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Posts Tagged ‘snow’

Walking at Night after the First Big Snow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.

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Practice in Being Present 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 18, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
As it is, I am grateful for the snow today,
though yesterday I reveled in the warm air
and clear blue sky that felt like spring.
Today still feels like spring, but with snow.
The geese still wander the field on foot,
a thick white layer gathering
on the wide gray platforms of their backs.
The swallows still soar and swoop
in tight formations, unbothered
by thick flakes of snow. The red-winged blackbirds
still trill. It seems only right the heart
should still practice how to fall in love,
no matter the weather. I am thinking of
how yesterday Wendy said of herself,
“What, did I think nothing bad would
ever happen to me?” and how just saying
this out loud helped her stay present—
less the story of herself, more herself.
I’m clear it does no good to wish away snow,
just as it does no good to wish away grief
or the tyranny of cruelty. So when thoughts
of grief and fear roll in like a squall,
I try out Wendy’s line.
What, did I imagine terrible things
wouldn’t happen to me? To the world?
The geese are sliding now into the pond,
the snowflakes disappearing
into dark water. With no effort,
I fall in love with the ripples
the geese leave on the surface,
a momentary story of where they’ve been.
How quickly that story disappears.

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Not Exactly Lost Near the Bitterbrush Trail

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 24, 2025| 6 Comments »

In the flat, low light
of morning there
is no way to see
the trail in the valley
of snow, and so,
new to this place,
I let myself not know
where I’m going.
I move more slowly,
let myself be led by
the trail as it appears.
Each moment is like
a new invisible map
that proclaims again
and again
You Are Here.

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Poem in Which You Are Storm, I Am Meadow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 17, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
By noon
the snow
that changed
 
the world
from brown
to white
 
in just
a day
seems gone—
 
the meadow
however, remembers
the gift.
 
Come spring,
there will
be green.

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After the Barely There Snow Storm

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 14, 2024| 16 Comments »

It happened. The tiniest perfect stars
fell from the sky and into the yard.
Dozens fit on a single brown cottonwood leaf.
There were millions of them. Millions!
An uncountable cache of crystalline stars.
When the sun rose, I ran from shadow
to shadow to witness them before they melted,
joy rising with every star I saw.
Within minutes of morning, they were gone,
but no sorrow came from the loss.
There is no name for this kind of love.
All day, it has lingered, the thrill
of bringing my whole heart
to the moment without ever once thinking
of holding anything back.

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Planting the Questions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 7, 2024| 8 Comments »

All day the first snow fell in the valley.
Hour by hour, I watched
the brittle world become new.
All day, I marveled at the human—
equally capable of cruelty and compassion.
Inside me, strong questions gathered.
I planted them in me like garlic cloves.
Every gardener knows how cold
only accelerates their growth,
triggers more development come spring.
I imagine how vigorous, how robust
these questions will grow
into actions I can’t yet conceive.
All day, the snow kept falling.
I imagined it was love.
There was nothing it did not touch.

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Today’s Sermon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 17, 2024| 14 Comments »


 
 
was a single drop
of melted snow
that clung to the tip
of a tight red bud
at the end
of a naked branch.
It didn’t have to
shout or sing
to make me fall in love
with the way afternoon light
gathered inside it.
Such a simple pulpit,
such humble gospel,
this radiant preacher,
this silence in which
the prayer is made
of listening.
 

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From Where, This Inner Spring?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2024| 14 Comments »

Midwinter, the snow on the roof is melting.
Not just a trickle, but a steady pour.
Inside, I feel it, too, a thawing,
a surprising liquescence
as stories about myself
I thought were true
become less solid, less icy,
more current, more flow.
I didn’t even know I was frozen.
I didn’t know I’d created walls
until this unexpected inner spring
arrived out of season
and offered me a glimpse of freedom.
How vast a day is without those stories.
Was it always possible, this openness?
Perhaps we cannot know it
without first experiencing constriction.
Outside, it is melting,
though I know soon the cold will come again.
Inside me, it is melting,
a whole world of ice turning to rivulet.
I fall in love with the sound of melting.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

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An Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2024| 4 Comments »

Mourning settles in like a midwinter storm,
clouds low, snow thick in the trees,
snow thick on the rooftops, thick
in the road where you’re forced to go slow
if you go anywhere at all—
squall after squall of thick fat flakes falling
till they break the boughs and thickly cover
the whole visible world
and then,
a parting, a lifting,
a clearing so startling, so blue you swear
you will never see the same way again,
not the snow, not the sky, not even yourself,
having as you do now, some small hint
of the weight of this life.

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One After the Sauna

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 11, 2024| 13 Comments »

 
in deep, new snow
a naked angel makes wings—
her song, how it soars

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