Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘stories’

And Then It’s Exponential

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 25, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
I made a cage out of doom.
Thought, who am I
to change the world.
Believed that thought.
It’s not so much that
the doom dissolved,
no. It’s never been
more real. But the cage?
Just one story of just
one person who chooses
to stand up for integrity,
equality and peace
is enough to show
what one courageous
person can do.
Then the bars of that cage
bend enough for the most
courageous part of the self
to slip through. I’m not
saying it isn’t scary.
But this is how
one becomes two.
 

Read Full Post »

Sitting Around the Campfire

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 22, 2024| 12 Comments »

If I told my teenage self
that one day I would sit
around the campfire
with six of the coolest kids
in school, she wouldn’t
believe me. But tonight,
if I could whisper into her ear
I would tell her to drop
whatever stories she’s telling
herself about who they are
and who she is and to question
why those stories scare her.
Because tonight, sitting
around the campfire
beneath striated clouds,
breathing in the scent of rain
I revel in how human we are,
laughing and crying and singing
along to “Love Cats.”
Perhaps it takes over thirty years
to develop a trust in gentleness,
but if I could whisper
into that girl’s feathered hair,
might she have been open sooner
to the ways we’re all the same?
It might not have changed a thing.
But even now, it feels so good
to shed my stories
the way tonight’s sky shed its clouds.
The whole world glowed then,
luminous with full moon
as if to remind me everything,
everything can shine,
Hear that, dear dark self?
Even something that’s been shrouded
for decades. Even that place
where fear felt like skin.
Even where the story
sounds like your name.

Read Full Post »

Insight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 18, 2024| 7 Comments »

I’m not sure I could say
they are beautiful,
these brittle brown
cinquefoil stems
trembling in the wind,
though part of me longs
to find beauty everywhere.
Ah, the longing to see beauty
shapes the way I meet the world.
There. Seeing this truth—
beautiful as a golden flower.

Read Full Post »

At the Bookshelf

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »




Today I touch the spines of the books
I have saved—run my hands over
shelves and shelves of poems
and stories and teachings and text books,
some I have never read, some
that have made a home in me.
I touch them as if to touch is to love,
as if the books themselves could feel
the enormous gratitude I have for the ways
their words have changed my life.
Touching them, I touch the days
I’ve spent curled up in couches and beds,
transported into other realms
of loss and belonging. I touch the longing
in me to be known, to be seen, to be heard,
to have a story worth telling, a story
worth living. I touch the fear that I am not enough,
and the hope that it is not too late
and the steadying pulse of the moment.
And the moment, generous as it is,
reaches out with its invisible hands
and touches me back, touches me here
as I stand by the shelves, touches
all the stories I tell myself, touches
the one who’s left as the stories fall away.

Read Full Post »

Sometimes, Like Today, We Remember

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 27, 2019| 3 Comments »

 

 

 

that everyone, even the driver in the white jeep

who cut in front of you, yes, even

the elegant woman in the dairy aisle and

the man who seems lost on the library steps

and the child sitting alone on the bench, yes

everyone has a story—fears and hopes

and something to learn and someone they love

and someone who’s hurt them and someone

they long to hold. And though their stories

are mostly invisible, they’re always

more complex than whatever we project

and they’re every bit as real as our own.

The woman in the dairy aisle smiles at you,

and though she is wearing diamonds in her ears,

she looks lonely. Or is it you, who is lonely?

Is it all of us? All of us longing for someone

to truly see us. And that driver you’re cursing,

don’t we all sometimes feel as if we need

to move forward any way we can? And that

boy on the bench, notice the empty seat beside him?

Perhaps you could sit there, too, in the sun.

Who knows what might happen next?

Read Full Post »

Four Revisions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 8, 2013| 3 Comments »

oh foolish woman
still trying to build a castle
out of thoughts

*

add this to
the list of gratitudes,
another perfect sunrise

*

all this time
I thought I was blindfolded
my eyes were closed

*

when the glass slipper
does not fit, learning
the joy of bare feet

Read Full Post »

Talking with Christie till 2:45 a.m.: Three Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 16, 2013| 6 Comments »

Talking with Christie Till 2:45 a.m: Three Haiku

not every story
ends this way
the end

*

I wish, she says,
someone told me it doesn’t
get easier

*

on the driveway
finding ourselves
in the universe

Read Full Post »

And the Field Turns into 10,000 Paths Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 8, 2012| 4 Comments »

I drop
these stories
of who and how—
every barrier between us
crumbles

Read Full Post »