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Posts Tagged ‘presence’

After Years of Seeking Peace, I Stop

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 5, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
 
right where I am
and find the peace
that is already here,
notice the way
peace is what
holds all the tension
in the same way
silence holds noise,
in the same way
the dark holds the sun.
Right here. Right here.
An infinite peace,
an unwavering peace
great enough to hold
all agitation, tender
enough to hold
even the most
shattered heart.  

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Not Exactly Lost Near the Bitterbrush Trail

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 24, 2025| 6 Comments »

In the flat, low light
of morning there
is no way to see
the trail in the valley
of snow, and so,
new to this place,
I let myself not know
where I’m going.
I move more slowly,
let myself be led by
the trail as it appears.
Each moment is like
a new invisible map
that proclaims again
and again
You Are Here.

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At the Inner Table

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 17, 2024| 10 Comments »

We actually transform the world from within our hearts.
                  —Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Anita Forrer (January 10, 1920)


“But I need to do something to fix this now,”
says the fixer. And the doubter says,
“What can be done from across the world?”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “I don’t know what to do,
but it can’t go on like this.”
And the doubter says, “It’s been like this
as long as humans have lived.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “Humans also heal.
And make peace. And forgive.”
And the doubter says, “What difference
could one person possibly make
when presidents and diplomats have failed?”
And meanwhile, the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the questioner wonders,
is she an olive branch? An open hand?
One more promise? One more fist?
Is she a wall? A rallying cry?
A never-ending debate? A rising tide?
And the fixer says, “I will not just stand by.”
And the doubter says, “It’s hopeless.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And who is the one who, with infinite compassion,
listens to each of the voices?
The fixer can’t let it go. “It’s urgent!” she says.
The doubter throws up her hands and huffs,
“We’ll never learn how to be together.”
And who is the one who, even now,
is making more space at the table of the heart,
a table big as the world?
And the woman who reads the news
feels her heart break even wider.
A tear falls down her cheek.

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On a Night When My Daughter Is Struggling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2023| 18 Comments »

I won’t tell her it is up to her
to repair the broken world.
Perhaps that comes later
with pen or needle, pointe shoe or song.
But for now, the thing to do
is to sit together in the broken world
and feel how it is to be broken.
To let shame sit with us.
Let grief sit with us.
To feel the sharp nails of fear.
It is not wrong to feel small,
to feel frightened, to be lost.
Nor must we feel these things alone.
So for now, I sit with her
in the brokenness
with no tools, no salve,
no metaphor of redemption.
It is not enough, perhaps
to meet brokenness
with nothing but love
and breath and a willingness
to be nowhere but here,
but in this broken moment,
it is everything.

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Is

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 7, 2023| 11 Comments »


 
 
On the highway, an empty space
where you are not driving. At the college,
a chair where you don’t learn.
In this room, a tall and slender empty space
where you are not. Not whistling,
not closing your eyes and humming,
not eating noodles, not reading the news.
Everywhere I am, this space you will never be.
Not in Ohio. Not in the woods with walnuts falling.
Not laughing with these new friends.
Not in these hands and not in these arms
and not in these words where you are
because you are not.
I would not fill these emptinesses
with anything else is. They are anything
but empty, these spaces of you.

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Wilding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 5, 2023| 2 Comments »


 for Corinne
 
It is always near-freezing,
this high alpine lake where
we slide into oddly blue water,

and bare strangled sounds
tear from our throats
as if our own wildness

is shredding through
manicured versions of self.
I crave it, this scraping away

of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang

and wild uncontrollable breathing,
crave the tingling after,
the feral laughter, the way

the world slips more deeply into us
when we dare to slip
more deeply into the world.

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Almost Two Years After Your Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 15, 2023| 12 Comments »


 
 
I no longer pick up the phone to call you.
No longer expect you to walk in the room.
Eventually, the brain learns to expect
the absence, the ears learn to expect
the silence, the body grows accustomed
to the loss of your body and recalibrates
itself in space. But the heart, broken open,
is as full as it ever was.
Did I think it would be parched?
Now I know love as a wellspring,
a continual supply.
Never once has the heart felt empty.
There, every time I look, I find you.

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Naming What Makes a Good Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 13, 2023| 8 Comments »


 
 
There’s a moment when I’m touched
by the sky inside the sky, the song
inside the song, the apple inside the apple.
 
It’s as if each bit of the world is itself,
only more so, and it reaches in
to trace the scaffolding of my life,
 
charging me with its utter purity,
its incontestable presence, as if to say
This, this is what it is to be alive,
 
and I hum with it, pulse with it,
glow with the wonder of it—
Rain. Rhubarb. Sand. Blood.
 
This. This. This. This.
This. This. This.

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For a Moment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 11, 2023| 9 Comments »


 
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.
            —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays
 
 
And so tonight I travel
the back roads of self
to a place with no shovel,
no spoon, no pen,
no wheel, no stick,
and find there
the peace that arrives
when the idea of traveler
dissolves. And then the
road. And then the self.

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A Blessing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 20, 2023| 8 Comments »


 
In the dream, you are ten
and your slender body
curls into my side. We
lie on a purple bed.
Our awareness wings
at the edge of sleep,
our bodies more stone
than bird, your head
on my arm as heavy as time,
and I think, I love this
sweet sapling boy.
 
In the dream, you are alive,
and I sink all the way
into the sweetness
of the moment
the way I sometimes don’t
in life. I sink full weight
into the tender present
and no part of me wishes
to be anywhere but
in the low golden dream light,
your body warm and gentled,
my body quiet and easy.
 
Two days later,
I feel it still, the heft of love
unending and generous
close against my side.
It invites me to be more here
with the ones I am with.
With that same arm that held you,
I hold them. Time lifts.

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