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Posts Tagged ‘sweetness’

While Feeling Betrayed by a Friend

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 5, 2015| 6 Comments »

My son cuts the rhubarb while I
hull the strawberries. We sing
scales and talk about hacking.
That’s a lot of sugar, he says,
as he pours the measuring cup
into the mixing bowl. I think
of all the things I wish I could sweeten.
Just today, I kept returning
to the same bitter views.
It was like touching a bruise
to be sure it still hurts.
It still hurts. I think about how
the Dalai Lama might tell me,
go ahead. Pick up the burning coals
and throw them at the man
you think deserves them. Of course
the only hand to get hurt is mine,
but all day, I reach for the coals,
even now as my son and I
turn our talk to growing things.
This summer, we’ll harvest
our own rhubarb stalks after waiting
for three full years. I try to turn
my thoughts toward sweetnesses.
My boy. The honey of singing.
The way that the ground brings forth
what is green and vital,
year after year after year.
The pie fills the house
with a wonderful scent
as it bakes, the marriage
of sharp and sugar. You can’t
bake a pie without fire, I think.
I leave the coals where they are.

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September Harvest

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

they taste better,
the rosehips, after the frost,
softer and sweeter—
even so, it’s hard
to want the frost

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I Say Sweetness Because I Don’t Have a Better Name

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 22, 2014| 5 Comments »

Sometimes for no reason
a sweetness comes. A pink scent,
perhaps, just beyond a fence,

or the particular way that a friend
says your name. It never lasts,
and it usually passes too quickly to name,

but for that moment the body opens
to meet whatever the sweetness is—
the way the low light moves across

the field or the fragrance of rain—
and though nothing changes,
the world is a much different place.

Imagine we could constellate our lives
on these points of sweetness—
such a different kind of mapping

that would be—a life not told
in highs and lows but in the subtler
tones—the times we turned our heads

or breathed in more fully, or closed
our eyes so we might better notice
a taste. The times our hearts skip

a beat, like tiny silent thank you notes.

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With the Juice Running Down Our Chins, Our Wrists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 8, 2012| 2 Comments »

Standing in the cherry trees
all one has to do is reach

and there is sweetness,
red sweetness, dripping

sweetness, sweetness.
It will not last, but

standing in the cherry trees
this blazing moment

all one has to do is
open the hand, and reach

and there is sweetness,
not just pleasure enough, but pleasure

more than enough. It is not
a cure for whatever aches,

but it is sweet standing
in the cherry trees tonight, so sweet,

so red and so sweet.

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