With a white plastic five-gallon bucket
as a stool, she sits in the middle
of my garden’s gravel path and wrestles
the long notched rod through the stones.
She moves her arm slowly,
her back hunched over her task.
I see in her body her father’s body,
how he, too, would toil in the gardens
of others for hours, tool in hand, patient
and thorough. I watch as mom dangles
a slender white root in the air
to marvel at its twisted length.
I hear her triumphant ha!
as she adds it to the small but
growing pile of roots and leaves.
The bindweed will grow back
with admirable speed, but she makes
an enduring mark—not in the rows,
but in the heart of this daughter,
teaching me again how it is we find joy
offering ourselves in service to each other.
Posts Tagged ‘service’
Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bindweed, legacy, mother, service, weeding on June 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Just When I Ache with How Much Humans Can Hate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, dark, flower, garden, primrose, service on June 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
Nina takes me by the hand
and runs with me through the garden,
earthen angel in a pale green skirt,
her long silver hair flies behind her,
and I laugh as she tugs me
past snap peas, arugula, broccoli,
and red lettuce leaves. We duck
beneath the rose-covered bower and
emerge into the open lawn, pass deep,
deep purple clematis, to enter another
garden where the evening primrose
flowers that bloom for only one night
are blooming, eight bright
yellow blooms! For each of them,
this is the night. It’s so fleeting,
this beauty. So fleeting, this life.
Long after I leave the garden, I think
of Nina tending these primroses—
so much work for such brief joy.
Or is the secret to know the work
itself is the lasting spark—putting
ourselves in service to something
that blooms in the dark.
One Reason to Show Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fire, service, water on June 6, 2025| 10 Comments »
the whole world is burning
and the only way to bring it water,
the bucket of you
For This, I Walk Outside
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged life, nature, outside, service, stellar's jay on November 8, 2024| 9 Comments »
Not to escape the world,
but to be more wholly in it.
Sharp cold stings my cheeks—
not like a slap, but like the thrilling burn
of whiskey as it blazes down the throat—
the kind of wild aliveness
that brooks no choice
but to wake up to life,
to champion it, to know life
as the most wondrous thing
even as I steep in the ugliness
we humans commit.
This is what life asks of us.
I walk outside to be more wholly here,
here the way the Stellar’s jay is here.
Even on the coldest day,
its every fluffing, every peck, every head bob,
every flight is in service to life.
It’s never confused about its purpose.
I want to be in service.
Outside, everything is teacher:
the cold, the snow, the bird, the day,
this fallible, fabulous human race,
this improbable, beautiful planet in space.
To serve life, I must inhabit it wholly
and be inhabited by it, too.
As if it all could end tonight.
As if it goes on forever.
Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bell, love, ring, service on November 3, 2024| 8 Comments »
Let this darkness be a bell tower / and you the bell. As you ring, / what batters you becomes your strength.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Joanna Macy, from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
Batter me, love, like a bell. Till I ring
and ring and ring because everything
I am, my whole being, is vibrating
with the urgent, pressing call
for love—not the sweet love
of lullabies, but insistent love
that rings through walls,
love that drowns out any voice
not in service to the whole.
Batter me love, until there is no one,
including me, who cannot hear
the pounding imperative to be kind,
to find compassion,
until all beings feel real love pealing
through their bodies—
a resonant command
so true it cannot be unheard.
I have heard other love-battered
bells of humans, and the song of them
is charging me, changing me,
making me long to be rung only by love—
It is not easy to keep asking for the battering.
But worse to be silent.
Worse not to be bell.
Worse not to be an instrument of love.
Once I feared the battering.
Now, I fear it and thrill in the ringing—
love, the only song I want to sing.
*title from “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen
In the Meantime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ephemeral, flood, rain, service, weather on September 2, 2024| 13 Comments »
It is only a matter of time before
the next monsoon brings a surge
of frothing red water hurtling
down the gulley, and yet my neighbor
landscapes the flood path
with meticulously placed rocks
and raised beds with bright flowers,
and every time I drive by I want
to cheer for her foolishness,
cheer for all who make beauty
certain it will be destroyed
and relentlessly choose
to be in service to beauty anyway.
Before the Road Trip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, clarity, love, marriage, practical, service on June 9, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though I do not ask him to,
he rises early and goes
to the car with a razor and
bottle of blue windex
to remove the smear
of the caddis fly hatch
from my windshield.
Over a dozen miles
of spruce and aspen
pass before I see the gift.
For the next three hundred miles,
it’s all I see.
Riparian Soul
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, generosity, river, service, work on June 7, 2023| 11 Comments »
for Kathy Jepson who lives and works in the San Miguel River Canyon
Some people are rivers—
always moving, always in flow.
