said the fallen woman
to the indifferent sky
I am still learning to fly
Posts Tagged ‘resilience’
One Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikuling, resilience, sky, wings on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
Return
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, grief, poem, resilience, spring on March 22, 2025| 3 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.
Steadfast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, connection, freedom, inauguration, resilience, voice 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
I, Who Did Not Die That Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, death, love, parts, resilience on January 17, 2025| 23 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.
The Night the Piano Fell Apart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, music, performance, piano, resilience 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.
The Moment that Mattered
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, husband, love, marriage, resilience 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.
As I Walked Out the Door
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, gift, language, resilience, Wendy Videlock, word 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.
Like the Peony
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossom, peony, resilience, vulnerability 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.
One After the Disaster
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged destruction, grief, healing, resilience on January 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
years after the tsunami
amidst piles of rubble
strange new blossoms
Spell of the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blooming, dark, magic, resilience 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.
One Small Step
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enormity, infinity, resilience, scale on November 15, 2023| 8 Comments »
for LEI
intimidated
I enter infinity
through the smallest door
Principle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged buoyancy, choice, density, mother, resilience, science on October 30, 2023| 8 Comments »
for my mother
She could have sunk,
the way a stone
falls to the bottom
of the pond.
But she didn’t.
She floated like wood,
like cork, like ice.
Floated like a ball
tossed in an angry sea.
Density alone
is simple math:
mass divided
by volume.
But density
of spirit is,
perhaps, a choice.
As if we exist
to be tossed
again and again
into the waters
of difficulty,
each toss
another chance
to practice
buoyancy.
In a Difficult Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, resilience on September 6, 2023| 12 Comments »
-for Christy G. and all who are having a hard time
When you can’t even pretend
to know what comes next,
when what has happened
has stripped your heart
and left you naked and unsteady,
when little seems to tether you
to the world of things, the world
of schedules, the world of the known,
when you are unable to anything,
this is when we might learn at last
how it is we are carried by infinite love—
how we float in the hearts of others,
buoyed by their tenderness, their prayers.
How all the love we have ever given
is still present inside us,
in fact, it has become us.
New Epoch for the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dragonfly, evolution, heart, resilience on August 24, 2023| 5 Comments »
I think of how the narrow blue bodies
of the dragonfly ancestors
once skimmed clear lakes—
over a hundred million years
before the great diplodocus
came to wade—
how they flew through the Permian,
the Cretaceous, through mornings,
through meteors, through floods,
through to the Holocene, to now.
How much change they have seen
before coming to balance here
on the reeds beside me,
their bodies like thin blue proofs
of resilience, endurance, constancy.
Meanwhile, the sun is disappearing
below the horizon.
Meanwhile this heart, too,
is learning to adapt, to become
something as surprising as beauty
that survives great challenge,
something as durable, as delicate
as gossamer wings.
Happy Birthday, Suzi! This one’s for you!!!
After a Rogue Hard Frost in Late June
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frost, garden, resilience, spinach on June 25, 2023| 2 Comments »
The usual suspects wilt and die.
Basil, of course, and beans. Potatoes.
Zinnias. Nasturtiums. Marigolds.
I find myself staring at the beet greens,
spinach, and arugula, marveling
at how they thrive, impervious to cold.
I have a craving for resilience.
I pull the dark leaves to my mouth,
devour the green communion.
It tastes like survival, so bitter, so bright.
Doing Water Aerobics in the Senior Living Community with Janie Bird
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, resilience, swimming, women on June 20, 2023| 6 Comments »
She is over nine decades old,
this woman playing Pitbull
and Taylor Swift. Now run,
she says, and we do our best
to get somewhere by going nowhere
in the turquoise pool.
And she smiles as she tells us
to crisscross our arms, palms facing in,
to scissor our legs as if we are skiing,
to work harder, to make it our best.
I laugh like a child because it’s fun,
this hour when we play in the water,
frisky as ducklings, tender as saplings
inside old trunks, joyful
as old women who remember
how good it feels to be buoyant
as geese, resilient as ourselves.
Celebrating My Daughter on Her Last Day of Junior High
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, junior high, resilience, school on May 26, 2022| 18 Comments »
She is the one
who sings in her room
and she is the beat drop
the melody, the bass,
she is the soundtrack
that still fills the home
even when she says nothing at all.
And she is the maker
of chocolate desserts
the one who was given
bitterness and met it
with sweetness
and flame.
She is the laughter
that rises in the dark.
She is the flare,
the generous spark.
She’s the dance, the dancer,
the stage, the shuffle flap ball change,
the pink pointe shoe
worn to the wood.
She is sweat and ovation,
she is barre and plié.
And she is the one who went to school
three days after her brother died.
She is raised hand and science lab,
t-ball and sketch pad,
she is one who thrives.
She is monarch and cocoon,
the bright wings, the wind,
she is the summer land.
She is the one who brings beauty with her.
She is story. Plot. The turning page.
The one with the pen
in her hand.
Transplanting the Nasturtiums
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, resilience, self talk on July 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »
They don’t like it. For a day,
maybe two, they’ll hang limp
in the beds. I try to talk them
through it, try to tell them
it will be okay. But no one
wants to hear it will be okay
when it feels as if
the world is ending,
especially not nasturtiums—
nasturtiums can’t hear,
which makes me wonder
how much of what I say
to comfort others is really
intended to comfort myself.
In two days, the nasturtiums
will be upright and bright.
And I’ll praise them, tell them
I knew they could do it,
tell them how resilient they are.
Motherhood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beaver, home, mothering, parenting, resilience on April 30, 2021| 1 Comment »
—with thanks to the wise Rebecca Mullen
Today, again, I praise the beaver
who spends her life building,
rebuilding, rebuilding
her lodge where her young will live.
With small sticks and big sticks
and tall solid trunks,
with logs and rocks and mud,
with her teeth she builds a home,
builds it on moving water.
Because rain, because snow,
because warm, because cold,
because flow, because flow, because flow,
her home is forever in need of repair.
And so on a day when a surprise storm
has flooded the stream
and washed much of my lodge away,
I honor the beaver,
stalwart, resilient, habitual.
I notice the longing to move to land,
then I gather new sticks of courage.
Stones of forgiveness.
Logs of compassion
and the deep sticky mud of love.
I wade to the middle
of the current.
I, like all the other mothers,
I build this home again.
Considering Resilience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged broccoli, hail, resilience on May 18, 2020| 8 Comments »
Today I talk to the broccoli sprouts.
I kneel down beside their bed.
You can do it, I tell them.
I don’t mention that every summer
there is a hail storm that will
puncture and tear their leaves,
that bits of their green will litter the soil.
Though the sprouts are less
than half an inch tall,
the leaves already look tough—
like thick four leaf clover.
The hail, though, will be tougher.
Perhaps I don’t want
to tell myself how tough things will get.
Would rather encourage. Would rather play.
Would rather revel in the day’s sun.
But today, there’s no lying to the self—
the inner hail has already come;
my leaves hang in tatters.
All around me, flower petals
are fallen, scattered.
Out of season, widespread wreckage.
There is an inner knowing, though—
one that needs no one else
to encourage it. It knows to grow,
to grow despite the damage, to grow,
because damage. To grow. It knows
to grow, because that is what we are here to do,
our new leaves coming in to support the old,
to support the whole, every bit as vulnerable,
and green, so green.