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Posts Tagged ‘pond’

Morning Encouragement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 17, 2021| 6 Comments »




I would like to be a kingfisher—
just for a morning.
I’d arrive at the edge of the pond
with the other kingfishers
and watch for crawdads.
“Catchin’ any?” I’d say
to the birds on my right.
“Nah,” they’d say,
“But we keep trying.”
“Good luck,” I’d say,
as took my own spot
in the branches,
waiting for the pond to still
so I could see the movement
at the bottom.
“Good luck,” they’d squawk back,
then they’d rattle with laughter
when at last I broke the pond surface
and came up, beak empty.
“Tough day at the pond,”
they’d rib. And I’d laugh, too.
Then we’d dive and dive and dive.
So often I come up empty.
How is it I sometimes forget to laugh?
But that morning,
every now and then,
one bird would get lucky.
“Your turn next,” she’d say,
her mouth full of shell.
And I’d laugh at how unglamorous
success can be. How crunchy.
All morning we’d go on like this,
diving and missing
and crunching and missing
and laughing and missing
so that by noon
when I was human again,
when I came up empty as I often do—
hungry for love, or eloquence or purpose—
I’d say to myself, “try again, darlin,”
and I’d try again, then break out
into a laughter wildly true,
the world rippling around me
like a pond that I trust
will eventually still.

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Wild Iris

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

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The News

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 16, 2020| 6 Comments »

IMG_0329

 

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.

 

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One Unbaptized

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

filled with golden leaves,

the pond, and shimmering with sky

and me, too dry, too dry

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One Irrepressible

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 9, 2018| 2 Comments »

 

 

in the relentless drought,

finding inside me

a pond somehow still present,

an unstoppable,

insistent spring

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An Afternoon with Basho

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 1, 2012| 4 Comments »

Basho sits beside the hut.

He notices the pond, the frog, the sound
made by the frog.

He does not write about it yet. He watches
for a long time. A cherry blossom falls.

He listens to the sound the water makes
without the frog.

The sound a page makes without a poet.

Again. The frog. Again. Plop.

He sees himself a man wrapped around
a silence.

Perhaps you have heard it, too, the sound
the water makes before it speaks.

Perhaps you, too, have felt it,
the loneliness, the light.

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