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Posts Tagged ‘role model’

Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 16, 2025| 9 Comments »


for Erin
 
 
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
she has never been more beautiful to me than when
I brought my great nephews to the loft of her barn
and she picked up a red ping pong paddle and let
the small, fretful boy across the old green table make up
the rules for the game. And every time he’d change the rules—
assigning points for hitting the ball over the exposed beams
of the barn or points for hitting the ball into narrow window frames—
no matter the rules he contrived, she would shrug and say yes
and laugh and let the ball be forever in play. There was sunshine
in her voice when she praised him, pure radiance
in the way she squealed as the ball ricocheted
in the rafters, honest incandescence in her smile.
This is how generosity and goodness survive—
they’re passed on one brief interaction at a time.
When the boys and I left that dusty, sacred space,
fully covered in dust and hay, I swear we, too, were luminous.

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Dear Ludwig,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 16, 2022| 5 Comments »




Before I knew of you,
I knew your music.
When I turned the flat metal handle
of my pale pink jewelry box,
Für Elise would play as a ballerina
in a white tutu would spin and spin
and I would hum along
until the music slowed
into garish metallic plinks.
Part of me envied Elise—
that someone would write her
such a beautiful song.
Now I know you wrote it for Therese,
a woman you wanted to marry,
but in transcription
your handwriting was misspelt,
and the error lasts to this day.
And Therese, she had no interest
in marrying you.
Oh, Ludwig, I, too, know
how the heart sometimes longs
for what it will never have.
I know how our words are twisted
till they plink, till they plunk.
I know how mistakes
sometimes stay with us forever.
What I meant to say is Happy Birthday,
Thank you for daring to love
even when it hurt.
Thank you for transforming your pain
and rejection into music so relevant
that 250 years later its played
as cell phone ring tones.
Thank you for teaching me
as a girl how to hum along—
for giving me the reason
to turn that flat metal handle
again and again and again.

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