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Posts Tagged ‘spring’

The Gift of Forgetting

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 14, 2026| 4 Comments »


 
 
A Thursday so ordinary
I might forget it is another
chance to love this world
until the delicate flowers
of service berry bushes 
start to throw their lacy white petals 
onto the trail as if I’m a bride 
walking the aisle—
and maybe it’s a gift
each time I forget the wonder
of Spring because each time
I remember, I’m remade again
by the simple splendor
of May, how tender the green
of the new aspen leaves, 
how urgent the rush of snowmelt
as it pumps through the gorge 
with its cold, clear song,
how warm the air playing on my face
like a lover’s hands ever so gently 
lifting the veil.

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Waking to Twenty-Two Degrees on April 24

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 25, 2026| 8 Comments »


 
 
I don’t want to curse the frost
that settles into the morning,
even as it continues to kill 
every blossoming thing. 
Nor do I want to be numb. 
I want to feel the loss 
of the lilac buds that will not
fill the spring with dark purple sweetness,
want to feel the loss of the apple blossoms
that tomorrow will be wilted and brown. 
It does no good to shout blame at the sky. 
More than once, I have tried. 
I want to practice weaving the ache
into a day also filled with singing. 
The stakes only get higher. 
The frost will come again. 
I want to love what is here. 

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The Minimum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 25, 2025| 1 Comment »




Even when worry wrecks us,
leaving us broken on the shores
of the life we had,
even when we have been wrung
like rags, even when we
are brittle, snappish things,
even then the scent of spring
can reach us with its notes
of damp soil, sharp pine,
and sun-warmed grass,
the air clean and slightly sweet.
We don’t need to open
our eyes. Don’t need to try.
All that is asked of us: breathe.

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Return

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2025| 3 Comments »


 
 
There was a time I wondered
if I would ever want
to open my eyes again—
today, I can’t stop falling in love
with the glossy black back
of the blackbird, the bright
crimson hues on its wing,
the light song that tumbles
like praise from its beak
as if to say, we are made
to return, we are made to sing.

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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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How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 17, 2025| 12 Comments »


 
 
The pond ice gone a single day,
and already the wild geese
have returned, filling the open water
with riotous honking. Even
the backyard feels like a teaching
of how every emptiness invites
something to fill it, if not feather
then feeling. I think of how
in my most lonely moments,
some strange beauty has wandered
into my vision or woven its singular
song into my ears and I can’t help
but feel infused by life, the way
a trickle of water slowly—
almost imperceptibly—
will eventually fill a vast basin
till its water spills out the gulleys.
Perhaps you’ve felt it, too,
when you’re barren. Void of hope.
Then. A pink cloud.
An unruly clamoring of geese.
Still that barren, hopeless feeling,
but also, there it is, a single green tip
of garlic planted five months ago
that finds its way up to the sun.

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Navigating the Changing Season

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 11, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
the day a river,
the moment a skiff
and the trill of the first
red-winged blackbird
both rapid and oar

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To the Bunny Who Lives Under the Porch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 9, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Snug little lump of timid flesh
whose fur matches the brown
grass of late winter, silent
little being with your long
pointy ears twisted back,
oh, soft little wide-eyed prey,
thank you for returning
to the yard this morning.
After two weeks of not seeing
your fidgety-whiskered nose,
I met your apparent loss like an elegy
I didn’t want to write. I am tired
of writing elegies, though this
is what life asks us to do—
to meet the world of loss
and learn the beauty
that grows from it.
So imagine my joy today when
I was driving in a faraway town
and my husband sent me a photo
of your mild, quiet bunny-ness
nibbling grass beside the porch,
one shiny brown eye open
to the camera. A wild gratefulness
for life flooded me then, keen
as a pasqueflower, bright
as a globe willow greening
on the winter side of spring;
and my heart leapt out
from beneath its shelf of fear,
vulnerable as you, little bunny.
 

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Between Winter and Spring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 3, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
I am here to remember my place
in the field, to remember again how
what looks dead can, in just a few days
of warmth, turn vibrant and green.
It can be so hard sometimes to have hope,
yet even knowing what winter did,
look at all this life.
I am here to remember again how the field
is made of uncountable blades of grass,
and how I, too, am one of many
that make up the whole, all of us growing
together. Knowing this, I feel at the same time
the truth of my insignificance and
the truth of our mutual greatness.
I come to the field to learn what the field knows—
a belonging beyond language, a vastness
that opens in me, a cell-deep trust in life itself.
This is how we learn. By listening. In the wind,
each blade of grass sings the smallest of songs,
joins in a chorus of rub and swish and kiss
as each blade whispers, this, this, this, this.
 

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Still Learning to Pray

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 1, 2024| 4 Comments »

The night the scrub oak leaves emerged
was the night the temperature dropped
to twenty two degrees. Whatever had dared
to unfurl has become a brown and brittle thing.
I put these, too, on the altar of the day—
not just the flax flowers purple and thriving,
not just the greens of the sedge, the rush,  
but also the barren branches of oak
with their lack of growth, their shriveled hope.
The dead invite us into the mystery
every bit as much as the living.
I carry the gray sticks like a sparse bouquet.
The woody scent lingers on my hands.

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