for K
On the altar of healing,
I would place a blade
of grass to represent tonight
lying in the fresh cut lawn.
You in the cooling shade.
Me in the low, warm sun.
The late summer green.
Distant hum of river.
Your tear as it slipped
toward the grass.
Our laughter about
I don’t even know what.
The way the earth held us,
asking nothing in return.
Your knees on my knees
as we curled in for warmth.
Your fear. My fear. Your trust.
My trust. The way we could
say and hear anything—
anything at all—as the world
turned slowly toward dusk.
Posts Tagged ‘shadow’
Before Turning Toward Light Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, friendship, healing, light, shadow on September 14, 2024| 6 Comments »
Beneath the Big Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, past, shadow on June 1, 2023| 4 Comments »
I walk in the chill,
and the past
walks beside me,
smooths my tears,
holds my hand,
faithful as evening,
gentle as a shadow.
By the time
I re-enter my home,
it has slipped
inside me again.
We walk through
the door
as one.
Evanescent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ephemeral, grace, shadow on February 12, 2023| 8 Comments »
For a few minutes a day
for a few days of the year,
the sun shines low through the window
and casts a shadow high on the wall,
as this morning, when I see
the shape of six chrysanthemums
splayed in diffuse gray
just below the ceiling
and I put down my work to marvel.
It’s simple science, really,
how opaque objects
placed in the path of light rays
do not let the light pass through.
But there’s something so beautiful
and temporary
about the giant spectral blooms,
so I do what the heart asks me to do—
I watch as the ephemeral bouquet
intensifies, then fades away
until the wall is just a wall
and I am just a woman
beside six purple chrysanthemums
who was found by a moment of grace.
One Mysterious Weaving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged feather, grief, loss, oneness, shadow, sign on July 16, 2022| 4 Comments »
on the brightest day
the shadows steep darker—
winging through them
on imperceptible wind
a white feather
On a Clear Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hold, life, nature, shadow, trust on March 1, 2022| 6 Comments »
The way the field holds
the shadow of the cottonwood,
this is how life holds me.
Holds me, no matter my shape.
Holds me with no effort.
Holds my darkness and knows it
as weightless, as transient,
as something that will shift,
disappear, return, and shift again.
It never says no to me.
I am still learning to trust life, to trust
no matter how I show up, I will be held.
Trust that my life is not a problem.
Trust that as much as I am the shadow,
I am also the field.
My Son’s First Word
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, shadow on January 29, 2022| 17 Comments »
He pointed at the grass
beneath the cottonwood tree
and said “dado.”
Shadow? I asked.
Not ball, not mama,
not cat, not dad.
Shadow.
Already at one,
he was aware of both
what is and what isn’t here—
how sometimes the light
is intercepted.
After Finn died, I dreamt
a young boy taught me
how I could help my son’s
transformation by
guiding his energy
through the shadow
of a total eclipse,
a golden corona flaming
about the circumference.
All night, certain I was awake,
I pulled luminous swirls
through the dark center, and
Finn’s energy disappeared
into the heart of the shadow,
into the light beyond.
A shadow is nothing,
of course, which is to say
it is also everything. The way
my life is now steeped
in the shadow of his life,
the way the shape of him
follows me everywhere I go.
*
this poem has been published in ONE ART
Communion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, grief, name, night, shadow on January 4, 2022| 7 Comments »
Now, when I am alone
I am never alone. I walk
outside or get in my car
and reflexively say hello
to my beloveds no longer here,
calling them by name.
I love to say their names—
like singing a favorite song.
I love to tell them about
the bald eagles this morning
carving the sky above the river,
about the carrot soup
I will make for dinner,
about how my ears, my mind
and my arms miss their voices,
their opinions, their touch.
During the day, they are
my shadows, always
attached, but silent.
During the night, when
I am part shadow,
they welcome me
deeper into the night.
Shade Loving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossoming, flower, shade, shadow on August 9, 2021| 4 Comments »
Bless the astilbe, the hellebore,
the hydrangea, bless the lobelia,
the bright impatiens—
it is no small thing to grow,
more notable still to grow in the shade—
to not only grow but to flower,
to bring color to the dark.
I take it to heart, the fuschia hanging
in the shadow, cascading
deep pink bells all summer long.
Oh tough beauty, teach me
the art of thriving in regions
where light is scant,
where light is not.
Teach me to bring to the world
the beauty
I wish to find.
