There comes a day when a woman knows
she’s more Mother Superior than Maria—
and though she spent decades dreaming
of spinning on stage singing The hills are alive,
she now knows she’s more likely
to be cast standing in a habit, clutching a rosary,
singing Climb every mountain.
How many dreams pass us
before we realize they’ve gone?
Already I know I will never climb Everest,
will not be an Olympic Nordic skier,
will not research the cure for AIDS.
Every day I am less the woman I dreamt I would be
and more the woman I am—
which is, apparently, a woman who sits in the balcony
to see “The Sound of Music” and drives home happy,
still singing about how her heart
wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise
from the lake to the trees.
A woman who is learning how,
now that her dreams have faded,
she can be more present than ever.
Posts Tagged ‘theater’
Still Singing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, musical, self, singing, Sound of Music, theater on October 24, 2022| 7 Comments »
At the End of Les Miserables
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, musical, sister, theater on February 1, 2020| 1 Comment »
And again tonight, despite injustice and hatred,
Jean Valjean learns to love. And again tonight,
in the face of fear and prejudice, he finds kindness.
And again tonight, I weep as he nears his death.
I couldn’t say for whom I am weeping—for him,
for the girl he adopted, for the mother who died,
for the empty chairs, for the whole cast
who remind me too much of the world we live in.
For myself, of course, and my longing to do
what is right. But more than anything, I weep
with the memory of watching this very same scene
thirty years ago, sitting beside my brother,
both of us baptized in tears as Fontine and Eponine
sing behind Valjean, reminding him it is no small miracle
to love someone. I couldn’t have known then
how this would be the memory I’d return to again
and again when I think of my brother. There we are,
young and full of competing ideals, holding each other,
laughing through our crying, ready to meet the world
and each other tear-stained and open to news of grace.
Thoughts After Watching The Taming of the Shrew
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hero, poem, poetry, showing up, Taming of the Shrew, theater on June 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And after the lying and cheating
and scratching and beating
and lusting and raging,
deceiving and craving,
after almost three hours
we finally know
that no one, no one
is a hero.
And we walk
through the rain
on this imperfect night
to the stain of our cars
and our imperfect lives.
And it rains.
In the great cast list,
my name will be
listed as the woman
who always played me—
the one who never
quite got the role right,
but damn,
she showed up
with her lines
every night.
From the Front Row
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self awareness, theater on April 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
She watched herself on stage,
and though she wept for the sad parts,
she didn’t wish them away—
they made the story better.
She easily laughed every time she forgot her lines.
And several times, though the play wasn’t done,
she gave herself an ovation.
Why not, she thought. I’m doing
a damn good job up there.
I wonder what took me so long
to see I got the lead. I can’t wait to see
where this play is going.
Ode to John Klug
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ability, advice, john klug, poem, poetry, teenager, theater on February 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
What was the best advice you got as a teenager?
—Question asked in the Positive Youth Development Training
Sitting in the old one-room schoolhouse
and trying to remember any piece of advice,
I come up blank, which makes me think brain scientists
are right: the prefrontal cortex had not yet kicked in.
Makes me think, why give a teen advice?
They won’t listen now. They won’t remember it later.
But then, clear as a clap, I am standing on stage
in my pedal pushers and my fake Izod shirt, and I hear
John Klug’s voice howl from the theater’s back row,
“I can’t means I won’t.” That is right before
he strides to the front of the stage, picks up the easel
and throws it into the empty audience,
where it lands in the training I attend thirty years later,
and I stare at it beside me, astonished he threw it,
but even more astonished at how simple it was,
the way he changed my life, how that afternoon
he guaranteed that every time I hear the phrase I can’t,
I see the chance to say instead, I can do it. I’ll try.
One on the Ride Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting go, performance, poem, poetry, theater on May 20, 2018| 1 Comment »
I Always Love Him, But There Was
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, Les Miserables, poem, poetry, sisiter, theater on September 29, 2017| 4 Comments »
that Sunday afternoon in Madison
when we went to brunch, then found our seats
in the theater where the French Revolution
is waging again and a man falls in love
and the woman dies and her daughter is horribly
enslaved, and my brother, a bear of a man,
the heavyweight champion wrestler who
routinely pinned behemoths to their backs
and threw keggers to “make me clean
the floors,” my brother beside me
cried enough tears for the whole globe,
a lightning rod for sorrow, as if his heart
were big enough to take on the burdens
of the whole world, how I loved him then,
his face radiant and glistening,
both of us weeping near to heaving
and holding each other’s hands, smiling
at each other in the dim light, both of us
seeing ourselves as the other as the players
built a barricade and all our walls fell down.