for LEI
intimidated
I enter infinity
through the smallest door
Posts Tagged ‘resilience’
One Small Step
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enormity, infinity, resilience, scale on November 15, 2023| 8 Comments »
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.