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Dear Students of West Side School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2022| 8 Comments »



Thank you for the pep talk.
When your teacher asked you
to record messages in the phone,
you could not have known
one day your innocent words
would reach this woman in Colorado
and I would sit in my car
and stare at a mountain and press 4
to listen to children laughing
and press 3 to hear a room full of kindergarteners
shouting YOU CAN DO IT,
and it would make me weep.
I imagine you do not yet understand
how something so beautiful
could make a person sob—
a complex, but very real emotion
we don’t have a word for in English.
But perhaps you are already learning
of the ripple effect: How kindness
brings hope. How hope opens us.
How being open can make people cry.
My friend Paula explained it to me this way.
That’s what friends do—
they share the truth with you.
Oh, young friends I have never met,
I thank you for the ripple,
for the way it has recharged in me a tide
so deep that currents leak out.
Thank you for restoring the great inner ocean
that sometimes turns desert, goes dry.
Thank you for reminding me,
pwease, do something you wike,
something that inspiwes you.
I remember now. Oh bless these salty tears.
I remember.


*

If you, too, could use a pep talk, or even if you don’t need one, call anyway: 707-873-7862

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Celebrating My Daughter on Her Last Day of Junior High

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 26, 2022| 18 Comments »




She is the one
who sings in her room
and she is the beat drop
the melody, the bass,
she is the soundtrack
that still fills the home
even when she says nothing at all.

And she is the maker
of chocolate desserts
the one who was given
bitterness and met it
with sweetness
and flame.

She is the laughter
that rises in the dark.
She is the flare,
the generous spark.

She’s the dance, the dancer,
the stage, the shuffle flap ball change,
the pink pointe shoe
worn to the wood.
She is sweat and ovation,
she is barre and plié.

And she is the one who went to school
three days after her brother died.
She is raised hand and science lab,
t-ball and sketch pad,
she is one who thrives.

She is monarch and cocoon,
the bright wings, the wind,
she is the summer land.
She is the one who brings beauty with her.
She is story. Plot. The turning page.
The one with the pen
in her hand.

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Things to Take on the First Day of School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 28, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

New erasers.

Ten pencils, lead number two.

Scent of ripe peaches.

Pent up quiet afternoons.

Callouses on the bottoms

of your feet.

A note from your mother

you’ll pretend

not to read.

The salt lick

of curiosity.

Left over sun.

Blank notebooks, three.

The drop kick

of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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