It is so little, I think,
what a few words can do,
and yet today,
after reading
a very small poem
my heart opened so wide
a whole life rushed through—
such a current of love,
somehow contained
in the banks
of so few words.
It carried me,
that tiny poem,
as I walked through snow,
carried me as I wept,
carried me as I taught
and planned and paid bills.
It carried me as if
I were a Roman general
in a chariot, carried me
as if I were Venus on a wave,
carried me as if I were me,
a woman grateful to be carried
through a day by a poem,
its words not only
cradling this heart,
but becoming the heart itself.
Posts Tagged ‘reading’
Why I Read Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, poetry, reading on January 19, 2023| 9 Comments »
Thank You, Gary Paulsen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, daughter, forest, Gary Paulsen, loss, reading on October 14, 2021| 12 Comments »
You are your most valuable asset. Don’t forget that. You are the best thing you have.
—from Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, (May 17, 1939-October 14, 2021)
How many children went down in that plane, Gary?
How many children fell out of the sky alone
and learned they could live
for months in the woods
with only a hatchet for help?
How many kids learned
that tough conditions were a bidding
to bring their best self?
My daughter was nine or ten
when she first drew your book from the shelf
and found herself stranded in the northern woods.
Then she went there on purpose again and again.
Now, three years later, she wanders a forest of loss,
and in so many ways she’s alone.
Gary, you gave her a story to believe in
in which young people survive, find their way home.
Your story’s a sharp tool my daughter can wield
to make sparks in these darkened days.
I thank you for teaching her
how she might rise from a crash,
how in these woods of sorrow,
though I would build her a fire if I could,
she is the best thing she has.
*In case you are unfamiliar with Gary Paulsen, you can read more here. As he says, “Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty.”
One Way to Do It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, opening, reading on June 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »
not reading the book
on letting go—
she opens her hand
In the Basement of the Old Stone Library
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, childhood, library, reading on November 17, 2020| 6 Comments »
Off the hot street and down
the narrow stairwell,
I entered the smell of books—
a musty scent of paper and ink.
How I loved entering the stacks,
shelves taller than I was.
Loved running my hands
along hardcover spines
wondering at the worlds inside.
I was allowed twelve thin books,
that meant twelve chances
to travel to realms where monkeys
stole hats and the Whangdoodle snoozed.
Twelve chapters in which I
was no longer an awkward girl
but a baker in an old village
or a mouse in an attic befriending a girl
who was something like me,
or at least like the girl I wished I could be,
a girl who was brave, a girl
who couldn’t help but stumble
every single time
into happily ever after.
The Girl Who Sat and Read in the Weeping Willow Tree
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, becoming, poem, poetry, reading, tree on January 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Even then she was becoming
a dreamer, a lover of bark,
a student of solitude. Even then
she noticed how there were places
and moods that words couldn’t touch—
even then she felt the joy in trying anyway.
Every Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, connection, poem, poetry, reading on February 3, 2019| 5 Comments »
and after the lights were out
and after my mother had kissed me goodnight
I would pull from under my pillow
the book, the flashlight, and for hours
in the quiet house, no matter how difficult
the day had been, no matter how low I felt,
for those hours I was so glad to be alive
in someone else’s story, and every time,
when I when I tugged long enough on its lines,
I could not help but notice
how each story was my story, too.
Before I Could Read, There Was the Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, literacy, poem, poetry, reading, tree on November 1, 2018| 2 Comments »
The day is quiet and
the light is strong and I sit alone
in the V of the weeping willow
in a place where the sun can’t reach me
and no one can see me.
I pull off the bark in thick rough slabs,
and the day is drowsy and the light
is long and the bark feels rough
in my four-year-old hands,
but I flip it and find it is smooth
underneath where it touches the tree.
Yes, the bark is smooth, like my dress,
like me, and I move my fingers across
the soft side, surprised by the secret writings there—
meandering marks that slither and wriggle
in cursive spells, some language only
the tree can tell, that only I can read.
And the day is page and the light
is song and I am not at all alone,
perhaps there is writing inside me, too,
the bark thrilling in my hands.
Just One More Page
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, poem, poetry, reading on August 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Not the End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, reading, suicide on July 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And as the demon prison is opened,
it’s already half past ten, and my daughter
and I have already read an hour past her bedtime,
but the demon prison is open, and so
I promise just ten more minutes, but then,
at ten forty, our hero is clashing swords
with the demon who betrayed him
and so we read on to the demon’s demise.
Just yesterday I spoke with a friend
who told me she thought about killing herself.
We sat in the garden surrounded by cosmos
and overly abundant chard.
Life is not like the book where we know
there will be a happy ending,
which makes it harder
to want to turn the page.
Tonight, when we put down the book,
just as the next demon taunts
our hero, we turn off the lights
and feel the giddiness of the battle
pulsing through our bodies.
We giggle too loud and shudder
beyond our control. It is difficult
to find enough peace in ourselves
to welcome sleep.
How we long to turn just one more page,
just one more page.
May we always find reasons
to go on, believing that
something good is about to happen.
I may not believe in happy endings,
but I do believe in happiness,
the way it finds us when we least
expect it. Like the zinnia in my garden
that for months has looked shriveled and dead
since a spring frost, and just today,
after the big rains,
formed four green leaves.
My Nine-Year-Old Daughter Reads Emily Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emily dickinson, literature, magic, mother, poem, poetry, reading on June 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.