After the leftovers have been spooned
into storage containers and the forks
are all snuggled back in their drawers,
when the few who are left are sprawled
on the couch or curled on the floor,
and we’re sleepy-eyed and sated
and telling stories and laughing
at ourselves, this is my favorite part
of the day, when all of the fixing is done
and we settle in with questions we know
we will never answer, and instead
of solutions we are left holding
nothing but ache and love for the world
and for each other, and somehow
instead of despair, this utter lack
of resolution serves up such
gladness—we’re here to meet
what is hard together.
Posts Tagged ‘questions’
After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, feast, love, questions, thanksgiving on November 27, 2025| 6 Comments »
Planting the Questions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dormancy, growth, love, questions, snow on November 7, 2024| 8 Comments »
All day the first snow fell in the valley.
Hour by hour, I watched
the brittle world become new.
All day, I marveled at the human—
equally capable of cruelty and compassion.
Inside me, strong questions gathered.
I planted them in me like garlic cloves.
Every gardener knows how cold
only accelerates their growth,
triggers more development come spring.
I imagine how vigorous, how robust
these questions will grow
into actions I can’t yet conceive.
All day, the snow kept falling.
I imagined it was love.
There was nothing it did not touch.
Questions for the New Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, questions on January 1, 2024| 17 Comments »
Why not believe in magic?
Can I soften? Can I soften some more?
Does truth exist? How are stones alive?
What if I never learn
what happens when we die?
What’s the next nice thing
I can do for someone else?
What’s for breakfast? What’s at stake?
When I dream of my beloveds, is it them?
Where am I in my own way?
How might I be more river, less dam?
Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace?
Which comes last, unknowing or the known?
What is love? What is now? What is home?
What is it in us that knows how to wonder?
What is it in us that knows how to grow?
Who are we really? What is courage?
What’s worth it? What’s asked of me now?
Should I be in this moment a blade or a bloom?
What’s the nature of higher ground?
Can I ask without longing for answers?
Can I feel I am one with it all?
How does life live through me?
Can I be in service to that?
What do I believe I can’t give away?
What if I say nothing and listen?
Will I choose awe today?
The Empty Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, bowl, dark, meditation, questions on August 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Answers don’t arrive if you’re afraid of sitting in the empty dark room of not knowing by yourself long enough for them to arrive on their own schedule.
—Michael Thelen
Oh let me, too, be willing to sit in the empty dark
and let the darkness enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
Let me lose my plans, though it terrifies me.
Let me not imagine any better time
to practice than now.
Let me be the bowl that sings when touched,
the bowl that is content with its own stillness.
If I want answers, let me sit with my longing.
If I want lessons, let me find them right here.
And if it is dark, let me not run from the dark,
but lean into it. And if it is light,
let me long for the light. Let it enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
I’m Thinking of an Ornament
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mom, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, questions on December 16, 2019| 2 Comments »
The rules are simple. One person chooses
an ornament on the tree. The others ask
yes/no questions until they guess it correctly.
It was my mother who taught me.
I taught my own children. It’s a ritual
as important as the tree itself. Is it red?
Is it round? Is it cloth? Handmade?
So many questions we never can answer.
So many questions elude yes or no. But here,
in the soft glow of Christmas tree lights,
we share moments when every question
leads us closer to a treasure, where
the moments are treasures themselves.
Clear Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, questions, silence on May 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I ask the night
teach me to ask bigger questions
it replies
perhaps you could
take the pen away
from the one who wants
to ask questions
and then let her come
walk in the night
Almost Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, friendship, poem, poetry, problems, questions on April 30, 2017| 4 Comments »
After many, many hours in the car,
through spring blizzards and shine,
over passes and through tunnels,
we have conversed about loneliness
and loss, isolation and struggle,
we’ve found laughter inside
awkwardnesses and cried
for reasons we don’t understand
and we have solved nothing
of the world’s problems, nor our own,
but in this last hour, a lovely
silence joins us in the car,
all those unanswered questions
somehow content to look out the window
and admire with us the white rumps of elk
and the mountains newly covered
with snow, so much already
growing beneath the white.
Phylogenetic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, classification, poem, poetry, questions on October 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Just today my son asked
if birds were mammals.
No, I said, without looking up.
Then are they reptiles, he said,
and I thought no, but then
I thought maybe, and then I said,
I don’t know. Turns out some
classify yes and others say no.
There are so many ways
to see the world.
I think of scaly feet and believe
the crocodile and heron
could be cousins.
I think of intersections.
It’s not a surprise
humans arrive at different answers,
what surprises me is how
there are questions I no longer ask.
Like the nature of a bird.
Like the nature of love.
How many other questions
are gathering dust or are waiting
to be found?
But I Want to Know Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, magic eight ball, poem, poetry, questions on May 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
I have never had an eight ball do me right.
—Rob Wasserman
I ask it,
Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Ask Later.
I ask later. Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Don’t Ask.
Oh, I say. Should I just go away?
It says,
Looks Good.
What is that supposed to mean? I say.
It says,
Try again.
Oh. Okay. Will it be easier tomorrow?
Can’t Tell, says the eight ball.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see, I say.
In the small blue window, it says,
I Say Yes
What to Say But Yes?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged are we there yet, arrival, kids, parenting, questions, short poem on December 7, 2013| 1 Comment »
long after we arrive
still the question
are we there yet?