Digging
deeper
into the soil
of self
planting
only
seeds
of you.
Posts Tagged ‘self’
There
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged other, planting, seed, self, soil on July 21, 2020| 2 Comments »
Walking in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, self, self worth on June 12, 2020| 14 Comments »
Every morning I walk into the garden,
even when there is little to see—only rows
of tiny sprouts and the earth just beginning to crack.
It is not so much that I speak to the seedlings,
though I do—to the slender green lashes
of carrots and the heart-shaped leaves of beans.
It is more that they speak to me in syllables
I feel through my fingers—speak of resilience
and tenderness, speak of the dark and beautiful
earth. There are so many days when I worry
that I am not doing enough—worry
that I could be more kind, more generous,
more loving, more vocal, more good.
But in the garden, pulling bindweed
and clover and salsify from the mostly empty rows,
all of my brokenness feels less broken.
It is somehow easier to forgive myself
for being who I am. And to mean it.
Easier to know myself as one of many.
Easier to believe that like the potato greens
I have so much more to offer that
can’t yet be seen, but it’s growing,
surely, deep in the darkness, it’s growing.
It’s All Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, new, self, self talk on April 9, 2020| 10 Comments »
Tonight I can laugh at the part of me
who thinks she should know
the right thing to do, the right thing to say.
Meanwhile, the rest of me
wakes up each morning in wonder,
marveling at the quickly changing world.
Every morning this second self practices
how to bathe, how to dress. Even now she is practicing
how to write a poem, how to make breakfast,
what to say to her friends, family, herself.
She knows there are so many ways to do it right.
Every moment contains invitations
she’s never noticed before. Sometimes
she practices saying nothing at all.
If you see her lingering beside the road,
it is because she is practicing how to walk
how to see. She used to know, of course,
but now she can’t seem to take anything
for granted, how to drink tea,
how to walk into a room, it’s all new,
how to weep, how to smile.
A Letter to the Woman in My Calendar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calendar, Corona Virus, fiction, reality, self, writing on April 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dear Other Version of Myself,
In my calendar, it’s April second
and you are going to an event tonight
at a bookstore in another town
where the people will gather
and hug each other and taste
each other’s wine. You live in a world
that no longer exists, and every day
I try to reconcile it—how you
had plans to go camping next weekend,
how you were going to go to the theater
with no mask, no gloves,
no sense of your body as a weapon.
Every day, your life, which once was my life,
seems increasingly impossible.
Every day, these two worlds are farther apart—
the one in which you were getting on a plane
to visit your mother
and the one in which I put on rubber gloves
to go to the post office box.
I remember how seldom you washed
your hands for fear that someone you love
would die. I remember what it was like
to hug my friends with no worry
of harming them, to go to a restaurant,
to plan for a day past tomorrow.
The Great Beyond
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?
Less
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.
Big
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged big, growth, poem, poetry, self on January 4, 2020| 12 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.
This is the year to be big .
In These Halcyon Days
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.
On Discovering Myself in Wikipedia
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.
Losing It
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?
At the Pond
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.
One Almost Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged green, poem, poetry, self on July 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Discovery in the Back Yard
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.
There is a Moment When
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.
When I Get Very Quiet, I Can See How It Goes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged paradox, poem, poetry, self on May 14, 2015| 2 Comments »
Here, I say, I am here for you,
and then I run the other way.
My legs are two trees. They never
leave. Everywhere I go, I am rooted.
My legs are two rivers. They escape
in every moment. I am always
where I’ve never been. There is only
yes, and still I say no. The truth is
I do not want to be known. The truth
is you know me already.
I open my mouth to speak and your
voice pours out. It is my voice
that lives on your lips.
What is all this interest in yours
and mine? Sometimes I believe
these invisible lines. And sometimes,
sometimes I am here, I say.
And then I run the other way.
And the Winner Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self, wrestling on March 20, 2015| 4 Comments »
I have made of my body a wrestling ring—
in one corner, the defender. She wears
a high turtle neck and her hair in a bun.
