Here is a stack of dictionaries
thick with words I never will know.
Here is the pen filled with the ink
of stories unwritten. Here is
the sky filled with stars I can’t name
and clouds that will not last.
And here, unseen, is the bridge
of the moment that links me
to all that was and all that is,
all that is real and all that is dream.
The bridge, as long as forever.
The bridge as solid as rain.
The long, beautiful bridge
vast enough to hold every word,
every story, every version
of what might be. It is the bridge
toward understanding. And here
is you. And here is me.
Posts Tagged ‘present’
What If We All Met on That Bridge?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bridge, connection, present on January 8, 2026| 4 Comments »
Present
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged box, grace, hope, pain, present on December 7, 2025| 9 Comments »
I open the moment as if it were a box
and, shocked by the cruelty I find,
I want to close the lid.
Want to pretend I don’t see the tears,
don’t hear children screaming.
I want to not feel my own heart whacking
like a club inside my chest.
In the myth, Pandora closes the lid
on hope and keeps it locked in.
But more than I want to close the box,
I want to keep it open.
I want to stay with the ache.
I want to be with what is real.
What is real: I keep the box open.
What is real: There is no box.
What is real: Sometimes I fear
there is no hope left. And sometimes
when I am very still with what is,
hope flutters inside me. How?
I don’t know. But its small wings
open like prayer inside my breath.
Sound Bath
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, present, sound, sound wave on November 1, 2025| 12 Comments »
Even now, imagine, we could step through
one of the infinite doors of the moment
and find ourselves in another life—
repairing a net on the banks of a vast river
or herding cattle down a two-lane highway.
Standing in line a block from a soup kitchen
or guarding the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Instead, we are here in the lives we inhabit
But press your ear to the other doors. Hear
the traffic. The sobbing. A swelling of symphony.
Gunshot. Thunder of feet. The whimper of an infant.
The world enters us in waves, waves that seep
through the doors and we wade in them.
Wading, we come to know there is no way
to not be touched by every other life,
no matter how distant. If you put your ear
to the moment, sometimes you can hear
every other ear listening for what you will do next.
When My Teenage Daughter Stays Home Sick
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boredom, coloring, daughter, illness, mother, present on November 1, 2024| 5 Comments »
We color. I pull out the only coloring book
we have left, most of the pages already full
of half-finished attempts from years ago.
Blue and pink seals. A resting jaguar
with one purple eye, the other eye green.
We sit side by side the way we have
since she could first hold a crayon
and choose a fresh page to color.
She coughs. I sing with her playlist.
We chatter about nothing important
and fill in the green of the leaves,
make a monkey with orange and blue hair.
And it’s boring. We both agree.
Buy my god, I’m so grateful today
to be bored with her,
so grateful to fill in the lines
because right now, there is no room
but this one, this the gift:
her sniffling, the house filled with midday sun,
my life so tethered to her life,
the pink pencil growing shorter every minute.
One Growing Awareness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, daughter, mother, past, present on September 1, 2024| 4 Comments »
millions of small miracles
bring me to this morning
beside you
This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged present, rain, summer, walking on August 2, 2024| 5 Comments »
Walking mid-summer
in the warm summer rain
there is summer in my
step and summer in my skin,
summer in the scent of soil
and summer in my blood
and there is nothing else
I’m searching for but to walk
in the rain in the summery world
with summer in each stride
and in each breath summer
and a summer breeze with its
warm summer touch and it’s
summer, mygod, I’m alive,
and it’s summer right now,
and I, no stranger to winter,
say yes, I say yes, yes to summer.
The Radiant Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, breakfast, marriage, present, spring, time on May 15, 2024| 6 Comments »
Beside the flower bed, still unplanted,
we sit on the porch with coffee and toast
and watch the field where the swallows
swoop and dive in their own ritual of breakfast.
Hummingbirds chase each other across the grass,
small bodies like darts that pin us
to this moment. Would I, if I could, pin us
to this radiant now when the whole world
is greening and the morning sun paints
gold on every surface? Or is its value
partly based in how quickly it passes?
So while I can, I sink into this measure
of bliss, cup still warm in my hand,
and breathe in the sweet, sharp scent of grass.
Someday soon, there will be flowers.
While Skiing at Priest Lake, I Realize
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, miracle, present, skiing on January 28, 2023| 6 Comments »
And here is the miracle—
to find in grief not only sorrow
but a ravenous gratefulness for life,
to find in loss not only emptiness
but an unimaginable abundance.
It doesn’t happen in a day,
no, not even in a year,
but who said miracles
need be instantaneous.
Today I skied through a veil of trees
and forgot for a moment
anything but trees, but skis, but lungs.
I want to tell you in that moment,
there was no one to remember,
there was no one to look ahead,
there was no one except the human
who knew to place the next ski in front
of the other, knew to trust
the ragged saw of her breath,
knew that life is only as beautiful
as death.
Tonight, When I Turn Right on Ogden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, grief, love, mother, past, present, time on January 21, 2023| 10 Comments »
Another part of me turns left,
and it is fifteen years ago
and I am driving to my parents’ new home
and my son and I will spend the night with them
because they live there and we can.
By the time I turn onto the highway toward home
it is fifteen years ago
and my father is sitting in his favorite chair
and my son curls into his lap
and dad tells him his ears are his mouth
and they laugh
and my mother and I make tea and chat.
And I am almost to the stoplight in Ridgway
when it is fifteen years ago,
and we go outside and make a fire in the pit
and sit in a half circle and sing camp songs
and snuggle because we are there.
And when I get home, an hour later,
it is fifteen years ago
and I am so full of their presence
and roasted marshmallows and
joy and loss that I lift my son
into his crib and kiss my father
on the cheek that is now ashes
and hug my mother now far away
then walk into the house
where my son no longer lives
and I have never been
so here.
Late Summer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, fruit, harvest, orchard, present, summer on August 28, 2022| 8 Comments »
for Vivian and Christie
This lyric afternoon with its fruit trees
and friendship and barest kiss of rain,
is it so wrong to want to save it, the way
I will process the dark plums into jam?
Is it so wrong to want to preserve
the honeyed song of summer, the warmth
of sun, the pleasure of an afternoon
with my daughter and a friend?
An ovation of thunder.
Scent of basil. Purr of cat.
The creamy fuzz of the growing quince.
The joy as we try for the first time
black apricots, their skin so surprising,
their flesh so nectar-ish. I will freeze
most of the ripe blackberries we gathered,
will savor them come snow, come cold.
A day such as this is like yeast in wheat dough—
it’s not there just for taste, it’s the difference
between bread and a brick.
It invites a trust there will be other days
filled with elation. Dig in, it seems to say.
Don’t save for later what can only be lived today.
Even the disbelief that a day could be so good—
that too, tastes so nourishing, so sweet.