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Posts Tagged ‘Regret’

For When I Am Hard on Myself

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 4, 2025| 3 Comments »


 
If you can soften your body, your heart can settle, and if your heart can settle your mind can listen.
—Augusta Kantra
 
 
When you are full of self-regret and turn
your fists on your own heart, I hope you will
recall that summer afternoon when you
dove headlong in the pond and floated there
until your fingers pruned, until hard thoughts
were soft as milkweed down, until you were
a gentle thing without a thorn, until
you were the song of birds and frogs and dusk …
 
I know how shame and not-enoughness turn
us on ourselves. And that is why I plant
this seed of memory. When shame shows up,
remember, self, you float. Remember, you
can soften. Love, like water, gentles us.
Such gentleness is how we learn to listen.

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We’ll Never Know

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

a naked bougainvillea

surrounded by pink petals

on the ground—

this fear that we could have

tried harder

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Three Small Lives

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 16, 2013| 3 Comments »

doing it all again
I’d do it the same only
this time no regret

*

I told her
I only sing songs—she said
save me

*

little brown mouse
on the road, I swerve uncertain
which of us should live

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One Way It Might Look

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2013| 9 Comments »

When regret comes
with his stale breath
and tattered coat, arriving

at your door as he does
on the chillest night,
it is still easy to want

to close the door
and suggest he move
down the road. You know

if you let him in, he’ll ask
for your last glass of wine,
then wonder aloud

if you have any thread
to fix his overcoat, and
perhaps you know how

to sew? You guess
from that bottomless look
in his eye that no matter what

you do it will not be help enough.
Regret, you might say,
I’ll have none of you.

But you know he’ll come back,
next time with his dog,
its fleas, his flies.

Better, perhaps, to let him
in now. Offer him the wine.
Water, too. And when he says,

If only … then you might say,
I hear you. And when he says,
I wish … then you might say,

It’s not easy. Look him straight
in the eye. You both know
it’s true. He might cry.

It’s okay. You might cry, too.
And outside, the stars,
the stars do what stars

do. The night is cold,
he was right about that.
And the needle, it moves

through the threadbare wool,
your fingers sure of
every stitch.

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