by the kiss of it all,
the one original kiss that links me back
to the miracle of being become flesh.
How good it is then to be limb and skin.
How good to be a nexus of firing nerves.
How shameless I am as I beg the world,
touch me, please, touch me,
please, make me yours.
Even After We Were Back on Land
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged floating, friendship, memory, pond on July 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
for Kayleen
There, in the middle of the morning,
was a pause in which we floated
on the surface of the pond, floated
as if we were two rocks who, at least
for a moment, had learned how
to be feathers. If they were to write
the story of my life, they would likely
not mention the way the blue damselflies
landed on our legs, the way we drifted
into the reeds, but I hope I always remember
the way your legs dangled in the cold water,
the way your eyes stayed with mine
as I cried, the way we floated, no matter
how heavy the words, we floated,
like daisies, we floated.
Time Travel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, pond, swimming, time on June 16, 2024| 6 Comments »
Slipping alone into the pond is like slipping
deeper into the world—how alive every
inch of skin is then—as if I’ve slipped
through an hour glass and
swum into the timeless
self
and my father is here, my
son is here and in half an hour
I live a lifetime surrounded by blue
damselflies, opening to the bluing sky and
goodbye is not a word I know, only hello, hello, hello.
The Day You Took My Picture Was the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being with, happiness, pond, stillness on March 9, 2024| 7 Comments »
I sat by the pond and watched
the blue dragonflies land
on slender green reeds.
And the sun was warm and
the air was still as I was still,
which is to say the air pulsed
with aliveness and so did I.
If someone could see the picture
from that day, they might think
I was sad. No slip of a smile
touches my lips. My glance
is far off, unfocused.
But I was in a place beyond
happiness, a place of being with,
a place that asks nothing of me
except that I forget everything
but sitting beside the pond
and marveling at blue dragonflies
as they weave and land,
the reeds so slender, so green.
Sunday Afternoon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, pond, present moment, summer on August 27, 2023| 7 Comments »
Balanced together on a paddleboard
my daughter and I float across the pond.
Already we’ve splashed and tipped
and swum and squealed. Already
we’ve followed dozens of blue dragonflies
with our eyes and greeted
the crawdads that cling to the reeds.
We’ve wrestled and tussled
and dunked and dried and now
we lie on our backs and glide
in the late August sun
and warmth seeps into our skin.
She tells me stories, and my eyes are closed,
and I think, This is why I am alive.
And if the moment is somehow made sweeter
because we’ve been intimate with death,
that is something seen only in retrospect.
In the moment, we are sunbeam and story
and the tickle of damselflies
that land on our skin. We are the aimless drift
from light to light.
Wild Iris
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, flowers, friendship, pond, wild iris on May 15, 2021| 2 Comments »
From a handful of wild iris
planted years ago,
dozens of slender spears
and stems now rise beside the pond—
their pale purple flags
wave in allegiance to spring
and each other.
They know how to grow
not just up but to the side,
how to send out lateral roots
that will someday be new blooms.
Old friends are like rhizomes—
connected by invisible roots,
resilient, perceiving the light as good,
but knowing, too, how essential
to grow through the dark.
The News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, Corona Virus, fear, geese, news, pond, wilderness on March 16, 2020| 6 Comments »
Just as I had settled into doom,
I heard the wild call of the first geese of spring
come screeching through the window.
I leapt up like a woman desperate
for good news—leapt up and ran to the window
in time to see a pair land on the pond,
splashing against the water. They quieted
immediately after alighting. And then,
there was only the sound of me watching them.
How graceful they were in the pond,
the water wrinkled behind them, as if their arrival
were the only news, the only news worth telling.