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Posts Tagged ‘tears’

The Last Parent Teacher Conferences

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 3, 2026| 2 Comments »


 
 
If I were like Suzanne Valadon,
fearlessly painting self-portraits as I age,
I would paint this moment
when I wander the high school halls
between teacher conferences, this moment
when I’m so full of love for the girl
who will graduate this spring
that I’m weeping and laughing
beside yellow lockers and posters
for basketball games. Gratefulness
can break a heart open as easily as sorrow.
In fact, the tear as it reaches the curve
of my lips, I think it would fill the whole frame.

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All the Tears

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 14, 2025| 4 Comments »

 
 
As I cry chopping onions,
I imagine the onions
cry for me, too, and
with each slice, they
wonder when I will ever
peel off all these layers I’ve
been adding in the name
of growth. When I add
the onions to the pan,
they become more clear.
You can do it, too,
they seem to say.  
Let the world open you
and weep with the gift
of giving yourself away.
 

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On the Eve of His 21st Birthday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 11, 2025| 18 Comments »


 
 
There is a joy that chases sadness
and sometimes overtakes it, as if
the two are racing down a hill,
their shadows sometimes merging—
and this is how a woman looking at a photo
of her son when he was still alive,
his face radiant with elation,
might find herself not knowing
if her tears are made of gratefulness
or sorrow, two parallel emotions
that sometimes twine inside us.
Nor does it matter to her.
Gratefulness. Sorrow. It seems right
she should weep either way.
Both feelings are fashioned from love.
She is here for all of it.
The salt tastes just the same.

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One Day Later

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 15, 2024| 2 Comments »

after drying the tears
her fear
still wet

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One While Watching the Film

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 31, 2024| 3 Comments »

my daughter’s tears
find their way
into my eyes

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Short poem, big invite

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 28, 2024| 4 Comments »

One Life
 
your tear
my tear
one water


*

Love Letters to Vincent
Monday, July 29, 6 p.m. mountain time
zoom

Dear Friends, 

Tonight was the most incredible, terrifying, heart-re-wounding, heart-re-saving, transformative night. Kayleen Asbo and I performed a tribute to Vincent van Gogh live in Telluride in The Palm theater (the stage where my son used to dance and where my daughter still dances), hosted by The Palm and Telluride Chamber Music. If you were not able to join us (and even if you were), please join Kayleen & me online on Monday night, 6 p.m. mountain, for a recording of the evening. One person said it was “extraordinary, healing, alchemical.” and another said “Transcendent! What a triumph. Haunting in the best of ways.”  We will, in time, have a fully edited video to share with you–with multiple camera views and the images of van Gogh. For Monday, we will be able to share the wide-lens view with really good sound. 

All donations will fund the completion of our recording project, and a tree will be planted for each registration through One Tree Planted. Come with a candle and a journa. As we connect, we wrap our arms around what it means to be human and in a communal ritual of love, loss, gratitude, wonder and a celebration of how beauty and devotion can reach out to transform the world. Sliding scale donations, Zero-$40.00. There will be a recording for anyone who can’t make it life. 

To register, click here

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Reasons to Weep

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 3, 2023| 17 Comments »

 
 
Because I’m flooded
with feelings, I weep.
Because feelings
are not enough, I weep.
Because your actions
have moved, me, I weep.
Because there is so much more
that wishes to be moved, I weep. I weep.
I weep because someone must weep.
Is it true, someone must weep?
Once they hired women to weep
because they knew the expression
of grief was essential—
they paid them to wail
and scratch at their faces and mourn.
But what does the blue sky care if I weep?
Or the gray sky? Or sunset? Or dawn?
What do tears mean to the dead?
What do they mean to the living?
I weep because I can’t stop the tears.
I weep because tears can’t stop me.
I weep because tears invite me
into the flow of all water,
the flow which goes the way all things go,
away from the self to shores of the all,
and from the shores of the all
back into the core of the self.
 

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True Story

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 16, 2023| 9 Comments »


with enormous thanks to Kristen
 
 
In this story, the grave keeper
is a woman named Kristen.
She plants grass seed
where soils have been disturbed.
She pulls weeds by the roots
instead of poisoning them.
She learns the birthdays of the dead.
When a mother comes to sit
by her child’s tombstone,
the grave keeper gives her space,
but as the mother leaves,
she offers her a quiet smile, a hug.
Kristen knows the name of the child.
In this story, when the mother
leaves the graveyard,
dead flowers in her hands,
she is filled with no less grief,
but there is something generous
alive in her now, too,
soft as the new grass that thrives
around her son’s headstone,
loving as the grave keeper’s voice
when she whispered, Happy Birthday.
When the mother tells this story,
she weeps every time.
It’s not for sorrow
tears slip from her eyes.

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Once Upon a Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 16, 2023| 14 Comments »

While dancing barefoot in wet grass
with the dark all around us and
the star-bright sky above
and a song in the air and joy
and sorrow crashing through me
in equal force, it is only now
with tears running down my face
I realize the tears themselves
are the river where I can lay down
my burdens, these tears are the stream
that will never run dry, these tears
are the river where I will again
and again and again return to pray,
Oh sister, let’s go down, come on down,
and Hallelujah, at last I know the river
is nowhere if not in my heart,
and if there’s a river here,
then every moment is a baptism,
every moment a chance to be lifted,
to be healed.

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Contentment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 24, 2022| 4 Comments »



What were you doing when you last felt content?
            —Ada Limón


And there, beneath the white tent,
beneath the blue sky, beneath the stars
I could not see, while spinning somewhere
inside a spiral galaxy, I closed my eyes
and let the sound of flute and piano find me,
an Irish song meant to be played with a wee lilt,
though the tune itself knew something of loss,
and I felt my lungs swell and my heart expand
felt my spine straighten and my soles ground,
and I floated inside the music, stunned and surprised
by the vibrant inheritance of being alive. I hummed
with full cellular resonance and then, I was crying—
a warm spilling of tears—for what?
for beauty? for loss? for living with both in one breath?
What was it the tears meant? Oh friends,
as I felt it all with no attempt to push it away,
I was wildly, alively content.

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