while I didn’t look up
from the storm in my book
the whole yard filled with snow
Posts Tagged ‘storm’
One Inner Weather
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, reading, storm, weather on February 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Midnight Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dreams vs. reality, lover, nightmare, reality, sleep, storm on January 27, 2024| 4 Comments »
heart thumping fast
as windshield wipers
attempting to keep
the vision clear
in a hurricane,
oh love,
lay your sleep-warm hand
on my sleep-warm leg,
remind me what is dream,
what is real
That Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenge, snow, storm, winter on February 21, 2023| 11 Comments »
It was like driving through a winter storm
for years, day after week after month
after night after morning of white-knuckled,
stiff-shouldered worry. No tracks to follow,
no sign of a centerline, no rails on the edge,
and where are the snowplows, and what
good is a map when you can’t read the signs?
There were whole months of white out, driving snow-blind
and slow, whole seasons of running the wipers on high
in an attempt to see just one inch further.
It was icy roads, skidding with the baby in back.
It was wishing I could ask someone else
to take the wheel. It was frozen-slick and slippery
with no studded snows. It was sliding with no brakes.
It was what I woke to everyday
and what I dreamed at night.
If there was beauty, I was too afraid to see it.
I wish I could tell you I was brave.
It was slow to change,
like a spring that arrives only to leave again.
One day the drifts were gone and the roads
were dry and the sky was wide blue and clear.
But it wasn’t like snow, was it?
Some things don’t just melt away.
Some storms transform the landscape forever.
Some storms transform the driver.
Not Just an Optical Illusion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged illusion, love, rainbow, storm on June 8, 2021| 7 Comments »
Just because we cannot touch a rainbow
doesn’t mean it does not exist.
And just because a rainbow is predictable—
sunlight bent in a water drop
at an angle of forty-two degrees
and separated into all its wavelengths—
doesn’t mean it is not a miracle.
How many times have I been unable to touch you,
and yet I am certain of love.
And hasn’t a downpour taught us
to see all our own colors,
shown us how to bend to the world
in ways startling and new.
And isn’t it strange, how love
keeps shifting, changing place,
moves even as we move,
all the while shining, astonishing us
with what a little light in a storm can do.
Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, prayer, rain, storm, transformation on July 17, 2020| 9 Comments »
You need a rainstorm.
—Paula Lepp
I need a rainstorm
on the inside, the kind
that relentlessly pours,
the kind that rearranges
everything, leaves nothing
untouched. I need a deluge
that drowns out any voices
that would offer easy answers.
I need a cloudburst to flood
everything I think I know,
that carries me until I, too, am current.
Have I gotten so dry inside,
so brittle and sure?
Give me a gulley washer,
the kind that scours
and remakes its path as it flows.
I want it, and yet
when I feel the first drops
I scramble for the umbrella,
as if it would do any good.
There it is, petrichor—
earthy fragrance of change.
The big rain will come when it comes.
There will be no stopping it then.
Love Poem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fight, love, peace, poem, poetry, snow, storm on February 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The Next Storm Comes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginnings, magic, new year, poem, poetry, snow, storm on December 31, 2018| 4 Comments »
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
—Meister Eckhart
And suddenly you know it’s time
to shovel the drive. For though snow
still falls, at this moment it’s only
three inches deep and you can still push it easily
with your two wide yellow shovels.
Yes, it’s time to start something new—
though it doesn’t feel new, this
shoving snow from one place to another.
In fact, your shoulders still feel
the efforts of yesterday.
But with each push of the shovels,
the path on the drive is new again. At least
it’s new for a moment, new until snow
fills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.
How many beginnings are like this?
They don’t feel like beginnings at all?
Or we miss their newness?
Or they feel new only for a moment
before they’ve lost their freshness?
There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,
and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,
a new path, a new promise, a new meal.
A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.
Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?
Too grand to call it magic, this momentary
clearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,
this momentary clearing in my thoughts?
Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—
something we allow ourselves to believe,
despite logic, despite reason, something that brings
us great pleasure, makes us question
what we thought we knew, our sense
of what is possible changed.
Riding My Bike Up to Sanborn Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bicycle, poem, poetry, rain, storm, vulnerability on September 2, 2018| 2 Comments »
Standing beneath the pinion tree
I am almost dry, while all around me
the rain almost attacks the road.
I lean my head against its shagging bark
and watch the world transform from dust
to shine. Thunder rends the darkened sky.
I knew when I began the ride
the rain was impatient.
I knew it would be no gentle shower.
How odd to trick myself into being
caught in a storm. How often I choose the gale.
Small bits of bark tear off in the wind,
fall to the cactus, the dirt. Eventually,
I am no longer content to watch
and pull my bike into the rain. Wasn’t
this what I wanted somehow, to be
unguarded, exposed, out? Within a minute
my clothes stick to my skin, and I shiver,
in part from the chill, in part because
I, too, have become a shining thing.
One Inescapable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged escape the self, poem, poetry, storm on February 11, 2018| 2 Comments »
Ducking into the woods
it is harder to tell
the storm has come—
though here
beneath the trees
in my own chest,
thunder.
And the Forecast is for More
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, fear, parenting, poem, poetry, storm, thunder on September 18, 2013| 3 Comments »
Though there is not a thing I can do
to calm the heart-stilling fat slam of thunder,
my daughter clings to me and whimpers.
Immense tides of rumble shudder the sky.
Another. Another. We huddle. I whisper into
her ear, “I am here.” It is the truest thing
I know to say. In a great storm, we do
what we can. Stay close to each other.
Get quiet. Quieter. Gasp as if gasping might turn
fear to awe. Keep our eyes very, very open.