Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, friendship, relationships, story on May 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
Because you are the porch,
I am the rocking chair.
Because you are the pen,
I am the unfinished poem.
In the conversation of what happens next,
I am always the pause.
I am always the pause
and you the verb.
And if there should be a run on sentence
that jogged right through the
end of the story, way past the end,
well, I would not be the period.
But I would be ever after.
And I would be the one still listening after that.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, openness, poem, poetry, relationships, tiger on November 30, 2019| 7 Comments »
Easier to keep open the doors of the heart
when a feathery breeze comes through, or
the scent of lavender, or slant of sun. Harder
when a wounded tiger comes in. Of course,
the impulse then is to run it out and close
the doors. Lock them. Barricade and block them.
But now is the time to take those locks
to the second hand store and to pull the chairs
away from the door and place them at the table,
then pour two cups of water. Say grace.
Let the tiger pace. And always, I pace, too.
Of course, I’m afraid it will hurt me.
That’s what wounded tigers do. And when
the inevitable happens, it’s hard to not wish
it were some other way. And it’s tempting
to lock those doors. But when I do, I quickly
note the lack of light in here, I want
for lavender, I rue how very stale the air.
Rather to die by tiger claw than live cut off from love.
Even now the wounds are raw, but oh, the breeze,
it touches them, and how soft it licks at my chest, my cheek.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, love, poem, poetry, relationships on November 25, 2019| 2 Comments »
Because we are traveling,
I say, We’re on the plane.
I say, Just landed. I say, See you soon.
As always, my heart leans beyond
the transactional. Longs to say,
Tell me about the pain. Longs
to say, I feel lonely. Longs to ask,
What do I most need to know?
But it’s not easy to hear. And
there isn’t much time. Is that
just the same old excuse?
And so I say, I love you,
because it is true. Say,
Can’t wait to see you.
Say, Gotta go. All through
the flight, the heart keeps leaning,
rehearses the five
most important words:
tell me all about it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, cold, frost, neglect, poem, poetry, relationships on September 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I return to find the basil dead,
wilted and browned, dull limp flags.
And the cosmos, bent and spent
and dead. And the beans, dead.
And the marigolds, still brilliant,
but the forked tongues of their leaves
say they are dead. What a difference
one night of cold can make, how
no matter how warm the season has been,
it irrevocably changes things.
It doesn’t matter I knew it would happen
eventually. The petunias fall all over themselves
in profuse bloom as if to say, it’s okay,
not all is lost, but it’s enough to make a woman
decide to pay attention, to be warm
in every garden she enters.
Some blooms defy the seasons.
There’s so much beauty at stake.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, love, poem, poetry, possessiveness, relationships on February 10, 2015| 3 Comments »
I fling open my arms
to greet the whole world
and you duck and run
right beneath
my wide embrace—
it seems
holding you means
letting go
of everything
everything
else
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hurt, love, pain, poem, poetry, relationships on January 20, 2013| 2 Comments »
She said it to me in her kitchen, she said it,
the water rushing from the tap into the pot
for tea, she said, You know what people do,
she said, we hurt each other. She said it
with no snarl on her tongue, her face lit
by the sun spilling in through her window.
Her shoulders were soft, though her eyes
were ablaze. She said it as if she were saying,
It’s Tuesday. Or, The salt shaker’s empty.
Or any other careless fact that has no ability
to shatter a world. I did not want to believe
her, but as she spoke the words, I knew them
as glass, and I swallowed them whole and they
cut every surface they touched. I tasted in my throat
not just my own blood, but yours.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, being present, love, poems, poetry, relationships, time on April 17, 2012| 2 Comments »
I cannot make
the flowers bloom
any faster
than they are,
but I can
right now
bend
my knees
beside the barren
lilac bush
and notice
how it, too,
is beautiful,
all spindle and gnarl,
its branches not
too small, too big,
can choose
to praise
those tight,
gray fists of buds
for being so tight,
so gray.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poems, poetry, relationships, soul on April 7, 2012| 6 Comments »
The first things to break
are made of glass—
tumblers, vases,
window panes—
then the wood,
how it snaps,
the floors, the counters,
the entire frame,
and even the metal—
the stainless, the iron,
the rings,
it all shatters, collapses,
everything,
and it takes a long time
for the shards and dust,
for the wreckage and the whole ruined lot
to become what it is,
just a heap of stuff,
not what we are made of,
not at all what we are made of.