At the edge of the lake, the rocks
are deep gray and unusually flat,
perfect for skipping, even for a woman
known for her lack of skill in throwing.
There’s such freedom in breaking through
an old story. On a day when so much
seems fixed, beyond my control, I thrill
in skipping rocks again and again.
Sometimes it’s hard to see what is possible.
Once, these rocks were a layer of silt.
Once, this shore was the bottom of an ocean.
Once, there was a girl who was told
she couldn’t throw. Once there was a country
with citizens who forgot how to work together.
Whatever we will become is, even now,
being prepared inside us. All morning,
polished bits of shale fly from my hand to leap
across the surface of the lake. I watch them
find lift again, again, leaving rings
that sparkle in the sun, a momentary proof
of how sometimes the story we think
we know is not yet done with its changes.
Posts Tagged ‘reframe’
How Things Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, changing a story, politics, reframe, skipping rocks, story, voting on November 2, 2026| 10 Comments »
This, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, memory, nourishment, reframe, sunflower on October 9, 2026| 4 Comments »
I once thought love was always open, open the way a sunflower is open, bright and lavish and soft. Today the sunflowers are spent, brown, lifeless stalks, and the Stellar’s jays wrestle seeds from desiccated heads, seeds that nourish them in these shortening days. Sometimes I find in me old memories of you. When I rattle them, I discover inside are dried seeds of compassion, seeds of loss, seeds of devotion, seeds of trust. I take them in like the communion they are. Feel how what is hard and dried grows me. Feel how this, too, is love.
Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged buzzard, reframe, silence on September 19, 2026| 3 Comments »
I am circling silence
the way a buzzard circles the dead,
as if silence is something to be fed on,
as if I might bring it into my body
for nourishment.
What if instead I let myself
be consumed by silence?
How might I live then?
An Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clarity, grief, perspective, reframe, snow, snowstorm on January 15, 2024| 4 Comments »
Mourning settles in like a midwinter storm,
clouds low, snow thick in the trees,
snow thick on the rooftops, thick
in the road where you’re forced to go slow
if you go anywhere at all—
squall after squall of thick fat flakes falling
till they break the boughs and thickly cover
the whole visible world
and then,
a parting, a lifting,
a clearing so startling, so blue you swear
you will never see the same way again,
not the snow, not the sky, not even yourself,
having as you do now, some small hint
of the weight of this life.
The Great Reframe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, frame, grief, love, reframe on March 16, 2023| 11 Comments »
Let this sorrow
that has opened me
to love
be like a frame
that has no photo—
so I might know
how to be this broken open,
this tender, this compassionate
with anything,
not only toward the one
who first filled the frame.
Let me not try to control
what is worthy of framing.
Let me trust everything
is worthy of prayer,
of consideration.
Let sorrow continue
to teach me generosity.
Let the frame be big enough
to hold it all.
The Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, invitation, love, reframe, story on December 31, 2021| 15 Comments »
Two nights after he died,
all night I heard the same
one-line story on repeat:
I am the woman whose son
took his life. The words
felt full of self-pity,
filled me with hopelessness, doom.
And then a voice came,
a woman’s voice, just before dawn,
and it gave me a new shade of truth:
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
It did not change the facts,
but it changed everything
about how I met the facts.
Over a hundred days later,
I am still learning what it means
to love him—how love is
an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb;
how commitment to love changes me,
changes everyone,
invites us to bring our best.
Love is wine, is trampoline,
is an infinite song with a chorus
in which I am sung.
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
May I always be learning how to love—
like a cave. Like a rough-legged hawk.
Like a sun.
In Those Quiet Hours
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, night, reframe, sleep, son on December 29, 2021| 26 Comments »
For two weeks after he died,
I’d fall asleep exhausted
only to wake just past midnight.
Desperate, I’d claw at sleep,
frantic to catch it and clutch it,
but always it slipped my grasp
and I’d lie awake till morning.
My friend suggested
I reframe those sleepless hours
as a sacred time, an intimate,
personal quiet time. Not a problem.
Not something to be treated.
Not something to be feared.
That night, as I emerged from sleep,
dreams dripping from me like water,
I did not resist the waking.
Instead, eyes closed, heart open,
still lying in bed, I said,
I love you, Finn. I miss you, sweetheart.
And woke on the shore of morning.
Ever since, it happens just like this—
when I slip from sleep,
I tell my son I love him
and slide unknowingly
back into the tide of dreams.
How many hundreds of times
when he was young, did I go to him
when he cried out in the night?
I’d press my palms against his chest
until his breath was a skiff for dreams.
Years later, though I can’t feel his hands,
though I don’t hear the lullaby of his breath,
somehow he arrives to comfort me.
And though I don’t hear him say
the words I’d always say to him,
I feel them float above me like a blanket,
warm in the cool night air—
Shhh. I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.
One Expectation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gate, idea, reframe, wall on June 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »
this old wall of an idea—
giving it hinges,
oh, how it swings
One Enormous Gratitude
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, gratitude, mother, poem, poetry, reframe, ritual on March 30, 2018| 4 Comments »
my mother began my mornings
by singing to me “it’s going to be
such a lovely day”—
over thirty years later
I still believe her
Two Reframings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, reframe, wound on March 4, 2016| 1 Comment »
this wound—
re-teaching my tongue to name it
blessing
*
a sad song
so beautiful even the skylark
stops to listen
And I Can’t Find My Way Back In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliche, poem, poetry, reframe, sustainability, worm on February 6, 2014| 2 Comments »
All these years
I thought I might be
the one who had opened
the can. Such surprise
to find I am one
of the worms.
Nine Reframings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, lens, poem, reframe on September 14, 2013| 1 Comment »
a chest
full of flowers—
open me
*
my thumb hurts, I say,
my dad’s favorite fix—drop
a rock on your foot
*
only a sip
and already I’m drunk—
desert after rain
*
my knee hurts, I say
and the world
breaks my heart
*
puddle, puddle,
puddle, puddle, puddle,
tear
*
why so serious
says the leaf
already gold
*
such a blessing
to be thirsty in a season
of rain
*
my heart hurts, I say,
and the old poet says
live by breaking
*
using a thread
to climb to heaven, the angels
toss me a rope
Epiphany While Driving in the Storm with Danny
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Danny Rosen, indifference, poem, poetry, reframe, universe on February 9, 2013| 2 Comments »
Out the window
I do not see
the mountains
I know are there
behind the fog.
Do you think
the universe
is indifferent?
he asks.
New snow
obscures
all the lines
on the road.
The radio
is silent.
Yes, I say.
Rosemerry,
he says,
are you
indifferent?