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Posts Tagged ‘river’

One for My Daughter, Made of Water

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 14, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
the river must follow its channel,
but every cloud can tell you
water also flows up

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One Listening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 6, 2025| 10 Comments »

beautiful boy,
in the still water of the river
is that your voice?

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Living in the River Bed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 5, 2025| 4 Comments »

The way the riverbank
remembers high water—
even many years later—
with logs and sticks lodged
high along its edges,
this is how it is I remember
you, the detritus of love
strewn all along my walls.
There is just a thin trickle now
and I’ve come to value clarity,
but remember the raging rush,
how it roared—a violent crush,
a terrible greatness—
how it tumbled everything
in its path. How the path
itself was never the same again.

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One End of the Year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 29, 2024| 1 Comment »

these solid thoughts—
the river flows
right through them

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Amidst the Cold of Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »

 
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together  
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.

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The Changing View

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


 
 
He walks along the river’s edge,
boots up to his knees, pitchfork
balanced on his shoulder,
his handwoven bucket hat
balanced on his head. And
I fall in love again. Not with
the man I married, but with
the man he’s become—
the man who has pruned
the coyote willows for days,
for years, so we can see
the river as it changes from clear
to bright red from the storms.
Watch as it runs clear again.

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Letter to the Dead

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 13, 2024| 10 Comments »

How many times did I stand
on the shore with you and throw rocks
in this same river simply for the joy
of hearing them splash?
But today, my friend’s daughter
suggested we use sticks
to write invisible wishes on the rocks,
then kiss the stones before we tossed
them in. Perhaps you could guess
what I wished for. Aren’t I always
longing for peace in this world?
But there is so much of me
now you do not know.
Like how today, when I got
behind the car going twenty-seven
miles under the speed limit,
I didn’t call him an idiot.
I just went slower. See?
Things change. Even this woman
who is still throwing rocks
 in the same river.
Only now the splash
makes me both laugh and cry.
And now, when I drive
behind a slow, slow person,
I can’t not think
of what wishes
they might write.

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When My Daughter Was Small

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 9, 2024| 14 Comments »


 
 
For hours we built
houses for fairies—
with fairy beds fashioned
from smooth red sandstone,
pillows made of soft
white daisy petals,
and green blankets
layered with willow leaves.
We crouched by the river
and carved thin moats
around their tiny homes,
used bark for boats
and tiny yellow bits
of sweet clover
to feed the fairy fish.
Sometimes now
when I walk by the river
and see what still exists
of the narrow
red stone paths we paved,
I miss those fairy-bright days.
I didn’t believe in fairies,
not really. But standing
amidst the rubble of their villages,
I see clearly now
what was less visible then,
how the hours spent
building palaces
with weeds, twigs,
rocks and sticks,
were hours rich beyond reason,
the magic so honest
it still lingers
amidst their ruined homes.
 

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Not Drowning, But Waving

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 8, 2024| 2 Comments »


 
 
So gently
the earthy
scent
of the
river
of
sorrow
enters
the open
window,
touches
my face
like a
timid
lover,
as if
it doesn’t
yet trust
I will
follow it
forever.

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Choosing the Sorrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2024| 6 Comments »

 
In my heart today, a river of love for you—
sparkling, clear, easy to wade in.
Some may not understand
why I sometimes reach down
to pick up a smooth stone of sorrow,
not because I have stumbled on it,
but because I want to know its weight again.
I search beneath the glossy currents,
and always I find what I seek.
There are thousands of such stones,
enough to cover the whole river bed.
Every one of them precious.
Every one of them, a memory
of how it was to love you when you were alive.
Stone of you waking in your crib, pointing to light.
Stone of you doing tricks on your bike.
Stone of hiking up cliffs. Stone of undone dishes.
Stone of your eyes. Stone of long fingers.
Stone of you whistling across the room.
The river of love is no less powerful
for all this sorrow. When I am still,
often I choose to go wading here.
I notice how beautiful they are, all these stones,
worn as they are by the currents of love.
I notice how the current never stops.

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