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Posts Tagged ‘smile’

In a Downpour

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 28, 2023| 6 Comments »

On an uphill slog
of a day,
your real smile
is like a single
red umbrella
in a long pageant
of black umbrellas.
Suddenly,
it’s all I can see.

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Undreaming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 28, 2023| 7 Comments »

Though I’ve dyed his pants pink
by accident, not black as he’d hoped,
the seam of his smile
spreads easily across his face,
a smile easy as sunrise, easy as moonset,
forgiving as the smile of someone who knows
what doesn’t matter and what does.
When I wake, his smile
stays with me. Every time
I close my eyes, there it is,
widening as my heart unravels
itself in my chest.
There it is, that smile, so real
it’s still there when my eyes are open,
stitching me back into the world.

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Watching My Daughter in The Nutcracker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2021| 10 Comments »




Tonight I fall in love with the mirliton
in the blue and white tutu—the way
she leaps, the way she angles her arm.
Not that I didn’t love her before
when she was a soldier, when she
was a snowflake, when she was a bon bon
or an angel in frothy white fluff. But tonight,
more than anything, it is her smile
that makes me weep in row H.
Because it is real, her joy in the chassé,
the grande jeté, the pas de bourrée.
Because her joy is my joy. Because
I know what she’s danced through
to get to this stage where that smile
spreads across her face like the sunrise
the first morning after winter solstice—
an essential, growing light aware of the dark,
just learning what it can do.

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Why We Smile

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 27, 2021| 2 Comments »

For Ivar


Today as we gently
spread mountain dirt
on your ashes
I think of
that snow blown day
three years ago
when we
at two below
were laughing
at how cold
we were and
how sticky
our skis.
It amazes me
how out of
bleakness
comes blessing.
To this day
your smile—
crooked
and wide as the mesa
we stood on—
still warms me,
your real smile
the only part
of that long cold race
I remember.

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One Blustery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

enormous wind—

hanging on to my smile

so it won’t blow away

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One Insight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

how beautiful they are,

all those smiles

I don’t see on your lips

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Pep Talk in June

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

If one windy day
you find yourself
beside the pool
with your three-
year-old girl,
resist the urge
to stay dry. She
will laugh at the way
you pull her through
the blue chlorinated
water with such real
joy that it will catch
in you so wholly that even
strangers in the grass
watching you play
will comment to you
on how sweet that you,
like your daughter,
delight in being wet. Someday
you will forget the chill—
the body cannot
pull the back the memory
of cold anymore than it
can bring back the red
pain of labor.
But her smile, the memory
of that as it flashes
above the refracting light,
it will forever bring a smile
to your lips, a real smile,
no matter how
tired you are,
how old and dry.

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