Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘saying yes to what is’

Sometimes I Can Say

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 25, 2015| 2 Comments »

You are my blizzard, my tempest, my hail,
you my cloudless sky.
I learn to say yes to your everywhere
and yes to your nowhere.
Yes to your hawk, your sparrow.
Yes to your desert, your orchards of plums
ripe and fat with sweetness.
Yes to your knives and yes to your blossoms.
Yes to your silence, yes to your growl.
Yes to the part of me that says no.
Yes to the fear of yes.
Yes to your flash flood, yes to your drought.
Yes to the angry red ache and yes to infinite tenderness.
Yes to the walls and the walls falling down.
Yes to the prison, the skeleton key.
Yes to you, yes, I say yes, yes again,
yes to your killing frost,
yes to your warm morning after.

Read Full Post »

A Whole Day to Practice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

how beautiful
the snow
the instant
I stop wishing
for a clear day

Read Full Post »

The Inevitable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

This morning, first day
of spring, it is gray. The snow
is not done with its melting.
Green is still a not yet thing.
I wake with the words of Anthony
de Mello tangled in my dream.
Enlightenment, he says,
is absolute cooperation
with the inevitable. I know
what he means, and I
do not. I have my ideas.
That is the problem.
Like this morning,
how before the sun rose,
I saw, lacing the turns
of this narrow river canyon,
the blue heron, his arced
wings glancing the negative space
where the leaves would be
in the crowns of the cottonwood trees.
Because I had never
before seen one here,
I thought it never would be.
Anthony would suggest
I just say yes to what is,
which is to say yes
to the dull brown mat of the field
and yes to the mud, and yes
to the pushy wind, and yes
to the longing in me for green.
And yes to the wanting not
to want. And yes to the unlikely great
blue wings. And yes to the way
the bird disappeared around the bend.
And yes to the longing that rose
in me then—just one more
glimpse. No? And yes to the absence.

Read Full Post »

Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 27, 2013| 2 Comments »

A woman watches the snow
as it falls out the window.
She reads another book
to her daughter, this one
about the sea.
The phone does not ring.
The door does not open.
An hour falls away. Outside,
the sun is fierce and the sky pellucid.
The woman and her daughter
paint beans. They turn them
into a game and count
how many sides are green.
Outside, another squall.
The woman listens
as the girl makes up a song.
They eat soup. Read another book.
The sun moves an hour across the floor.
The day goes on and on this way.
The woman doesn’t once think,
I am happy. Happiness is her.
The snow falls. The sun comes.
Today, she greets them both the same.
The woman is lost, perhaps. Only not.
She is finding herself in the current,
unconcerned for the moment
if the tide is going out
or coming in.

Read Full Post »

Today I Can Say It But Who Knows About Tomorrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 30, 2012| 3 Comments »

I used to loathe them,
the dandelions, the cheat grass,
the tamarisk, the whatever
wasn’t what I had planted.
I’d declare war in the field
and spend hours hunched over
removing the dark green rosettes
and ripping up handfuls of grass.
And likewise, I despised
sorrow, wanted to yank it
like a tap-rooted weed.
Wanted a garden without it.
It is not that I would encourage
sorrow now. Would not sow it,
nor plant a whole bed of it.
But nor would I yank it out.
It is not against me.
Perhaps the garden got bigger,
so much bigger that there
was more room for everything,
though I was not the one
who made it increase.
Perhaps it is that I can see
how much richer the soil is
with sorrow tilled in, too,
how now everything blooms
more beautifully, even all
those golds and purples
I would never have dreamed
of planting myself.

Read Full Post »