after Gayle Brandeis
The poem you’re going to write tomorrow
is somewhere in your cells, is made
from language you’ve been learning
and forgetting since your birth.
The poem you’re going to write tomorrow
will ask you to go beyond who you are today,
will invite you to leap over the edge of the known
and may or may not offer wings or a parachute,
may in fact stuff stones in your pockets.
It promises no net.
The poem you are going to write tomorrow
will certainly be more wise than you are,
drawing as it does on infinite potential,
something you can only touch for a moment
before the words on the page become solid
and stuck in their serifs, trapped in their
clever cages of metaphor. But the poem is there,
it’s always there, that poem you will write tomorrow,
with a promise that if you show up, it will come to wrestle,
will let you glimpse its latent thrill, that thrill
you’ve tasted before that keeps you coming
back tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Posts Tagged ‘potential’
The Poem You’re Going to Write Tomorrow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, potential on September 1, 2026| 10 Comments »
One Potential
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged expansion, potential, self, space on February 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
as the self expands
through deep space, deep space expands
to fit in the self
Universal Origin Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged big bang, blank, book, potential, singularity on December 1, 2021| 14 Comments »
It helps me to think
of the singularity
not as a point per se,
but as a book
that contained
everything that is
and everything
that ever was
and everything
that ever will be—
a book in which
the makings
of spiral galaxies
and nebulae and
triceratops and
Tchaikovsky
and you and ticks
and a bullet and
Google were
all nestled together
in the pages,
and if we could
go back and read
that big bang of a book
I believe we’d find
that in the beginning
was not the word
but a volume
of unfilled folios,
a blank with infinite
potential, an empty
space so generous
that everything
might emerge.
Even planets.
Even fireflies.
Even forgiveness.
Turn the page.
Even peace.
Dear America,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, potential, sunflowers, United States of America on July 3, 2020| 6 Comments »
For your birthday, I’m sending you
the sunflowers in my garden,
which is to say, I send you
something unfinished,
something with so much room
left to grow.
America, I send you
the space above the sunflowers
a space they will reach into.
There is so much promise
of beauty in you, America,
so much blossoming yet to do.
America, you’re right if you think this is symbolic.
So I send you the sunflower’s roots, too.
We all know what happens without them.
America, here’s what I most want to say—
I believe in you, America, and all the hands
that tend your soil. Happy Birthday.
It’s time to get out of your own shade.
Happy Birthday. You’ve got this.
Home of the brave.
I Want to Live in That Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, potential, resilience on April 25, 2020| 5 Comments »
What if, tonight, we all went to bed
and thought of our best version of our self.
It wouldn’t be true, of course. Not
in this moment, and not tomorrow.
Not mid-week. Not next week.
Not even next year. But if we could picture it,
it would be a goal we could live toward.
It would be, perhaps, like the garden beds
I prepared today—hoeing in fertilizer,
last year’s grass clippings, leaves.
When I was done, the rows still looked like dirt,
but such fine dirt it was for planting.
I believe in our resilience.
What is best in us is eager to grow,
like the sunflower sprouts
volunteering again this year.
What if tonight, we imagined the roots
of our goodness. What if tonight,
we planted only those seeds.
One Sauvignon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, potential, wine on October 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And What Might Grow Then?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, poem, poetry, potential, weed on June 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Pulling ten thousand
yellow-petalled weeds—
how many more millions
left to pull? How soon
will they be back?
Still, marveling
for a moment
at this small bit of
weedless dirt.
In me, how many
thousands of weeds?
And beneath them,
how many gardens
just waiting to be revealed?
One Potential
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, doorway, meeting the moment, poem, poetry, potential on November 16, 2018| Leave a Comment »
in every moment
a doorway, but sometimes
the door so small
not even my toe
will fit through
Expansion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, home, poem, poetry, potential, walls on May 4, 2018| 3 Comments »
When I started to fume,
God grabbed me in his arms
impossibly strong and tender
and said, dear one,
don’t build our house too small
and I dropped my hammer
and nails and noticed
how fine the breeze
without walls.
One Inner Potential
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, possibility, potential on December 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
anything is possible
but only one thing will happen—
tulip blooming on a dandelion stem
Who’s There?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, potential on February 20, 2015| 3 Comments »
Before the snow
before the kiss
before the loss
before the hymn
before the fear
before the dust
before the brick
before the hush
there was the rain
that made the world
a glistening place,
there was a girl
who was her dreams
while wide awake
who never thought
of holding back—
sometimes before
the cold spills in
I feel her knock
inside my ribs.
Lullaby for Vivian Rose as she Turns Four
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, lullaby, poem, possibility, potential on July 14, 2012| 3 Comments »
If I lay here, if I just lay here, will you lay with me and just forget the world.
—Snow Patrol
Like sipping the stars in water,
like hearing the sun in the stone
all the impossibles, all the fantastic
notions are possible now.
Like drinking gray sky in big gulps.
Like song spiraling out of bent wheat
there is improbable joy, my love,
in the imperfect, marred, defeated.
There are shoulds, my dear, and mustn’ts
there are cages we think are ourselves,
but night is here and soon there will be
nothing we can’t have.
But it’s not about the having
not even about the dream.
it’s about, well, darling, I don’t know.
Let’s close our eyes and see.
Planting the Garden Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, haiku, marigold, miracle, poetry, potential, seed on May 14, 2012| 3 Comments »
in the tiny seed
the scent
of marigold
Even Blossoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, blossoming, Erika Gordon, friendship, growing, poems, poetry, potential, yoga on March 25, 2012| 5 Comments »
Erika on the red mat
tucks her right foot in her groin
and bends forward from the waist
then lowers till she’s hovering
above her left tippy toes.
If you can’t follow
what I’m saying, that’s
because her body’s twisted,
furled and folded as a body seldom is.
But full of grace,
she brings her hands
to meet in prayer in front of her
and for a minute poises there,
a compact bulb with five small roots
and a patient shoot waiting
to push up and through.
It’s beautiful to stand beside
Erika on the red mat
to feel more than see
the rising energy as like
a tulip in the spring
she reaches not just up
but into the quiet balance point
where anything can happen.