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.
Posts Tagged ‘tears’
The Last Parent Teacher Conferences
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged education, graduation, mother, parenting, school, self-portrait, suzanne valadon, tears on March 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
On the Eve of His 21st Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, gratefulness, grief, photo, sadness, tears 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.
One Day Later
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, fear, tears on September 15, 2024| 2 Comments »
after drying the tears
her fear
still wet
One While Watching the Film
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, daughter, empathy, film, tears on August 31, 2024| 3 Comments »
my daughter’s tears
find their way
into my eyes
Short poem, big invite
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged tears, Van Gogh 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
True Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, generosity, graveyard, kindness, labor day, loss, tears 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.
Once Upon a Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, river, song, tears 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.
Contentment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged contentment, music, tears 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.
Ode to the Saltine Cracker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, grief, mother, son, tears on December 9, 2021| 12 Comments »
Oh, salty square,
oh, bite that turns
to savory paste,
oh, flaky wafers
stacked in long
white plastic sleeves,
you fed the boy
who could never
eat enough,
attended him
through online school,
travelled with him
in his book-laden backpack,
fueled him as he
researched twin-
turbocharged V-8 engines
and fawned over
Italian luxury cars.
Finding you today
out of place
on the shelf beside
my thesaurus,
an unopened box,
I crumpled,
longing for the boy
who would have opened you.
I’d love to clean
your stupid crumbs
from the couch.
All afternoon, I taste it,
this daily salt
that falls to my lips.
In a Circle Six Feet Apart in Town Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, Heartbeat, joy, music, singing, tears on May 26, 2020| 4 Comments »
Perhaps we stumbled
on the words, perhaps
we forgot a note,
forgot a bridge,
bumbled our entrances,
fumbled our parts,
but we sang, oh yes,
we sang into the low golden light
of summer, sang
because joy, because
harmony, sang because
lonely, because fear,
sang because, tears
spilling down our cheeks,
we could sing, oh friends,
before we said goodbye,
we could sing.
Golden Slumbers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Beatles, Golden Slumbers, home, music, tears on March 6, 2020| 4 Comments »
Please pretty darlin’, do not cry.
—Paul McCartney, “Golden Slumbers” adapted from Thomas Dekkers’ “Cradle Song”
And if the candle noticed
that I played the song six times,
it didn’t say anything.
And if the pan were aware
that I struggled to find a harmony,
it kept the failure to itself.
And if the kitchen noticed
that I continued to sing the song
long after the recording was done, well—
The onion did its best
to mask any tears
that no one was there to see.
And if once there was a way
to get back homeward, well,
perhaps, perhaps it will appear again.
*To listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbcvf8a5BwM
After Six Days of Holding It Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, daughter, grief, impermanence, parents, poem, poetry, tears, vulnerability on July 25, 2019| 9 Comments »
It wasn’t until I had passed through security
and found my way into Concourse B
that I found myself sinking into a chair
across from a giant Vienna Beef poster
and began to weep. And once they began,
the tears wouldn’t stop. Nor did I try
to stop them. I had wondered in the ICU
where they were. Had wondered
again at my parents’ home. It was strange
to be so level—not cold, really, and not numb,
but oddly steeled. It was a relief, really,
to sob into my hands. To let grief take over.
To be a maidservant to fragility.
What a gift to be sideswiped with the truth
of our vulnerability. What a blessing
to be baptized in my own helplessness.
Over the loudspeaker, they announced
that a plane was delayed. As if any of us
really know when we’ll depart, when we’ll arrive.
When the tears dried, I stood. Walked
to my gate recalibrated. Called my parents
again because I could. Because I could.
In the window, I smiled at my watery reflection,
how it almost wasn’t there at all.
Ode to Tears
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, poem, poetry, tears on June 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The way day doesn’t fight
the dim before night. The way
shore does not resist the river’s rise.
The way air does not refuse
the beat of wing—that’s the way
I want to let tears come.
Why do I try to force
them from falling?
Not that it works anyway.
Still, this defiance, this struggle
to appear unmoved. And why?
When there are children who laugh
and a sky that blues and stories
that break us and laughter that
seizes us? Why try to pretend
we are not changed by the way
a child loves her mother or
a friend perseveres through cancer
or the way a math teacher reminds us we have
86,400 seconds a day to spend
and if we don’t spend them,
they are gone. It is logical to weep
when met with beauty, it is practical
to let the tears release instead
of all this stupid pretending that
we are too cool or too smart or too
sophisticated to be stirred.
No, better to notice when our toes
are dipped in the grand stream
that unites us all and let that water
move right through our eyes—
better not to try to explain it.
Better to wade in the course of tears
and refuse any boat that would keep us
from touching the water. After all,
we know how to swim. After all,
there are so many reasons
to give in to who we are.
Some Days Are Difficult For Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, poem, poetry, tears on May 16, 2018| 3 Comments »
Longing is the hardest thing to give up.
—Jim Tipton, “What is This Place I Have Come To?”
Some days can’t end soon enough,
when the heart, so full of love,
breaks and breaks again—
for beauty, for loss.
And the eyes can’t cry
another damn tear
but they do anyway,
I would rather not
cry anymore, but God,
thank you for letting me
be one of the ones
who can’t help but weep,
whose house is built
too close to the water.
What a gift to feel this horrible ache
like a lantern, golden
and soft, guiding us
deeper and deeper
into our humanness,
leading us closer
to each other, even
though we have never felt
farther away,
and though the stars
are out and at last,
thank god, it is night,
we have never
been more awake.
One Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, poem, poetry, tears on April 28, 2015| 1 Comment »
here, I’m thirsty
said my cheek
to your tear
I Do Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hurt, memory, poem, poetry, tears on August 27, 2013| 1 Comment »
I wonder
if you remember which wound
you poured it in,
the salt
in these tears