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.
Posts Tagged ‘story’
Practice in Being Present
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged geese, presence, snow, spring, story on March 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
The Day Before Your Sixteenth Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, daughter, love, mother, story on July 14, 2024| 7 Comments »
We float side by side on the pond for an hour—
you in a tube, me on a paddleboard,
both of us deep in our books.
But even immersed in another world,
I slip more deeply in love with this one
in which I’m your mother and you
my girl and our stories are woven
so closely together that even before
I flip the page of tomorrow, I know
for certain I will love you even more.
Making Space
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, erasure, love, story on April 27, 2024| 10 Comments »
My heart is an unfinished poem
I begin scribbling every morning.
By noon, I sign my name.
By night, the whole page is erased.
I used to lament the erasing.
Now I love the blank more
than any scribbles I could make.
To love you is to lose my story.
Sometimes, when I am brave,
the hand doing the erasing
is my own.
What the Self Really Wants
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, infinite self, naked, self, story, what is on March 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
When the story of self
slips off like a mask, the sky
is more sky and an apple
more apple and the self
less self and more
what a wind is. How easy
to love then when I’m naked.
And how is it that always
some new story arrives,
solidifies less like a cast,
more like a strait jacket?
I notice because life
starts to fit too tight.
I notice because
I start to think I’m right.
But it’s no failure when a story
appears. Just an invitation
to notice how it feels
to be dressed in a story.
An invitation to pray
to the mystery, please,
once again undress me.
An invitation to be grateful
for the hands (whose hands?)
that loosen the story
and free me. An invitation
to let the self remember this:
how it longs to be spacious,
to be as infinite as what is.
Still Changing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, grief, move, stillness, story on December 19, 2023| 7 Comments »
How seldom he was still,
more humaning than human,
more aliving than alive.
Mostly he was running
or jumping or lunging.
Mostly he was spinning
or flopping or dodging.
Even as he sat,
which he seldom did,
his leg was pumping,
his fingers fidgeting.
But there were times,
like when we snuggled on the couch
to read books,
when his whole body quieted
as if to better listen
to the story,
as if he was captive
to the characters’ struggles,
every cell of him rapt
to know what came next.
Now I see how active
a stillness can be,
how far he was moved
when he was motionless,
how even now as I sit here
still as his tombstone,
I am spellbound
by the still changing story
of his life—
how because I am still
all of me is moved,
until I’m a new woman
sitting in the same place.
When She Is Being Herself
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Kayleen Asbo, story, transformation on July 28, 2023| 4 Comments »
I listen as she spins
gold out of words,
infusing the room
with grail and goddess,
with Celtic greens
and Grecian blues,
until the whole room
is glowing and golden, lit
by her love for the world.
Stories are, perhaps,
one of the simplest
proofs that miracles exist.
Look how before
there was only a room.
Now everything
and everyone in it
is shining, changed,
drenched in grace.
The Invitation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, invitation, love, reframe, story on December 31, 2021| 15 Comments »
Two nights after he died,
all night I heard the same
one-line story on repeat:
I am the woman whose son
took his life. The words
felt full of self-pity,
filled me with hopelessness, doom.
And then a voice came,
a woman’s voice, just before dawn,
and it gave me a new shade of truth:
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
It did not change the facts,
but it changed everything
about how I met the facts.
Over a hundred days later,
I am still learning what it means
to love him—how love is
an ocean, a wildfire, a crumb;
how commitment to love changes me,
changes everyone,
invites us to bring our best.
Love is wine, is trampoline,
is an infinite song with a chorus
in which I am sung.
I am the woman who learns
how to love him now that he’s gone.
May I always be learning how to love—
like a cave. Like a rough-legged hawk.
Like a sun.
Still Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, butterfly, learning, story on December 9, 2021| 9 Comments »
Tonight when I see a photo
of myself from almost thirty years ago,
I stare at the woman in white lace
the way a butterfly might stare
at that strange nibbling larva—
curious. It doesn’t occur to me
to tell her about what will happen.
I flit by as she stays on the wall.
She’ll learn soon enough. I breathe
into my wings. She’ll learn.
Note to My Future Self
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged future, patience, self talk, story on May 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Please don’t tell me what will happen.
I’ve peeked before at the end of a book
and know how one detail learned too soon
can ruin the entire story.
Not that I wish to be patient.
Of course, I want to know what’s coming,
but this story only works in present tense.
Even when it makes me weep,
even when I’d rather put this story down,
even when I’d like to rewrite the last scene,
please, don’t give me even a little hint.
I am not sure I believe in happy endings,
but I believe in turning the page,
in holding the weight of the book in my hands,
and racing through the text,
my eyes eager to discover what comes next.
Lights Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, story on June 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
We would be tucked into our twin beds,
and dad would sit in the door way.
Every night, he’d tell us a story about a boy
and a girl who were very much
like my brother and me, only they lived
amongst the dinosaurs. I don’t remember
how the stories went, but I remember
how I loved them, how my father’s voice
became part of the night, how everything
always turned out right for the kids
in the story. How much I wanted
to be that girl who rode on a pterodactyl,
and how grateful I felt to be the girl I was,
snug under the thin blue blanket,
our small room a cave where anything
could happen, the low tones of my father
quietly cradling me toward sleep.