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Posts Tagged ‘struggle’

For When It’s Hard

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 9, 2026| 8 Comments »


 
 
Remember looking up
and seeing the slender moon
glowing white against the deep pitch 
of predawn? Not a star to be seen,
but there was one bright planet 
beaming steady below that slip of moon.
Remember how beautiful it was?
How it felt as if you could reach up
and grab on to the moon’s hooked tip
and just hang there for a while, 
swinging through the darkness on its light
the way you once hung on the monkey bars
and made of your weight and momentum a game.
Remember how, in that predawn moment, 
there was so much fear and so much ache,
and it took some effort to lift your head 
to look at that moon, but you did, you looked, 
and because you did, you felt it, 
the way beauty tethers us to the world,
never fixing anything, but reminding us
the ache isn’t the whole story, 
that there is also the marvelous, 
the generous, the good.

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On a Night When My Daughter Is Struggling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2023| 18 Comments »

I won’t tell her it is up to her
to repair the broken world.
Perhaps that comes later
with pen or needle, pointe shoe or song.
But for now, the thing to do
is to sit together in the broken world
and feel how it is to be broken.
To let shame sit with us.
Let grief sit with us.
To feel the sharp nails of fear.
It is not wrong to feel small,
to feel frightened, to be lost.
Nor must we feel these things alone.
So for now, I sit with her
in the brokenness
with no tools, no salve,
no metaphor of redemption.
It is not enough, perhaps
to meet brokenness
with nothing but love
and breath and a willingness
to be nowhere but here,
but in this broken moment,
it is everything.

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One with a Mud Pit in the Middle

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

playing tug of war—

my future

my past

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One Blessing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2018| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

wrestled by the moon

until daybreak, until losing my name,

I, too, am shining

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Struggle with the Divine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 1, 2012| 7 Comments »

Tonight, the storm is not here, but I see it
in the distance. Lightning unzippers the air, white shock
of illumination. The sky doesn’t hide its bruises.

Dark tents of rain settle over the flats.
And the thunder, no matter how distant, grabs me
with its enormous hands, shakes me by the shoulders,

and tells me to hush. If the angel came to me tonight
and said it were my turn to wrestle, would I tussle with him
until daybreak? Would I try to shutter him out? If he pushed me

to the earth, would I leap up and run? Or lie there and let
him take me the way the rain would if it were here?
I hush. Must we fight for our blessings? Must we steal

for our birthright? The wind dances the leaves,
ravages my hair. Angel, please do not come tonight.
I am tired. Uncertain. Oh, you are already here.

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