The cantaloupe was golden
beneath its raised veins,
the globe of it heavy in my hands,
its musky perfume filling the hot
summer air at the farmstand.
When I handed the woman my money,
I was paying her not so much for this melon,
but for the memory of other melons
we have shared when I moaned my delight,
the sweet orange flesh deliquescing
in our eager mouths.
This melon was no such melon.
Though we waited and waited,
when I sliced in and offered you a bite,
we both agreed the flesh was a bit too hard,
the flavor sweet but a little flat.
A fine-enough melon. But not a melon
for rhapsodizing or writing an ode.
I think of Grandma Betty, how
in her later years it didn’t matter
what you served her, she would always declare,
This is the best pie I ever had.
This is the best tea I’ve ever had.
This is the best. The best.
This is not the best cantaloupe I have ever had,
just a substandard stand in for ecstasy. Yet here I am
writing an ode to this mediocre melon, learning again
how my longing for something to be different from what it is
can destroy any joy found in what is here.
Somehow, this fine-enough melon is bringing me to my knees
at the altar of the moment, humbling me, inviting me to question
how I choose to meet the world.
It is, perhaps, after all, the best melon I have ever had.
Posts Tagged ‘showing up’
The Teacher
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cantaloupe, comparison, enough, fruit, grandmother, presence, showing up on August 4, 2026| 21 Comments »
When We’re All the Way Out of the Way
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged April Fools, ecstasy, showing up, surrender on March 31, 2025| 15 Comments »
We show up, burn brightly, live passionately and hold nothing back and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.
—Rolf Gates
This moment, too, is surrender, this blazing,
this bliss-ache, this bright-chime of being,
this showing up heartbare with no shred held back,
this feral unselving, this radiant loss
of all knowing, this wild unhiding
where anything can happen next,
this, too, is surrender. Not like the soulquaking
gut-fall of grief, only just like it, no foothold
except on the needle-tip point of what is,
that place where there is no story, no self,
no yes, no no, no safety, no promises, and
all is being, yes, this, too, is surrender,
this opening beyond self, this radiant obliteration,
unfathomed unfurling, trust-flaring, now-flaming,
instructionless grace, this ecstatic exploding
that always and never arrives.
*
Oh friends … Rumi said, “Be a fool,” and also suggested “be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no … crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute …” …
And so … happy April Fool’s. Perhaps not the fool where you try to trick people, more the fool where you are “surrendered to beauty.”
At Five
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, connection, self, showing up, tree, younger self on July 19, 2022| 3 Comments »
Along the lake and down the hill,
the road dead ended into a meadow
with a wooden fence a girl could slip through,
and slip through she did,
that five-year-old version of me,
slipped through the gaps into the tall green grass
and then wandered to the lake
where the weeping willow hung over the shoreline
and she could sit beneath its shade and disappear—
or perhaps more rightly, she could show up.
As herself. Show up not as a girl who lived up the road
but as shade, as shore, as tree,
as field, as green beyond the fence.
Perhaps it only happened once or twice,
that journey past the dead end,
but forty-seven years later, I remember
the dissolution, how beneath that tree
I was no longer who I was, only more so.
How I knew myself as integral to the miracle.
There were whole decades I forgot her,
that infinite version of me.
Tonight I can tell she never left.
How did she ever fit in my limited sense of self?
What does she have to teach me now
of fences, of shadows,
of sitting quietly,
of the art of slipping through?
Lesson from the Coyote Willows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged showing up, willows on May 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Only when it rains do coyote willows
turn their brightest red, as they do
today in the drizzle and gray, and oh,
how I fall in love with them now,
these slender stems that know
how to regenerate from brokenness,
bringing their brilliant vermillion
to the dim of the day.
Let us live this way. When it is dark,
let us find what is brightest in us
and share it with the soggy world,
a thicket of grace in the midst of gloom,
not fancy, but rampant and so deeply willing
to share radiance, to dazzle, to blaze.
Lesson from the Ouzel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, courage, despair, ouzel, showing up on January 7, 2021| 5 Comments »
Sometimes I want to be anywhere but here,
but today, I let myself feel it all.
I go to the river covered in ice,
and move along the bank until
I find the open places where the dark-feathered ouzel
chooses to submerge in the cold, cold water—
It doesn’t hesitate to plunge into frigid depths.
It knows it was made for this.
Viola Tricolor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossoming, Corona Virus, death, flowers, medicine, showing up, spring, wildflowers on March 31, 2020| 2 Comments »
also known as Johnny jump up, heart’s ease, heart’s delight, come and cuddle me
Into the shade by the porch
bloomed the first wild pansy,
its small yellow face sunny
and eager and open.
The Athenians used to make
the tiny flowers into syrup
to moderate anger and
to comfort and strengthen the heart.
And here it is today,
small volunteer beauty,
growing in this patch of dirt
where nothing else wants to grow.
This tiny garden is but one of many
concurrent realities—others involve
hospitals short of beds, loved ones
gone, doctors scared to go home.
Our hearts need strengthening.
Little violet, we’re learning, too,
how to be surrounded by death
and still rise up, bring healing as we bloom.
The Way the Spider Does
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, poem, poetry, showing up, spider on September 23, 2019| 2 Comments »
That is the way
I would like to meet the world,
my work both beautiful
and useful,
bringing into any
dark corner a lattice
for gathering light.
And though I may
be feared, hated, reviled,
still, I’d show up,
delicate and fierce,
I’d show up.
Thoughts After Watching The Taming of the Shrew
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hero, poem, poetry, showing up, Taming of the Shrew, theater on June 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And after the lying and cheating
and scratching and beating
and lusting and raging,
deceiving and craving,
after almost three hours
we finally know
that no one, no one
is a hero.
And we walk
through the rain
on this imperfect night
to the stain of our cars
and our imperfect lives.
And it rains.
In the great cast list,
my name will be
listed as the woman
who always played me—
the one who worried she didn’t
get the role quite right,
but damn,
she showed up
ready to rehearse
every day, every night.
Showing Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, prayer, showing up on December 29, 2015| 1 Comment »
Before I pray
I do not wash
my hands—
not out of disrespect
but because
I do not
want to pretend
to be any cleaner
than I really am,
this filth,
this patina of depravity,
this is part
of why
I have come
to pray—
if I waited
to wash the stains
from my skin,
my lips, my sleeves,
I might
never pray
at all.