while kneeling in the chapel of despair
finding beside me
a friend
Posts Tagged ‘sadness’
One Story of How We Make It Through
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, sadness on November 23, 2025| 4 Comments »
One at the Same Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged paradox, sadness, sorrow on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
On the Eve of His 21st Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, gratefulness, grief, photo, sadness, tears on September 11, 2025| 18 Comments »
There is a joy that chases sadness
and sometimes overtakes it, as if
the two are racing down a hill,
their shadows sometimes merging—
and this is how a woman looking at a photo
of her son when he was still alive,
his face radiant with elation,
might find herself not knowing
if her tears are made of gratefulness
or sorrow, two parallel emotions
that sometimes twine inside us.
Nor does it matter to her.
Gratefulness. Sorrow. It seems right
she should weep either way.
Both feelings are fashioned from love.
She is here for all of it.
The salt tastes just the same.
New Eyes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, paradox, perspective, sadness on February 2, 2024| 4 Comments »
But I’m sad, I said.
And the world
was unrelentingly
filled with good.
Weaving into the ache
and loss and dread
was the moon as it rose
in fuzzy white gauze,
luminous behind thin clouds.
Was the woman
who made of her body a circle
to embrace with her love my pain.
Was the laugh of my girl
in the other room.
Was the paperwhite
blooming on the kitchen counter
like an intimate constellation.
But I’m sad, I said,
and the world did not try
to convince me my sadness
was not also true.
And I felt myself open
like a daffodil in spring,
grateful to be touched
by sun, by chill. And
I felt myself open,
naked as a winter tree,
tender as a woman
just learning to see
how everything invites us
to meet what is holy.
Healing the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, healing, sadness, wholeness on March 14, 2023| 3 Comments »
Perhaps I once thought I knew
what it meant to heal—to be good as new,
to be stitched back together, unbruised,
unblemished, in no pain, repaired.
But what is healing to the heart
when it has lost a beloved?
Surely not to forget the loss happened
the way the lungs forget bronchitis.
Surely not to stop the ache
the way bones reknit and forget
the break. Surely not to shun sadness,
when sadness is the only thing
that makes sense.
Is it strange that deeply broken
is the only way now I feel whole?
Whatever It Means
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, love, outside, sadness on October 31, 2020| 5 Comments »
Certain I can’t carry
another sadness,
I step outside
and let the shine
of the mid-morning sun
stroke my cheek
like a lover.
And the air has a strange
bright citrus tang,
and I inhale it
again and again.
Whatever it means
to be alive,
it has something
to do with this—
the scent of leaf
and soil and shadow.
The astonishing warmth
of a late October day.
The weight
of loving another,
that weight
without which
I would be nothing.
After Hearing the Heartbreaking News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, sadness, shoes on May 8, 2020| 15 Comments »
Tonight, life wears me like
an old pair of shoes. The kind
it can slip its feet into
without untying the laces.
The kind of shoes a mother
would probably throw out
thinking of the act as a favor.
Life is tired, tonight,
of running. Doesn’t want
to dress to impress. It just
wants to know that it goes on,
especially tonight when
events seem to point
to the contrary. And so
though I am down at the heel
and shabby, life slips into me
as if life depended on it.
And we walk in the moonlight,
cry. And howl. Then take another step.
And then another.
The Way It Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, paradox, poem, poetry, sadness on May 30, 2015| 2 Comments »
A woman sits in the park
in the grass, and she is happy.
It is not that she does not know
that all over the world, even
in her own twisting heart,
terrible things are happening.
It is not that she is trying
to pretend she does not know.
It is more, perhaps, that the happiness
rises up and she does not try
to pretend it isn’t there. Yes,
there it is, beside the growling burrs
of sadness, letting loose
all its tiny white parasol seeds
just as a dandelion does.
Some of them fly beyond her sight.
Some land in her sweater
and will not be pulled out,
no matter how hard she tries.
Tuesday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged life, poem, poetry, sadness on March 18, 2014| 2 Comments »
As it is, I would rather be
a something else today. A vine
or a wind or a crocus leaping
purple-ish and fragile out of the earth.
Or rather to be the bulb that did not
come up. No one to please and no one
to disappoint and keenly unaware
of so much misery. I am not suggesting
that today is not a blessing.
I do not mean to be ungrateful
for this precious, amazing life.
There are plenty of reasons to fall
in love with the world today, including
the wind, the crocus, the bulbs and the
hands that planted them, but I
am too tired for falling in love,
and my pockets are full of sadnesses.
Which is perhaps, another reason
to fall in love with the world,
the fact that I have pockets at all,
only it’s very quiet. And resembles
a bruise. And very not what
I thought love was. I would curl
into a corner, but no corner
is small enough. There is always
more space. And every wall
becomes a mirror. And every
sorrow seems to smile at me
with gentle eyes and say,
it isn’t what you thought
it was now, is it?
Interior Weather Report
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fog, great blue whale, parenting, poem, poetry, sadness, tetrameter, weather on November 6, 2013| 1 Comment »
Yesterday, a low gray haze.
A fog. A blur. A sullen shroud.
At dinnertime my young boy says,
Mom, can you guess how much a cloud
would weigh? I guess a thousand pounds.
No, more, Mom, guess again, he says.
Two million pounds? He says, Go down.
I give, I say. He looks away,
then tells me, Half a great blue whale.
And guess how much a storm cloud weighs?
I say, I give again, and smile.
A whole blue whale, he says, then splays
his hands in thrill, and says, Guess how
much hurricanes would weigh?
This time I guesstimate too low—
Perhaps two hundred whales, I say.
By now I’m curious about
how many pods of great blue whales
could swim in squalls of heartsick doubt
and grief, the pea soup kind that swelled
up yesterday. Three hundred whales,
he tells me and I wonder if
the same great number found their way
into my brooding thoughts. He shifts
the conversation to how heat
is what makes clouds suspend up high.
Meanwhile, a foggy thought repeats.
A dozen great blue whales swim by.