I love when people share memories of you
I have forgotten. Like when your big sister
remembered the time we visited your aunt’s
new home, and you, six years old and unstoppable,
were entranced by the decorative glitter glued
to her walls, and while the rest of us were nearby
making food, you stood there in the hallway
and picked at the sparkles until there was a pile
of shine on the floor. “And she was so mad,”
remembers your sister. The memory glimmers
in me like the first stars at dusk, barely there,
but becoming more clear by the moment,
then shining and bright. Yes, that’s what it’s like when
old memories return. I get a shining sliver
of you back. Like finding some constellation
that was always there, I had just forgotten where
to look, and now it’s so present, so true,
I can use its light to navigate my nights.
Posts Tagged ‘stars’
It’s the Fourth of July Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fireworks, fourth of july, grief, stars on July 3, 2025| 6 Comments »
And I didn’t go buy fireworks today.
Not yesterday, either. Nor will
I buy them tomorrow because you
will not be here to light them.
I realize now what I loved about fireworks
was how much you loved them,
the way you brightened when the fuse was first lit,
the way you glowed near incandescent
as the sparks and colors fountained and flashed.
And rapt in your thrill, I would ooh and ahh.
This is how it is. We shape our lives
around the joys of those we love.
You found joy in the bang, the pop,
the squeal, the repeating boom.
I don’t love the noise. Don’t love
the Sulphury smell. Maybe this year,
your dad and I will sit outside
and watch the sparkle of unmoving stars—
this tradition truer to my own sense of joy.
Maybe a meteor will streak the sky.
If it does, I am sure I will ooh and ahh
the way we used to on the Fourth of July,
the way I still do on any given day
because, despite the ache of missing you,
I’m still stunned by this life,
stunned by the things that bring joy in the dark.
Like the candles I burn. Like holding your dad’s hand.
Like the memory of you. Like stars.
One Under the Stars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, losing the self, stars on January 4, 2025| 5 Comments »
stripped of the coat of my story,
for a moment naked enough
to fit into the universe
One Night Before Christmas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mystery, stars, trees, winter on December 24, 2024| 1 Comment »
ornaments for the galaxy
between bare cottonwood branches
hung by what great hand, the stars
Talking to My Son at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, nothing, silence, son, stars on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »
I miss you, I say to the stars,
The stars are not you,
but always they seem to listen,
as if what I have to say is important.
I miss you, I say again.
The stars never talk back.
Still, I listen for a response.
When I say I miss you,
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
what missing you means.
Though I live it every day.
Though missing you infuses every breath.
Though missing you shapes me—
especially at night when I’m alone
and I find myself talking with stars.
I miss you, I say to the stars.
I hear nothing in response.
I let myself be cradled
by that nothing.
After the Film
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camera, daughter, film, mother, night, stars on September 2, 2023| 5 Comments »
We leave the desert flats of Australia
and the axe and the snakes and the flames
and walk into the quiet, starlit night
and become two characters in our own lives.
This is the part where the mother and daughter
lean into each other and walk extra close
so they can speak in tones so low
the audience can’t hear their words.
The camera follows them with a low angle tracking shot
focused on where their hands are joined,
then it tilts to the sky to end the scene
in an extremely wide shot where our characters
are barely a blip on the screen,
surrounded by infinite mystery,
the stars, the only lights.
These Days When the Veils Are Thin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, death, grief, mother, son, stars, vision on October 28, 2021| 5 Comments »
Leaning into the vastness
of the star drunk sky,
my heart a vehicle,
to my surprise
I heard a small click,
like the sound of a car door
opening,
and your voice,
Mom, hop in.
Let’s take a spin.
I startle, as if
waking from a dream,
heart pounding,
astonished to find you
in the driver’s seat
as you love to be, and me
just one yes away
from a joy ride
through the universe,
if only I can find
the door.
Floating Feeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, meteor, mother, night, shooting stars, son, stars on August 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
I had imagined we’d see dozens of meteors
streaming across the sky, streaking,
flaming, impossibly bright.
Instead, I lay on the driveway
between my son and daughter
and we stared into the night,
laughing and singing and listening
to the sound of the earth turning,
the pavement hard beneath us—
and above us, the whole
starry firmament unfolding.
Not one shooting star did we see, no, but oh,
how the milky way swirled all around us,
our eyes wide open, my heart soaring, swarming,
a small piece of matter burning up,
glowing, impossibly bright,
never quite touching the earth.
