The day is a stream
and your love a blue canoe;
there are rapids
around the corner
and all I can do,
unskilled as I am
in reading the waves,
is paddle with fervor—
terror in my gut,
and this goofy smile
glued to my face.
Tomorrow, perhaps,
the stream will be calm,
but today
the white roar of chaos
crashes all around,
rocking and tossing.
It does no good to pretend
life is anything but what it is,
so I paddle, I scull,
and I may not be dry
but dang, I’ve never
been so alive, my arms,
dripping in diamonding light,
our lives at stake.
Posts Tagged ‘river’
White Water
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canoe, love, river, stream on June 9, 2021| 4 Comments »
Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arriving, home, nature, river on March 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Even after all these years
of wandering this twisting path of self,
how is it I am still surprised
to find a new home inside the rush of river,
as if I haven’t been here
in this song of melting many times before?
How is it I forgot my home
inside the brittle brown grass of March,
home in the sweet moldering scent of spring,
home in the sun soaked day—
as if the great star of beginnings
is saying again to me, Come, friend.
How is it I sometimes forget to arrive
exactly where I am, especially in these days
when forgiveness arrives like the cranes
on great wings that charge the air.
These days when love comes crashing in
like western wind, breaking branches
and rearranging the yard, as if to say
it is here to change everything.
Sometimes I forget the world will find me
wherever I am and insist in the language
of willow and trunk and hawk and noon,
home, home, you are home.
Tempted by Comparison
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comparison, river, stone, water on February 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Today I know the self
as a stone in the stream—
everything around me rushing and quickening,
and me, a way to mark all this moving.
Amidst all the bubble and rush,
a stone has its own very slow journey,
and yet, there is no doubt
the stone belongs, is doing
exactly what a stone should do—
which is to be true to its stone-ness,
to know itself as a traveler, yes,
but also as an integral part of the path,
a model of consistency, seldom
in a hurry, inclined to show up
exactly where it is.
The Defense
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged defensiveness, melting, river on February 19, 2021| 6 Comments »
The part of me who fears being falsely accused
will do anything to defend herself—
build walls of words, make dams of truths,
construct barriers out of old conversations.
She has always been this way,
certain others are judging her.
Certain they find her at fault.
Certain she must protect herself.
I would like to take her for a walk
and show her how the ice on the river
is melting. How all winter long,
the river itself was the only thing
in its own way—impeding, constricting—
doing what rivers do in the cold.
Now that the cold recedes
the river is more open, more free.
I want her to smell that alive river scent
and know that she, too, can melt.
I want her to feel the freedom of warmth.
I want to tell her that sometimes
the best way to know the innocent self
is to let it run away.
Student
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, communication, river, speaking, student on October 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The river in autumn
is clear enough
to see the trout
who swim
in the deeper pools.
There are many ways
to speak.
This is one.
Holding What Must Be Held
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, growing, heartache, holding, river on August 11, 2020| 1 Comment »
Down by the river we sit and talk.
When I think I can’t ache any more,
the world serves more heartache.
And I meet it.
I say no, but I feel myself stretched
by some great invisible hand,
rendering me spacious enough to hold
what must be held.
When we rise to leave,
the river doesn’t stop.
Nor does the forgiving wind.
I swear I feel them move
right through me.
Still Swimming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, death, hair, mom, parenting, river, son on May 4, 2020| 2 Comments »
And so I pull the purple comb
through my son’s thick hair,
the same way I’ve seen
the stylists do at Great Clips.
Wet the hair. Comb it through.
Part it. Hold it between
two fingers. Cut vertically. Snip,
and his hair falls to the floor.
Comb it through. Snip. Snip.
We both know that I
have no clue what I’m doing.
So we laugh as the hair
piles up on the floor.
We chatter, the way
a stylist and customer would,
talking of school and his friends
and his unruly cowlicks. Snip.
I remember that time
I was trapped underwater
by the river’s hydraulics,
how I stared up at the light
shining through the surface
and thought, I don’t think
it’s my time yet to die.
And the river spit me out
and I swam hard as I could
through the rapid toward shore.
I don’t think it’s my time yet
to die. Nor my son’s. Though
all around us the news of dying—
the numbers increasing every day,
stories of beloveds who are gone.