Wherever they are,
life flourishes. They nourish,
they support, they sustain,
and they change the shape
of the landscape—
carving new paths around obstacles,
softening what is sharp.
Some people are rivers—
the lifeblood of a valley.
Forceful at times,
at other times gentle,
but constant, so constant
you could take them for granted—
like a woman with a headset
and a clipboard,
a pencil tucked in her hair
standing behind a curtain
so others can shine.
Some people are rivers.
You know who they are
because all around them
everything is growing,
everything they touch.
And you realize you can’t imagine
being without them—
everywhere you look,
you see how quietly,
how powerfully
they have transformed the world.
When My Friend’s Husband Brings Us a Morning Treat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grandmother, kindness, mango, service, sweetness, time on October 18, 2022| 11 Comments »
I want to go back in years
and find my grandmother Rose
when she is living in Illinois
with my grandfather,
a cruel and angry man.
I want to meet her
on a cold snowy day
when the world feels small
and she feels smaller,
and I want to serve her
a bowl of ripe mango
with a squeeze of lime.
I would love to see her face
when she tasted it—
the orange flesh
that sings of sunshine,
warmth, and the far away.
Would she love it
the way I do this morning,
astonished by the goodness
that exists in the world?
Would she thrill,
as I do, in the surprise
of being served?
As it is, I delight in sitting
on a deep red couch with my friend,
sighing as we slip the soft cubes
into our mouths,
making lists of people
we long to feed mango—
like Beethoven, like Etty Hillesum,
like my grandmother,
who likely never tasted
a mango, my grandmother,
who knew so little of kindness.
Over sixty years later,
I long to serve her mango
to make her feel seen,
cared for, special,
astonished by the sweetness
of the world.
One Willingness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dandelion, service, surrender on August 31, 2022| 4 Comments »
like a dandelion seed
in the land of wind,
this heart longing to serve
One Interdependence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, independence day, service on July 4, 2022| 4 Comments »
rummaging in my heart—
a thread worn flag, a scrap of anthem,
a rousing desire to serve
Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged is, koan, opening, service, treasure on November 7, 2021| 2 Comments »
The storehouse of treasures opens by itself. You can take them and use them any way you wish.
—from Pacific Zen’s Miscellaneous Koan Collection
Even in deepest sorrow,
the storehouse of treasures
opens inside each moment—
I needn’t even knock on the door.
Nothing is asked of me.
I come to the storehouse
pockets empty, but feel
no need to fill my pockets.
All I want is to live in the opening.
All I want is to be used
by the treasure.
I want to be the treasure.
I Want a Lot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged box, Rilke, service, usefulness on September 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
You love most of all those who need you
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “You See, I Want a Lot,” trans. Robert Bly
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
Rilke, you were right.
I want so much to be useful.
Today I stared at the brown cardboard box
on the counter and marveled
at how a box knows exactly what it’s here to do—
it holds what needs to be held,
it keeps things together,
it helps things move where they need to go.
It is a fort for a child or a bed for a cat
or a makeshift sled in winter.
I hazard to say the box never worries
if it is enough. It simply folds up
when its task is done and waits to be of use again.
Or not. Oh, this longing to do more, to be more,
to serve more, because in every direction,
the need is so great. Oh, this fear
that no matter how much I do, it is never enough.
A man is not a crowbar, a hoe.
A woman is not a box,
but oh for a moment to be able
to keep things together.
I know it’s not how it works,
but oh, for a moment,
to hold all that needs to be held.
Sitting Quietly, Asked to Consider My Inner Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, light, service on March 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Any light I carry
is nothing I
have manufactured.
It’s entirely unearned.
It is easiest to notice
in the dark.
It cannot be faked.
Perhaps I wished
I could control it.
Instead, I marvel,
ask it, how
can I serve?
Making the Ask
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, breaking open, compassion, heart, love, poem, prayer, service on June 19, 2013| 5 Comments »
Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
—The Wizard of Oz
Give me a heart that breaks,
a heart that longs to open
wider and wider, always revealing
more space. Give me hands
that long to serve. Make them strong
enough to build what must be built.
Make them fall in love with letting go.
Make them unable to hurt. Give me a mind
that leans toward generosity. A tongue
that speaks in only we. Feet that run
toward those in need. Eyes
that see beneath the masks. Ears
that hear the silence
that is the staff for every sound. A nose
that follows the fragrance of truth.
Blood the same red as everyone else’s.
And give me a heart that breaks again
and again, the way ocean waves
break, unpredictable, an endless
breaking, an endless release,
in which nothing is ever really lost,
in which we are found.