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Posts Tagged ‘puzzle’

Somehow Inside This Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 16, 2025| 4 Comments »

 
Every day has something in it whose name is Forever. 
—Mary Oliver, “Everything that was Broken”
 
 
The snow falls forever
into deepening drifts
and forever the mother
and daughter are fitting in
pieces of a puzzle that is
forever unfinished
and the cat purrs forever
in the lap of the girl
who is laughing forever
about the smallest
of things and the song
on the radio lasts forever
and the mother harmonizes
though forever she forgets
the words, and her tea
is forever not quite warm
in this sweet buried day
that she prays will last
forever though she knows
the other name for forever
is now, and now the snow
has stopped falling
and now the cat is asleep,
but how is it that
as the mother goes
to brush her teeth those
strands of forever have
stitched themselves into
her being and she carries
them into her dreams
with infinite other threads of forever,
even as forever carries her.

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Still Life on My Mother’s Birthday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 15, 2024| 9 Comments »



In the painting no one did,
we don’t see the Beaver Moon,
but it is there, full and shining
on the other side of the earth.
What we do see, as if from a bird’s
eye view: the hands of three
generations of women hovering 
above a square wood table.
They hold bright puzzle pieces,
and beneath their fingers, a vibrant garden
has begun to emerge.
What we don’t see is the light
and gauzy conversation—the kind
that swoops, swallow-like, through
the field of the moment, the kind
that swerves and lifts, suggesting a space
unconstrained by straight edges.
In the painting  no one did, the garden
is always blooming, the hands never age,
nothing sad ever happens,
the candles on the cake, also not pictured,
are never blown out, the banter
never ends, and like the unseen moon,
the love is there, reflecting, radiant,
shining beyond the frame.

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One Path Toward Intimacy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 29, 2023| 4 Comments »

Sometimes
a piece
from another
who is broken
finds its way
into my frame,
and our shattered
bits fit
with each other.
Perfectly.
And I am
forever changed.

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Imagine the Size of the Picture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 5, 2020| 4 Comments »

Dozens of puzzle pieces suspended in the air.

All day, I’ve wondered why no one else

seems to see them—dangling as they are

on the hiking trail and in the kitchen this morning,

over the highway and at the birthday party.

All day, they appear with their knobs and inlets,

their gray backs and colorful fronts,

spinning like small bits of certainty.

Sometimes I feel one fit into place

in some larger puzzle I don’t actually see,

but when a piece slips in, I feel it

with my whole body—a snap, a link,

a small yes. I don’t know whose hand

is doing the work. I don’t know where

the pieces came from nor where they should go.

All day I wait for it, the feeling of being lifted

out of my life and placed back in

exactly where I belong.

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In the Wing of the Nursing Home

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 23, 2013| 5 Comments »

Mom picks over the blues to find
the barely discernable line
where sky meets clouds. I push

around the reds of the Indian Paintbrush.
She slides me an odd-shaped piece,
mostly green, with the tiniest ruby tip.

Those, she says, are often the hardest
to find, but make the biggest difference.
We have done this for decades, traded

tessellating bits of flowers or castles
or horses or sky. We have interlocked
the bodies of wolves and assembled

mountains and rivers, all the while chatting back
and forth about whatever subjects rise—
which is often something falling apart,

a dream unmet, a breaking heart.
We always begin with the straight edges,
creating the puzzle’s frame. Perhaps

it’s a comforting pretense—that the world
can be edged in. Tonight, the reds
get the better of me. I can make nothing fit.

I try and retry to piece them together
and the holes and knobs resist. But
our conversation surges on despite my

ineptitude. It blossoms in the puzzles cracks,
all those holes unfilled—our talk spills
across whatever boxes we might want

to catch it in. Our losses and wonders
slip from our lips like the clouds
in this jigsaw scene, from blue into deeper blue.

It all seems the same somehow, the sorrow,
the gladness, the then, the now, the doing,
the not doing, the borders, the holes,

as if we’re all part of an infinite,
uncontrollable, ever-changing weather,
but what do I know of forever.

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