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Posts Tagged ‘resilience’

One Practice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »

said the fallen woman
to the indifferent sky
I am still learning to fly

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Return

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
There was a time I wondered
if I would ever want
to open my eyes again—
today, I can’t stop falling in love
with the glossy black back
of the blackbird, the bright
crimson hues on its wing,
the light song that tumbles
like praise from its beak
as if to say, we are made
to return, we are made to sing.

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Steadfast

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 19, 2025| 12 Comments »



Though a cold
wind is howling,
we’re not birds
without wings—
and as long as we
have voices
let us sing together,
sing of freedom,
sing what’s true,
let us sing.

  • “birds without wings” is from John Lewis’s speech, January 9, 2005, at the Kennedy Center, at a choral tribute honoring Dr. Martin Luther King

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I, Who Did Not Die That Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 17, 2025| 21 Comments »

 
 

                  “I, who did not die …”
                                    —Naomi Shihab Nye, “Making a Fist”
 
 
I, who did not die that day,
also died. Not all of me,
but part of me: The part
who believed I could change things
beyond my control.
The part who believed
any of us can save someone else.
What a terrible freedom to know
what I cannot do. The part
who did not die is the part
who loves—loves what was,
loves what is now, loves as long
as I am able to love.
The part who did not die
is the part who still thrills to see
the twitchy-nosed bunny
streak across the grass
and the near-full moon that bathes
me in cold blue light. The part
who still lives is not afraid to grieve
and lets herself be turned
toward fear and learns,
learns to meet even heartache
with wonder. Like a tree, I grow
from the soil of all I have lost.
I, who did not die that day,
am still being taught how to touch
the wound and let myself be sung
by the part still wildly alive.

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The Night the Piano Fell Apart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 23, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
listening to Trio Duende play Allegro con Brio, from Piano Trio 1 in B Major
 
 
Once, on a rainy night, I sat in the home
of a family I did not know and listened
to a trio playing Brahms. Though
it is only hours later, I unwrap
the memory as if it is tied with silk ribbons
and wrapped in gold tissue—something
precious as a time-smoothed stone
on the banks of a slender river. Unlike
a museum piece, this memory wants
to be opened, to be held, to be touched,
to be cradled by bare hands. Wants
my finger prints all over it—
the memory of how beauty swells in us
 
and then breaks us, breaks us
the way the piano itself broke apart tonight—
the pedal rods clattering to the ground
mid-movement. Beauty bids us play on
as the pianist did tonight. Play on.
Though broken. Though we know
the work eventually ends in a minor key.
Play on, as if we trust the line of beauty
will not be broken. No matter how intense
it gets. Even if the world explodes.

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The Moment that Mattered

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2024| 11 Comments »


 
 
In the midst of a gnarled aspen grove
where the tree trunks were contorted,
distorted and knobby, my husband,
hiking behind me, joked,
These trees have been through a lot.
And they’re still here.
And I stopped mid trail
and turned to face him.
We’ve been through a lot,
I said. And we’re still here.
And there beneath the misshapen
trees with their leaves still green
and trembling in the wind,
we hugged and cried and cried
and hugged, knowing the full weight
of everything that might have kept us
from this moment.
Surrounded by aspen
and fields of purple asters,
I knew full body that this
was the moment that mattered.

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As I Walked Out the Door

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 3, 2024| 8 Comments »

for Wendy
 
 
Into my hand, she pressed
a smooth rock she’d painted copper.
In all capital letters, turquoise and navy,
she’d written the word RESILIENCE.
Beneath it she’d drawn a lopsided helix.
I thought of her own spiraling with death.
Two years later, she volunteers
to teach in schools and dances
before breakfast every morning
with her husband in their living room.
She finds compassion for tough neighbors
and welcomes the wayward into her home.
She knows in every cell
the definition of resilience,
and so when she offered me
resilience on a rock,
I felt it, the full invitation
to be both grounded and vital,
to be both solid and springing,
the chance to be both the anchor
and the hand that reaches as if to say
come on, let’s leap, I’ll show you how.
 

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Like the Peony

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 27, 2024| 12 Comments »


 
Like the peony that opens
and opens and opens,
this is how I want to meet life—
surviving the cold
then returning to bloom
again. Again.
That vibrant. That many-petaled.
Embarrassingly fulsome,
as if life just can’t
get enough of itself.
Truth is, life cuts you to the ground
and you lose all but the roots.
Sometime you lose those, too.
How is it, then, comes
the chance to bloom again,
to be less master of life,
and more servant to the life
that pushes through.
I want to be fluent in blooming.
I want to trust the possibility
of sweet spring perfume
as much as I trust
the inevitability of frost.
I am so grateful for beauty,
albeit brief,
for the chance to be naked,
tender, soft.
 

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One After the Disaster

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 18, 2024| 4 Comments »

years after the tsunami
amidst piles of rubble
strange new blossoms

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Spell of the Christmas Cactus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 14, 2023| 10 Comments »

Something magic
about knowing
it’s the darkest days
that bring on the buds,
the extravagant bloom,
because oh, friend,
how dark it is.

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