Almost every spring, I forget them,
the six packs of cosmos starts on the porch.
All it takes is one cold night,
an innocence of frost.
By dawn, the buds slightly droop.
By noon, the leaves hang darkened and limp.
By the next day, they’re black.
And dead.
It’s a familiar story. How one night
changes everything. How one day
I’m blooming, thriving, alive,
the next all I’d grown is gone.
I used to believe all was lost.
I used to throw the whole plant away.
But I learned what is dead serves as a blanket
to protect whatever still lives.
Wait, and in days, a tiny green filigree
emerges from the base.
In a month or two, it’s a bask of blooms,
no trace of how bleak it was.
Such tender study, the cosmos.
Blame is no part of their process.
They let what’s been lost be of service.
They know they are here to grow.
Posts Tagged ‘spring’
Again. Again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, death, frost, garden, spring on May 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, not knowing, spring, surprise, words on May 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today, I notice something green
spearing through the dirt
in the garden, and only
because there are eight such spears
rising in perfect rows do I vaguely remember
last year I planted bulbs there,
but I don’t remember what they are.
How much of the beauty we plant
do we forget?
There is so much in me that grows
because of words you have sown.
I doubt you remember them,
I don’t remember them, either,
only that your words were kind
and now they have taken root.
Who knows what the flowers
will look like? I water them, though,
trust I’ll be delighted when they bloom
into a garden of beautiful I don’t know.
This Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, prayer, spring on March 22, 2021| 3 Comments »
Today the prayer is words
I can’t yet find,
words that flit away
like spring juncos, like chickadees.
Today the prayer I wish for
is not the prayer that finds me—
less like the perfume of a fully bloomed flower
more like the dank and fusty scent of spring.
Some days when I forget how to pray,
if I listen with my whole body,
the world reminds me how what is used up, spent
is also a vessel for the holy,
as dry leaves become a nest
as bare branches hold the sunrise.
One Lifetime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, death, life, red wing blackbird, spring on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the way to the graveyard
taking a few detours through spring—
trill of red wing blackbirds
Finding My Calling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged animals, busy, Jack Granath, nature, spring on March 10, 2021| 2 Comments »
with a line from “After the Japanese” by Jack Granath
A warm March day
and the blue sky
slips itself
into the list
of things to do,
and I would have to be
deaf or just plain stubborn
to not hear the call
to play outside—
and damn, but
I’m stubborn,
so the world
sends a bobcat,
a red-tailed hawk
and a whole herd of elk
to the yard.
What’s a busy woman
to do
but surrender?
I don’t.
Head down, I get
the work done.
I put on the blinders
of responsibility
until a poem says to me,
You do the right thing,
citizen, and my chest pounds
in urgent code:
that. means. you.
and I put down
the work and walk
into the day
to do my duty,
which is to meet the world
that will never
send an email,
the world
that will never knock,
will never call,
but will always
say welcome,
citizen, welcome.
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.
Olfactory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, february, friendship, healing, Kyra Kopestonksky, perfume, scent, spring on February 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for Kyra
February ends with the fragrance of change—
not quite the fresh earthy scent of rain,
but no longer the white sterility of winter.
It’s the damp aroma of long dead grass
and the must of soil as it starts to unfreeze,
the bright tang of Gemini distilled from the sky
and the hint that someday there will be green.
This is the perfume I imagine you wearing today
as you move from the darkest hours of fear
into the chapter of healing. Yes, I smell it
as I hug you, the scent of making room for the world,
the scent of resilience, of beauty yet to come.
One Deep Purple
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged history, lilac, poem, poetry, scent, spring on June 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mud, poem, poetry, shine, spring on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I am reborn into the world of radiance—
crystalline icicles, glittering reaches of snow—
and whatever in me is old brown stick,
whatever in me is withered rose hip,
whatever is desiccated and dead takes notice
of the shine and says, Teach me that.
I am reborn into the world of drip
and melt and streets of mud,
and whatever part of me is muck-squeamish
and sludge resistant goes walking anyway
and wallows and squishes and slips and laughs.
In that slippery moment, the part of me
who has died becomes lotus.
And who is it in me that scoffs
and says Who are you to be lotus?
I show her diamonds in the field,
the big blue dome of sky, the vast
expanses of glistening mud,
and I ask her, Who are you not to be?
One Reality Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged independence, love, mud, poem, poetry, spring on March 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
cleaning off my shoes
before walking through the mud,
and Love says to me,
what? do you think
I am going to carry you?