Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of separate self, perspective, self on March 10, 2020| 2 Comments »
And once again the invitation
to see beyond the self—
the way water knows itself
not only as river and lake
but also as fern, as cloud, as cat.
Forgive me for believing
I end with this skin, these ideas,
these imaginings. Sometimes
I forget to choose vastness,
forget to know the self
as cliff, as maitake, as crumb.
How is it I so often miss the invitation?
How is it I overlook that I
am lemon, asteroid, wren?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, nakedness, self on February 25, 2020| 6 Comments »
Today I can see how I wear it
like a velvet dress, the dream
of wanting to be somebody.
It’s so easy to forget I am wearing it.
Because it is lovely. Because
it feels good. But life
hands me a hanger and asks me
to take off the dress
and move naked today
through my inner rooms.
It’s not as if anyone else can see,
but I notice, as I must,
how much easier it is now to know
the self as sunrise, as apple seed,
as cinnamon, as you.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged big, growth, poem, poetry, self on January 4, 2020| 10 Comments »
This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big.
Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa,
as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love.
Being small has never served me—constricting,
contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes,
into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little
rules with those little shoulds, all those little
cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself
a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize
communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to
open, to unwall, to do as the universe does,
accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward
something else, but changing the scale of space itself.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, knowing the self, poem, poetry, self on December 19, 2019| 2 Comments »
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone
—A.R. Ammons, “Gravelly Run”
I want to know the self
the way a nest might know
the eggs it holds, the way
a feather might know a wing.
I want to know the self
as a bank knows a river,
as wave knows water,
as night knows the night.
There is a kind of knowing
that has less to do with certainty
and more to do with meeting
the world again and again as it is.
I want to know the self
with no name, with no story,
as a stone might know it,
or a song.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspirations, dreams, poem, poetry, self, wikipedia on July 3, 2019| 10 Comments »
I’m exactly the person that I thought I’d be.
—Amanda Palmer, “In My Mind”
And there she was in Wikipedia, the woman
with my name who went to my college and
attended my grad school and graduated the same
years as I did. She wrote books that I wrote
and lives in the same state I do.
There was no picture of her, but I think
I might recognize her if I see her. Though in reality,
I recognize her less and less. I remember
how much she wanted to be in Wikipedia.
How the bio she wished for included honors
way beyond the honors they list. I know
how she still struggles with what she thinks she wants
and who she actually is. Of course, I love
that they spelled her name right. That they
neglected to mention the awards she didn’t get
last week. How they left out the part
where she didn’t want to get out of bed
in the morning for months. But dang.
Wikipedia. I mean, how could that not
make her feel as if she’s somehow arrived—
categorized as “American Woman Poet,”
which, they don’t mention, has been
her dream since fifth grade. If they knew,
they might expand her bio to mention the winter day
back in 1979 when she sat in a beanbag
on Mrs. Zabrowski’s fifth grade floor
and stared out the window
at the furious Wisconsin winter storm
and read “The Snowflake” by Walter de la Mare,
falling in love with what poems can do.
That was the day she felt the wild tremor
of words and thought, Maybe I could do it, too.
And maybe tonight, looking in the mirror,
she will see that no matter the honors
she never received, she did follow
the wild tremor of words to become
the woman she dreamed she could be.
And though Wikipedia won’t tell you why,
she’s starting to believe she’s exactly
the woman she dreamed she could be.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, loss, poem, poetry, self on August 25, 2018| 4 Comments »
It was a tiny percentage, I knew, but still
there was some French royalty somewhere
in my blood. I would spend hours imagining
myself in my proper place: in a long pink dress
and thin gold crown in a castle on a green hillside,
doing needlepoint, no doubt, and nibbling bon bons,
and so when I again asked my mother to tell me about
that part of our heritage, she told me,
It’s so little blood, and you’ve had so many
skinned knees, I’m pretty sure you’ve
bled it all out by now. And I was instantly
less grandiose. That was, perhaps, the first identity
that I was aware of losing. But soon after that,
I was no longer blonde. And soon after that,
I no longer lived in Wisconsin. And soon after that,
I was no longer a Scout. Everything I thought
I knew about myself didn’t last. Ah,
the litany of losses. Those notions of who we are,
how they shed, they spill, they slip off.
As they’re lost, we usually rush to replace them.
I became worker. Lover. Parent. Friend.
We wear them so close, these identities ,
that we no longer see them as separate. We think
they’re who we are. But what if we skinned
not just our knees, but our thoughts,
and let those roles escape? Who would
be left to walk through the field this evening
to see the double rainbow stretched across the east?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baptism, poem, poetry, self, swimming on June 22, 2018| Leave a Comment »
It’s no Walden, but it’s cool
and the day is dust hot,
and so I ask my younger self
if she wants to go swimming,
and she grabs the hand of my older self,
and drags her to the pond.
My older self was, perhaps,
more rhetorical than sincere
when she suggested the swim,
but the younger self has already
kicked off her shoes and shrugged
out of her dress. The swallows
wheel and sweep overhead
and all along the pond’s edge
the dragonflies darn through the reeds.
What is it in us that never forgets
how to jump in, no matter
how cold, no matter who’s watching,
no matter what else
we’re supposed to do?
That is the part that is already wet
and otter slick as the older part of me
stands at the edge, still dressed,
in awe of that girl, how she
glitters in the sun, how
through chattering teeth,
she laughs, how she looks
so almost familiar.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged green, poem, poetry, self on July 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, poem, poetry, self, tree on March 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »
When climbing the inner branches
of the largest spruce we can find,
and finding the prickly lattice
an easier ladder than we imagined,
we might climb high enough
that we forget if we are climbing
to get away from or to move toward,
might climb long enough
that at last it is neither tree
nor land nor sky that feels
like home, but our own
limbs as they find the next place
to step, to pull up, to rest.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, darkness, night, poem, poetry, self, union on January 28, 2016| 3 Comments »
the dark is less dark
and the shapes of the world
reveal again their singular shapes—
I know they don’t really lose their lines in the dark,
but I like to imagine all those newly
illumined silhouettes
have spent the night blurred, puddled
into one immense darkness,
forgetting for a while
that they have any lines
worth preserving.
It is enough to make a woman
wish that the light
would never come
if that is what it takes
to make us all remember
how arbitrary they are,
these boundaries we like
to call ourselves.
