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Posts Tagged ‘time’

I left the ocean

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 23, 2026| 13 Comments »


 
but the ocean followed me
to the mountains, bringing
its vastness to the day. 
Sometimes it takes me a whole hour 
to swim to the other side of a minute. 
When I arrive, somehow dry, 
at my desk in my chair,
there is salt on my skin, currents 
in my breath, scent of brine
still tangled in my hair. 
 

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This Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 20, 2026| 4 Comments »



Driving past the graveyard
listening to news
as it explodes—
while we breathe 
it’s never too late
to choose compassion.

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One Waiting for College Admissions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


after Hokusai
 
I fall asleep, wake,
fall asleep, wake, meanwhile
the sapling becomes a great spruce

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The Outing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 6, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
Because once I was an ocean
and now I am a mother,
because every single moment
is integral to ever after,
I give myself to this snowy hour
skiing into the woods with my daughter
and know that no matter how brief a day,
an hour lasts forever.

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Too Late?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 28, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
 
By the time we arrive at the cliffside
to watch the sunset, the darkness
has already come. But because
of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands
of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.
And moonlight on the water makes
the blackened surface shine. How often
do I think I’m too late, only to find I have
arrived at just the right moment,
the moment in which there is a beauty
beyond the one I knew to wish for.
Like how, when I thought it was too late
to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its
soft and generous hands. Like how when
I thought I was too late to love, love
bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,
and stayed, the way sunsets never do.
Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,
I came to learn how exquisite, how
lavish, how astonishing, the dark.

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Reunion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 28, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
And though it has begun to rain
and the Bernedoodle jumps and squirms
between us and though it has been
thirty three years since last I saw her,
I want to linger in the yard when I hug Susie,  
and for a moment I am again eighteen
and we are snowshoeing up a fourteen-thousand-
foot peak. The winter sun is brilliant; we
are laughing and I’m exhausted and so alive,
and I am standing in a suburb as golden
leaves whirl and Susie is in velveteen pants,
her hair streaked gray, and she is not at all the same
girl I remember and also exactly the same,
meeting me with a smile, offering to carry
what is mine, speaking of gardens and knitting
and tea. And we’re on the summit of Mt. Elbert
and I wrap my arms around those girls we were.
I thank them for loving each other then,
how that love opens a door to this very moment
to create an intimacy that needed no tending,
as mullein seeds sometimes wait decades
before they bloom. I release Susie and bend
to nuzzle her puppy, a marvel of zeal and scruff.
Is it rain on my face, or tears? I take that young
girl I was by the hand. She walks inside with us.

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Calendaring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2025| 4 Comments »

since I last held you
I measure the days 
in fallen leaves—
great brown mounds
beneath empty branches

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Sitting with My Husband at the Wedding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 22, 2025| 6 Comments »


Watching the bride
and her father walk
the long distance
from the house
to the benches
in the grass,
I don’t even try
to hide my tears,
fat and warm,
my whole being aware
of how big it is
to give one’s life
to another,
and with her
every step,
my own
wedding comes
closer until
it is me
in a white dress
on the arm
of my father,
my husband
the man at the end
of the aisle,
my own lips
speaking till death
do us part,
my eyes glittering,
spilling, wet—
how sweet now
when the man
on my left
offers me his tissue
and somehow
with his kindness
and a wrinkled hand,
I touch those tears
thirty years ago.

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Multitudes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 7, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Over twenty years ago I walked
this same trail to Hope Lake
and crossed the same creeks
and picked my way through
the same talus which is always
falling in the path. I gathered
ripe raspberries and stared
at the red peaks all around.
Who was I then? A stranger
with my same name. I don’t
blame her for not knowing  
she was young. As we climb,
I hold her hand. We don’t
say anything, I don’t want
to scare her. And who is that,
waiting for us at the edge?
Some future version of me
I can’t quite make out, but
her arms are open. Her smile
says she were expecting us.
And though it’s about to rain,
we all slip out of our clothes
to slip into the deep blue lake.
Quick, I say to all my selves,
and as one, we enter in.
Long after we leave the lake,
inside me, they continue to swim. 
 

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A Scrap in Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2025| 5 Comments »


 
 
Something about the relentless beauty
of the dahlias this year makes me forget
lists and calls and news and aches as
I stand beside them in a splendor stupor,
watching them bloom in real time, not
wanting to miss a moment of the long stems
rising, the red color deepening then fading
from the petals as they age. I imagine a time lapse
begins, and the world’s winter white, then greening
again, and now a hundred years pass,
now five hundred, a thousand, and the garden
bed is gone and the fence is gone and
the trees and the ditch and the home
are gone, and there’s no way to know
this was once a place where dahlias grew.
Is it any wonder, then, I call to you, ask you
to come stand here with me to watch
the dahlias open themselves to the sun,
each petal a hymn to the present,
a history soon to be forgotten, a shimmer in time
we might put in a vase and marvel as
all around it the whole world spins.

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