We ask ourselves, how do we
go on? And meanwhile, we do.
We go on. And because my son’s hair
is too long for his taste,
I learn how to cut it by cutting it.
How much more will we learn
as this goes on? How to share?
How to grieve? How to let go? How to live?
And meanwhile, life spits us out
into sunlight, and we come up
spluttering, gasping, surprised
we’re alive, and we swim, what a gift
to find we’re still swimming.
Riparian
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flow, river, surrender on April 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
To be known by the river—
that is what I wanted,
which is to say,
to know the self
as the river knows it,
as something that might be carried,
something that will be eroded,
something that might wade
into the center and then join
in the flow of all things.
Beside the River with My Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, fairies, mother, poem, poetry, purpose, river, rocks on November 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Hundreds of smooth red stones—
we gathered them that summer
and spent days carefully laying them out
into a wide and winding red path.
It had no real starting point, no destination.
We tucked white daisies between the rocks.
We said it was for the fairies.
I wouldn’t have said it then, in fact,
I hesitate today to say we didn’t believe in them.
They gave us so much purpose.
Even now, I’m following that path.
Autumn Beside the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, autumn, poem, poetry, river, trees on September 6, 2019| 2 Comments »
The rocks that were underwater
two months ago are dry now,
and a woman can sit on them
beneath the bridge and escape
the September sun. But she can’t
escape herself. There was a time
she really believed she could control things.
Now she sits with her own brokenness
and invites the inevitable autumn into her,
the autumn that’s already come.
Invites the lengthening nights. Invites
the dank scent of the garden, moldering and dead.
Invites the loss of green. You can’t be
a sapling forever, she tells herself,
though another part of her argues,
Yes you can, yes you can.
The river has never been so clear—
every rock in the bed is visible now,
and perhaps clarity is one of autumn’s best gifts.
She imagines the leaves of her falling off—
how she loves them.
She imagines them golden in the wind.
One Wild Ride
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, heart, love, poem, poetry, river on April 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The Hardest Steps We Take
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged invertebrates, love, poem, poetry, river on February 1, 2019| 2 Comments »
Beneath wide bands of ice,
the river hides, barely visible,
but when we come closer,
we can hear how alive it is,
playful as ever, babbling, rippling.
And somewhere in and around the water,
the stonefly larva keep moving,
the midges produce their own antifreeze,
the damselfly eggs diapause,
all of them adept at surviving the cold.
There are times I have wondered
how love survives, even when
we starve it, freeze it, offer it nothing,
turn our attention the other way.
Perhaps it adapts, as macroinvertebrates do.
Or perhaps it is more like the river itself,
persistent, singing as it goes, making its own path,
and all we ever need do is meet it.
One Marriage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, change, love, poem, poetry, river on November 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »
ever conversing
the canyon and river—
one carves,
one contains,
one sings,
one resonates,
summer, winter,
sun, rain,
both endure
both change
One Down by the River
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, river, stone, thoughts, transformation on March 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »
the rocks move
more than we think they do—
after the ice floes,
the mudslides, high water in spring
take note, you stone-like thoughts
One in Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, heart, poem, poetry, river on December 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »
when cold enough
the river becomes its own obstacle—
oh heart, stay warm, stay warm
One Togetherness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged creativity, love, poem, poetry, river on April 20, 2017| 4 Comments »
Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged journey, love, poem, poetry, river on March 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I’ve got a wide, a wide river to cross.
—“Wide River to Cross” by Julie Miller, Steven P. Miller
Perhaps when the river
we must cross is so wide
and the journey
to just to get to the river is so long
that our legs and arms are weary
before we even reach the shore,
perhaps that is when
it helps to remember
that the heart is infinite
in how much it can love,
and dang if that journey
across the river
doesn’t seem all that far
after all and the body
shudders and trembles
finds a way to take
one more step, and
one more step.
Two Marvelings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, gratitude, love, moon, poem, poetry, river on April 21, 2016| 2 Comments »
just another full moon rise—
is it any wonder
I can’t stop bowing?
*
how, I said,
to the river bed
do you make
of yourself a home?
I let the flow shape me,
the river bed said—
flood, current,
shimmer, stone