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Posts Tagged ‘refuge’

The Phone Call

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 25, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
While all around us the world rushes by, 
our conversation becomes a wide flat rock
in the midst of the river where we can rest
long enough to see not everything
is snarl and torrent, rapid and rush. 
See how the heron lands in the eddy,
how soft moss grows on rocks in the shade.
Holding up all the tumult, the peaceful.
At the edges of chaos, the beautiful. 
This is why, when I call you in the middle 
of the day and you answer, I almost cry. 
Because the timbre of your voice is enough
to land me. I lie on the solid rock of our talk. 
I rest there long enough for my own pulse
to slow, long enough dangle my ankle
into the current and think, yes, 
I can swim again. 

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Heart Medicine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
To stay open 
 is what I wanted.
  Though winter and war
   have taught me 
    the importance of refuge. 
 
Even then, like a wild rabbit 
 that is no less soft
  and no less gentle
   inside its dark burrow,
    the heart in its shelter
     finds ways to stay open, 
      if not to the world, 
       at least to whatever
        it is that shines
         through the self,
          and the deep remove 
           becomes a chance
            to steep in tenderness
 
before re-emerging again 
 into the world 
  with all its threats
   and dangers, 
    with all its green 
     and radiant beauty.

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The Mother Wonders about Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 15, 2025| 4 Comments »


                  for Vivian on her 17th birthday
 
 
I don’t understand how it is that loving you
asks both everything and nothing from me.
Every day since your birth I have nourished
this love with time, with touch, with words,
and loved you the way I was loved—knowing
there is nothing you could do or be that
could make me stop loving you. I thought
I was making a refuge for you, but
every day since your birth, the love
you’ve given back to me has become
my sanctuary, a place I show up exactly as I am,
with bad breath, with tired arms, with a faulty
memory and dirt in my fingernails and trust
you will love me, too. Every day we build together
the nest of love. Once we wove in fairy houses
and reading books and making up secret handshakes.
Now we weave in cinema and long road trips and
floating on the pond. And trust is the glue
that holds the nest together, even as
it changes every day. It surprises me
the nest of love is less a place and more
a spaciousness inside—not somewhere we go,
more something we are, so even when
we’re not together, the refuge is always within us,
a love that asks nothing and everything,
a home that grows as we both continue to grow.  

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Could It Happen Anywhere?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 13, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
Listen to the rhythm of things that never die.
                  —Mark Nepo, “For a Long Time”
 
 
Worried about what was to come, I went to the river
and listened to the constant song as water met stone,
met log, met wall. The endless white hush of it.
Song of building up banks. Song of tearing them down.
Song of surrender to invisible force. Song of change
that is ever the same and not the same. And in the listening,
I found refuge—not in the longing to hide, not in the sound—
I found refuge in the listening. Refuge in the opening
of the senses. In attuning to what is here. Wave and current
and eddy and flow and the attentiveness that lives
through this woman. And I listened and listened, listened
to it all, and was opened by listening. At some point
the listener disappeared. What was left was
listening itself. For a time, peace found me there.

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For a Moment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 11, 2023| 9 Comments »


 
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.
            —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays
 
 
And so tonight I travel
the back roads of self
to a place with no shovel,
no spoon, no pen,
no wheel, no stick,
and find there
the peace that arrives
when the idea of traveler
dissolves. And then the
road. And then the self.

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Love is Like This

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 25, 2012| 5 Comments »

Above the deep river
on the slenderest branch—
a nest.

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