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Posts Tagged ‘singing’

No Wonder I Woke Singing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 5, 2024| 11 Comments »


for Donna
 
 
I saw you last night in my dream.
We were singing, of course.
The strange part is we were floating
in inner tubes in your home
which was flooded. I was worried,
but you didn’t seem bothered.
The smile never left your face.
The water was clear and we could see
to the bottom where the rugs
and chairs and tables were still in place.
We paddled around the room
and sang with our friends. God,
it was good to sing with you again,
me still here in the flood of the world
and you teaching me to sing
through it all. Teaching me
smiling is still possible. Teaching me
even the weight of grief can float.

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Oh! de Perfume

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 10, 2024| 4 Comments »

I want to bottle it,
tonight’s drive
with my girl,
both of us singing
full voice,
so when I forget
how good it can be
in this world,
I can dab it
behind my ears
and inhale again
the joy of singing
through the dark
that brazenly,
that together.

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While Singing “Parting Glass”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 6, 2024| 10 Comments »


                  for D
 
I spent years
practicing how
to make my voice
disappear
inside hers
so we’d blend—
and though
it’s been a year
since we sang,
it’s only weeks
since she’s gone,
and how strange now
to open my mouth,
to listen for her,
to hear only
myself. And I
can’t stop singing
because it makes
me feel closer
to her to hear
where her voice
would be,
almost like
silence
is now harmony.

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Still Lifes from the Gathering on the Day Before She Will Die

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2024| 11 Comments »


                  for D.B.F.
 
 
The white and blue folds of her sweater.
 
The hand of her daughter on her shoulder.
 
The rain.

The cancer blossoming in her brain.
 
The story of when she did dishes for the dying woman.
 
This dying woman in the home she just built.
 
The glasses lifted high for a champagne toast.
 
The medicine waiting for tomorrow.
 
The snapdragons on the table not yet starting to droop.
 
The song we have sung with her for thirty years.
 
The tears.
 
The missing harmony where her voice would be.
 
The smile on her face as if nothing was missing.
 
As if nothing was lacking.
 
As if she was opening the gate
 
and showing us this, this is the way to walk through.
 

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Hallelujah

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 18, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
after singing in the stadium
with fifty thousand other voices
emerging into the night
to find my own ecstatic
silence

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The Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 7, 2024| 5 Comments »


                  for Holiday, in the James Turrell Skyspace at Cheekwood Gardens
 
 
Each moment of the day
a song is looking for its singer—
song before the eyelids rise,
song of hunger, song of dream,
song of waiting for the phone to ring,
song of groping in the dark,
song of walking through the garden,
song of trying on silver hats,
song of seeing the city’s edge.
And still so often we miss the song,
but today when Holiday
opened her mouth and began
to sing of cumulonimbus,
her clear tune spiraled through the small
white room with such astonishing
rightness I brimmed with gold
and cloud and kin,
her bright-winged notes soaring
in my body like a murmuration,
and I opened like dawn, like sky,
as if when one person dares
to be found by the song of the moment
and sing it true, they teach
the rest of us how to do it, too,
how to sing, sing wild, sing
ourselves alive, as if
it’s what we’re here to do.

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The Welcoming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 11, 2024| 6 Comments »

for Moudi
 
 
With an open umbrella, he met me
in the rain having walked barefoot
to the place where I’d parked.
He handed the umbrella to me.
 
In the warm bright home,
he offered me a soft, dry chair.
He served warm bread wrapped
in a green and white cloth
 
and his partner sprinkled zatar
and olive oil on the labne.
The kale salad was crisp
with sweet chunks of beets
 
and thick creamy slices of avocado.
And in the warm, rich stew
offered to us in a rounded pot,
the eggplant disassembled itself
 
alongside chickpeas and tomato.
But before we ate, he served us a story
of a place where people begin a meal together
with spontaneous singing of sorrow and praise.
 
What stopped me then, while I sat at his table,
from singing? So I sing now,
of sorrow that I let my fear of singing it wrong
be louder in me than the urge to sing.
 
I sing of praise for the second chance.
I sing a prayer for the courage to learn
how to sing a new song, and the chance
to sing it again. And again.
 

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Never Too Late

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »


 
 
By the time I rise,
it’s well beyond
the edge of day—
the clouds
of morning
burned away,
but I will not
lament the songs
for dew or peace unsung,
instead I’ll sing
into the blue
and keep on singing—

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One Alleluia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 14, 2024| 8 Comments »

in the ruined chapel
of the heart
not a hymnal to be found
the choir
still singing

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At the Aladdin’s Lamp Cabin on Molas Pass

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 3, 2023| 4 Comments »

Let me remember this night
dancing in the deep woods—
the patio our stage
the stars like sequins
the full moon a spotlight
and every song a love song
when sung with love
and my god, did we sing,
after all that talk of heartache,
yes, until our voices were near gone,
did we sing.

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