One Irrational Fear
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, shadow on February 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »
inside this trembling woman
her own shadow
wildly distorted, flexing
Groundhog Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Groundhog Day, Jacob and the angel, shadow, weather on February 1, 2021| 2 Comments »
May I not only see my own shadow
but may I let it wrestle me
the way an angel once met Jacob
then wrestled him till dawn.
May we scrabble and scrap
until I am trembling, exhausted,
until the shadow dislocates what I think I know
about how to move through the world,
until panting I beg it to bless me,
cling to it until it gives me a new name.
I want to know everything
I am capable of—the destruction,
the ferocity, the benediction.
I don’t need to know the weather.
I just want to know that I can meet
whatever comes, even
the darkest parts of myself,
and learn from them,
then limp into the daylight
toward healing, toward wholeness.
Better Half
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged equanimity, shadow on January 4, 2021| 2 Comments »
After midnight, the shadow
is with me drinking tea—
mint and lemongrass.
It doesn’t mind a spill.
What’s a mess to a shadow?
If there is a question
that must be asked,
the shadow doesn’t speak it—
no, it understands, perhaps,
the only reason
to ask a question is to let
the universe know
a willingness to not know.
The shadow doesn’t worry
about what comes next.
That’s the concern
of the flesh. When I sleep,
it untethers itself
from my breath and slips
into the night. It doesn’t curse
the light for bringing it back.
It simply joins me as I
do whatever I do,
stays close to me,
like a dream, like a friend.
One in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, shadow, snow, song, winter on January 3, 2021| 2 Comments »
Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, learning, life, shadow, tree on July 26, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today the shadows
teach me to love
what is dim,
the sweet respite
of obscurity
when the sun
is too much
and a tree
yields its shape
so that I might slip
my clumsy heat
out of the bounds
of the vertical world
and find instead
a cool dark pool
on the ground,
as if I’m a boat
that has discovered
at last
a slim calm eddy
in which I might rest.
This is perhaps
the way we start
to meet our deaths—
sliding into the relief
of these dark, quiet
channels.
Respiratory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, lung, shadow, tree on March 31, 2020| 4 Comments »
This morning, after the blizzard,
after the sun came out,
there was a moment when the shadows
of the empty cottonwood trees
patterned the snow like tree-sized lungs—
the trunk was a bronchus,
and the branches, bronchioles
that split into twiggish alveoli.
And the tree seemed to say, Remember.
I often neglect to be grateful
for lungs, for breath—
such a simple, forgettable gift.
But in the dividing silhouette,
I saw into myself, a divine branching,
an inner tree, an invitation
to sit and breathe. Remember, it seemed
to say, and I followed the lines until
they disappeared into the light.
The Half Century Caper
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mystery, nancy drew, poem, poetry, shadow on November 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I thought I was Nancy Drew,
a girl who stumbled into mysteries
and solved them. A girl proficient
at picking up clues. A girl who knew
her mission. It felt good to crack
the codes, to decipher the signs.
It felt good to know who was bad.
It felt good to know I was good.
And then I learned some signs
have multiple meanings. That sometimes
a mission gets in life’s way. That
bad people are also good,
and good people are also bad.
And that the solution is seldom
as elegant as the mystery—
secrets unfolding in the shadows.
One Long Relationship
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, poem, poetry, practice, shadow on June 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »
New Seeing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, shadow on November 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Just because
we can’t say what
a thing is doesn’t mean
it won’t cast a shadow—
a shadow so small we perhaps
don’t notice as it falls on our own
naked skin—
and sometimes, focused as we are
on the light, we fail to see where
our own shadow lands, our
familiar shape distorted,
creating (for whom?)
an unintentional
(I’m sorry)
darkness.
One Stretch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, light, poem, poetry, shadow on July 22, 2016| 1 Comment »
A Lesson in Shading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, light, poem, poetry, shadow on October 1, 2015| 1 Comment »
So first, you imagine the light bulb,
he says, then he draws one on the page
so I won’t have to imagine too hard.
And then, he says, you draw a dark line
under the object, assuming that there
will not be much light underneath it.
He moves his pencil forcefully
to darken the bottom of the square.
Next, he says, you move your hand
as far from the light as possible
and make it darker there.
I watch as he fills in the spaces
where white has been.
There is something vital
in all of us that leans toward the dark.
I notice the depth that the shadows
have brought to the page, so like the shadow
into which we are pulled and pulled.
Even now, the darkest parts of us
are kindling our greatest light.
Two Beside the Fish Pond
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heron, poem, poetry, shadow on October 24, 2014| 2 Comments »
the more still the blue
heron sits on his rock the more
my thoughts grow wings
*
such a fleeting
darkening on my face—
the shade of herons