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Posts Tagged ‘shoulds’

Monday, Midsummer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 28, 2021| 2 Comments »


 
 
It could be any ordinary midsummer day
when the world redefines green
and the field leaps into leaf and bloom
and the birdsong plays in a nonstop loop,
but I’m sitting inside because it’s Monday
and there are bills to pay and deadlines
to meet and stovetops to scrub
and children to feed. I know
I’m supposed to seize the day and
walk in the waist-high wildflowers
that even now splay into deep purple bloom
in the alpine meadows still rung with snow,
but I know, too, there is work to be done.
Perhaps there is no such thing
as balance. There is only this story
of should versus should. For a moment,
I step out of the story and notice how
good it feels to not believe any of it,
to let myself be led by the next true thing—
this word asking to be written, this breath
asking to be breathed, this life wanting
to be loved no matter how I spend
these ordinary, precious hours.

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Gravity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 1, 2020| 6 Comments »

Today it is enough

to pour the orange juice.

To push down the lever

on the toaster.

To feed the fish and the kids

and water the orchid

and return one call.

A woman could be buried

by all the things

she thinks she should do.

It might take her years

to crawl out from beneath that weight.

And so today

I find refuge in the fact

that I made the bed.

That I was a lap

for a cat.

That I caught a mouse

in the carrot row

and I let him go.

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But We Want it How We Want It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 30, 2013| 2 Comments »

While sitting down to work, I see the thin
spine of a paperback called “It’s So Hard
to Love You.” Waiting’s hard, and driving cars
on icy roads is hard, and losing skin.
Or filing taxes. Calmly walking in
a room where men are fighting. Swimming far
through four foot waves. Or dropping what we are
so sure of. Vomiting up shots of gin.

But loving? Loving’s not so hard. It’s what
comes easiest. You’ve seen the way the grass
bends with the breeze? How ferns unfurl? Like love.
It’s all the shoulds we put on love that cut
and burn and roughen us. Ferns never ask
for more. Grass never tells the wind, enough.

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Won’t Even Take It To the Second-Hand Store Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

that warm coat of shoulds
not one button missing
after all these years
oh happy goosebumps
these shoulders, so naked

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