Their voices sound
like giddy bees
as phrases swirl
and interweave
and poems open
like peonies—
a hush comes in
like a gentle breeze
as their wonder lands,
wades deeper in
to gather any gold
that sticks,
and though I cannot
hear what any
one voice is saying,
I taste with ears
inside the buzz
all the glorious makings
of honey.
Posts Tagged ‘teaching’
While Listening to Others Talk about Poems in Small Groups
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, poetry, pollination, teaching on March 7, 2026| 6 Comments »
Six Weeks After I Break My Foot
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, pain, stillness, teaching on May 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
It still hurts. Not like it did at first,
of course. But still. One slight change
in angle can cause a sharp zing
that brings me to stillness.
Perhaps this is the day when
I don’t resent the pain.
Perhaps this is the day
I embrace how pain belongs
to this life as much as joy,
I imagine pain is like the strict
third-grade teacher I didn’t
love at the time, but years later,
I thank for holding a line.
If there is a way to appreciate struggle
in this very moment and not wait
for the future when I see the struggle
has been good for me, well, I don’t
yet understand it. But I do know
that stillness has never come so easily
to me as it does today when, again,
I feel the ache and discover just how
lovely it is to sit here, to not move an inch,
to watch the green swallows as they fly.
Three Teachers at the End of the Writing Retreat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, history, hug, teaching on October 13, 2024| 7 Comments »
for Uche and Jon
In a trio of ecstatic days
measured in boisterous laughter
and hours of impassioned conversations,
there was also that moment when,
at the end of a brilliant night,
we stood behind the stage,
our students still raucous
and basking in each other’s shine,
and we wrapped our arms around each other
and bowed our heads till they touched,
brow to brow to brow,
a moment so brief one could easily
miss it, but this, too, is history—
the quiet breath, the words
we didn’t have to say, the pressure
of our hands against each other’s backs,
the sweetness of standing out of the light,
tired and nodding to the beauty
pulsing all around us.
Swimming Lessons
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged going down, job, nursery rhyme, summer, teaching on June 12, 2024| 6 Comments »
How scared they were that first day,
the ones who had never before put their faces
into the cold blue water of the pool.
Goosebumps rose on their tiny limbs,
mine, too, as we shivered in the shallow end.
I’d take their hands and we’d move in a circle,
Ring around the rosies—
Their little voices rang out with lisp and shine.
Pocket full of posies—
scent of chlorine and sun screen and
Ashes, ashes, we all fall—
Years later, afraid of a much different
deep end, I notice who is holding
my hands. Sometimes we sing
while we meet what we fear.
It makes it easier as we all fall down.
One Instruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, humility, nasturtium, teaching on July 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
not here to teach me
but to bring beauty
this red nasturtium
Falling In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embodiment, heartbreak, Joi Sharp, teaching on May 2, 2023| 9 Comments »
with thanks to Joi Sharp
There’s a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.
―Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Again today I rest my hand above my heart
and feel how naturally the body softens,
how simple it is in this moment to forgive
myself for thinking I should be anything
but what I am. Hello air that fills
this body. Hello life that pulses through.
Hello mystery of gentling. Hello self
who would resist. I rest my hand
above my heart and think of how
for many years my teacher laid
her teachings exactly there—
placed them right where my hand is now
so that when my heart broke,
the teachings fell in, just as the Rabbi
once said they would.
I think of how it saved me, this falling in,
how in that terrible breaking moment,
what had been understood only by the head
became blood, became breath,
became every step, every unstep,
became nerve, became bone,
became true.
I rest my hand above my heart
and feel how this, too, is the tenderest of teachings—
to say yes to the body, to ask nothing of it,
to feel in the palm the miracle of heart beat,
and fall in, fall all the way in.
Strange Teaching
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eternity, space, teaching on July 7, 2022| 10 Comments »
Sometimes when I forget to think
I feel in me eternity, feel big bang
and black hole and spiraling galaxy.
Feel myself as arc of swallow,
bend of river, canyon depth,
feel myself as wind, as branch,
as scent of evergreen,
as slowly spinning earth.
In those moments,
I feel the everything I am
and the everything I’m not—
a self so whole it is lost.
No me, no you, no other,
no here, no there, no when,
no need to name, no need
to understand, no need
to state things just so.
The quietest of teachings:
the erasing of the one
who wants to know.
By Example
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, poem, poetry, teaching on September 11, 2019| 7 Comments »
He taught me you can never have too much love
or too much ice cream in the freezer. That it matters
how you shake someone’s hand. He taught me
to pile wet seaweed on a bare patch of dirt
so the earthworms will come to the surface.
He taught me how to cast, to set the hook, to filet.
He taught me to cheer for myself. Once,
he taught me to say no, and to mean it,
and we shouted it over and over into the phone,
our voices a joyful chorus of refusal. He taught me
that despite unceasing pain, you can still
be grateful to be alive. That it is possible
to love someone very different from you.
That you can go to different schools together.
He taught me to take life seriously, and then
to speak in made up languages and giggle till you cry.
He taught me you can’t save everyone, but
you can save a few. And it’s important that you do.
The Big Lesson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, learning, poem, poetry, teaching on August 5, 2019| 14 Comments »
I’m still learning.
—Michelangelo, on his deathbed
Sometimes I feel as if
I missed something.
Something big. The sermon
that would forge a love affair
with the divine.
The history lesson
that would teach me
how to forgive myself.
The webinar that would train
me in doing the right thing
at the right time. If only
I had read the right book
or met the right coach
or drunk the right tea. If only.
I don’t believe it, not really,
though sometimes
I wish it were as easy
as auditing a class.
Perhaps that is why
I write poems.
I’m taking notes.
Because sometimes
the truth slips into them.
Because it’s surprisingly easy
to forget.
A Mighty Fortress
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, doubt, martin luther, poem, poetry, song, teaching on January 16, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I am afraid of the darkness and the hole in it.
—Martin Luther, “Luther”
And when Martin Luther was struck with plague
in 1527, he refused to leave the city, though he trembled,
though he burned. He felt it was the devil’s assault
sent to reduce him with despair. And reduced, he was.
There is darkness so great we lose all sense of direction,
forget even which way is in. There is darkness
so great that even the holes in the darkness are terrible,
cannot be seen as light. And in that terrible August,
the Reformer argued with God. And all that terrible August,
Luther trusted God’s promises. And he told himself,
Pray. Read. Sing. And the darkness endured.
Sometimes, Luther found, there are darknesses
so great we forget how to sing ourselves. Sometimes,
the only way through darkness, through doubt,
is to teach other people to sing.