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Posts Tagged ‘recovery’

Skate Skiing at Priest Lake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 9, 2022| 9 Comments »




For two hours, I am
more lung than thought,
more legs than loss,
more heart beat
than heart ache,
and so holy alive
as I become rhythm
of push and glide,
push and glide,
pole and swing,
I transform into
a flying thing—
each shift from ski
to sliding ski
a calling on balance
that comes from
the core.
By the time
I ski back to the car,
it’s not that I have forgotten
my loss, it’s just
that every cell in me
now remembers
the dance between
falling and recovery,
falling and recovery—
how it happens
again and again—
how this is the way
we recalibrate—
we fall, we recover,
we move forward.

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Instead of Shutting Down

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 24, 2021| 10 Comments »

Cast your lot with all small things.
—Sharon Corcoran, from her new poetry collection The Two Worlds


Today I cast my lot
with the tiny tea leaves
giving their all to hot water.
I cast in with the light touch
of my brother’s hand on my shoulder
and the slight whimper my mother makes
when she finds in the closet the gift
my father had bought them for Christmas.
This, the first full day of life
without my father,
a loss so big
that all I can meet
are the smallest things—
candle flame, scrap of song,
orange butterfly wing.
They lead me like crumbs
toward courage, toward life—
and so I join in with the teeny blue flowers
still blooming on the rosemary bush.
I cast my lot with the thin creak of hope
heard only when tears are falling,
with the faintest gleam of love
only able to be seen in the darkness.

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One Month Out of ICU

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

walking four blocks with my mother,

every step an arrival,

every step a reason to praise

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After the Slam

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 16, 2012| 5 Comments »

It hurts worst
in the first few hours,
when the purple
leaps up in the moon
of the nail,
and it pulses, throbs,
how the thumb’s pulp
strains against
the skin’s chapel,
and the wrinkles
erase themselves
as the knuckle swells.
Tell yourself
at least it was
only your thumb.
Tell yourself
it was no one’s fault.
Tell yourself
it is not at all
like the heart.
It will heal.
The hurt
will be gone.

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After Waking Up a Fussy, Brittle Thing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 27, 2012| 1 Comment »

No surprise then,
the crash
the splatter
the moans
the tones
all splitting
from whole
to half
the silence
underneath
it all
the eventual
descant—
laugh.

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