She holds up her fists to the world, to anyone
who tries to touch her. On her belt, it says,
I Don’t Need Anything. She fired her trainer
long ago. And she’s staring down the challenger,
who has shown up to the match in a soft
pink dress and bare feet. The challenger
smiles at the champ. It’s a genuine smile.
She holds out a hand to shake, but the
defender glares and starts to circle her. There
is no referee. The challenger, she wants
to be held, to be loved, to share warmth,
and she’s willing to stand in this ring
and take the hits. But after forty some years
of circling each other, they’re both getting tired
and wouldn’t it be something if one day
they took down the ropes and got really curious
about what might happen next. I’d like to think
that ring might become an altar, a place
they might meet and say yes to each other,
a place where everything is offered
and anything might happen.
Have You Felt It, Too?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged delight, poem, poetry, self, sonnet, surrender on February 18, 2015| 5 Comments »
In spite of everything, an odd delight
upsurges in the body, like a tide
that claims a rocky shore, or like a wide
and widening pool of morning light—
except it’s messier. It spills, despite
our thin attempts to hold its force inside.
It sloshes, splatters, overflows. It slides
and slips, it floods, upends, engulfs, unrights.
Oh fierce irrational joy! It doesn’t care
about the setting. Doesn’t care who sees.
It soaks us with its ecstasy, its strange
unruly grace. And then it’s gone. No prayer
or pretty please will make it stay. And we
are changed: yes, still ourselves, but rearranged.
And Meanwhile There’s Something Simply There
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged essence, identity, moon, poem, poetry, self on February 3, 2015| 4 Comments »
While the moon watcher stands
out on the porch in her towel
and stares at the almost full moon,
the practical one starts to fuss
about how she’ll catch cold with wet hair,
and the list maker is already thinking
of all the things to be done
when she gets back inside,
“Like go check on your kids
to be sure they’re asleep,” says the mother,
and that’s when the laid-back one says,
“Oh relax, they’re fine, drink some wine,”
and the optimist notes what a sparkling
night it is, how the snow in the field
has never, ever been so luminous,
and the pleaser agrees with her
and says, “Never, ever so luminous,
you’re so right, oh it’s beautiful out here,”
at which the budding wise ass says,
“You’ve seen one moon, you’ve seen ’em all,”
and moon watcher almost sticks out her tongue,
but that is not like her, not like her at all,
and she marvels at the impulse, how it seemed
to rise out of nowhere, just like that gorgeous
enormous shining orb. “Oh yes,” says the scientist,
“Did you know that the moon’s surface
has exceptionally low albedo, giving it a reflectance
only slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt,”
and that’s when the reporter jumps in and begins
to take notes. And the little girl says, “There’s a bunny
in there, do you see it, do you see it tilting on its side,”
and the lover, feeling lonely, wishes she had someone
with her to watch the shining moon as it slides
all the way across the visible sky, the moon somehow
oblivious to all that company it’s keeping
on this luminous, cold night.
He Wants to See My Photo ID
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, poem, poetry, self on November 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I do not tell him that the woman
in the photo, who looks just like me,
only 12 years younger, does not exist.
She is smiling in the way that only
a woman who has not yet had children
can smile. She knows nothing yet
of how desperate she will become,
how she will lie, how she’ll tell the truth,
how she’ll lose her sense of worth and
replace it with, well, it’s impossible to say.
So instead, when he says, “Is this you,”
I say, “Yes, travelling to Chicago today.”
Eight Unhingings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doors, forgiveness, god, poem, poetry, self on August 18, 2013| 3 Comments »
I begged God,
enter me, God said, yes darling
you bolted the door
*
all this time searching
for a door, not seeing the door
inside me
*
knock knock
who’s there? you are.
you are who?
*
slipping this love letter
under the narrow gap
of the wrong door
*
god in the bolt,
god in the door, god
in the hand that bolts
*
standing
on my own welcome mat
roses in hand
*
knock knock
who’s there? forgive.
forgive who?
*
unbolting the door
only to notice the walls
were already gone