One Review
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged judgment, satisfaction, space, stars on July 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
asked to rate my satisfaction
from one to five stars—
trying to submit the milky way
One Wheeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comet, sky, stars on July 20, 2020| 3 Comments »
Three Present Progressives
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, haiku sequence, stars, sun on July 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
letting the stars name me
after them—
unpronounceable things happen
*
building a throne
out of meadowlark song—
kingdom with no borders
*
holding hands with the sun
wishing it would go
to second base
One Infinite Night Stand
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, stars on March 7, 2019| 4 Comments »
While Taking the Trash Out, She Disappeared
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged milky way, poem, poetry, stars on August 17, 2017| 2 Comments »
In China they call the Milky Way
the silver river, and tonight
at the top of the drive I launch
my starry canoe into swirl of it.
I notice I forgot a map. I notice
there’s more song out here
than I thought there’d be.
No edge in sight.
Please, you come, too?
Disconnecting the Dots
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, poem, poetry, separateness, stars, whole on December 27, 2014| 2 Comments »
The miracle cannot be separated from the mess.
—Teddy Macker, “Christmas Morning”
Every time I connect the dots
I get it wrong. It never turns out
to be an image of a tree or a cat
or a happy woman. Always a mess,
lines scratched and scrabbled
and crisscrossed. And always
I wonder if someone else could
get it right? Could make a coherent
picture by connecting the facts instead
of this jumbled thatch of misdrawn
links and errant nexuses.
Oh this strange longing to get
it right. This urge to make sense
of separate points. There are nights
I stand beneath the moonless sky
and realize I don’t know how
to constellate the stars in the ancient ways.
And instead of trying to draw
the lines, I simply look at the stars
and notice how beautiful they are,
how unfathomable the space
that holds them, that holds
the woman staring at the stars,
holds even her longing to get it right.
Remembering to Look Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, stars on November 22, 2014| 4 Comments »
Night unbuttons its coat
and all those stars fall out—
I feel no need
to name them
nor order them
nor to measure their distance,
to calculate their age.
I still cannot find
the lines that others use
to link one to another,
but sometimes I sense
the invisible ladders
that link the stars
to you, to me.
Let’s Not Give It a Name
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, mystery, poem, stars on September 5, 2013| 1 Comment »
dusting off all these
stars we’ve forgotten
to wish on, surprised
to find a new
constellation
Two at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, night, poems, stars, unity on October 5, 2012| 2 Comments »
staring at stars
with these eyes made of
old stars
*
what is your address?
I ask my girl, hoping she’ll say
earth
Five Unlearning Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, kiss, letting go, losing the self, mine, poem, possession, relaxing, sky, stars, uncertainty, unlearning, wind on February 4, 2012| 1 Comment »
That wind always tries
to undress me … today
it took my name, too.
*
It’s hard to be
serious when you’re kissing
my elbows.
*
What’s that? It’s only
supposed to have seventeen
syllables? But the sky today deserves at least twenty-five.
*
Erase the word mine
from these lips. Replace it with
nothing.
*
Tonight the stars
are just stars, the lines that link
them all undrawn.
five haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, freedom, haiku, love, perspective, poem, shy, stars, sun, words on January 29, 2012| 5 Comments »
I could never say
what love is but often
I say I love you
*
you’re shy? it’s okay—
I can drip love from these words
instead of flooding
*
who says there is
only one sun? let’s think
vaster than that
*
falling through
the spaces between stars
a temple of emptiness
*
a velvet cage
is still a cage she said
scissors in hand
The Gift of Forgetting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being available, brilliance, dissolution, gift, Rumi, stars, unknowing, unlearning on January 29, 2012| 3 Comments »
As salt dissolves in ocean,
I am swallowed up in you
beyond doubt or being sure.
Suddenly, here in my chest a star
came out so clear it drew all stars into it.
—Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks, Say I Am You
Dear Rumi,
It is easy to believe that a star could come out so clear in your chest,
a star so clear it could draw all stars into it, but in my chest? Here?
A star so clear? I don’t think so. No wonder I stumble
each time I try to memorize this line. I don’t think this is humility.
Is it fear? Fear of being responsible to my own light?
Here in my chest my own heart is straining against the cage
of my ribs, pushing hard all the oceans of blood that stay
in the shores of this skin—some interior ocean I am afraid
to go swimming in. “Not past the tip of the nose.” That is what
my teacher says, and time and time again I feel how true it is,
and now, your words like rocks in my mouth, here in my chest,
the same lesson again. I have been dreaming of stars,
dreamt that they were being poured into my mouth, not just the stars
but the spaces between them. Are these the stars of which you speak?
My god, here they are, already they have been given to me, and I am somehow unable to see them, unable to believe my own experience,
unable to unwrap the packaging and receive the gift. Here in my chest—
but these stars are not for me. Not something to make me brighter,
but a light that belongs to everyone. All of us dissolved
into the same ocean, all of us dissolved in the same night.
I can almost touch this, and then it is gone,
there is still too much of me here.