Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, sorrow, transformation on August 29, 2018| 2 Comments »
And when sorrow arrives for tea
and stains the table cloth
with its great mass of gray,
and when sorrow arrives
and drives everyone else away,
do not leave, alarmed though you are
by its slumping weight.
Offer your attentiveness.
See how it almost radiates?
There are myths in which monsters
transform into princes.
It always takes courage. And kisses.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged books, poem, poetry, transformation, words on August 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »
The words that will change us
remember, perhaps,
when they were first found
by the person willing
to serve them—
they carry in their serifs
a willingness to wait,
late nights of wrestling silence,
the wing of receiving, the joy
in sharing the gift.
When we read them, they enter us
like tiny notes in a score we never knew
we were part of until one day
there is music everywhere
and we are the ones being sung.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, language, light, poem, poetry, transformation on June 17, 2018| 2 Comments »
Just as the sun enters the room
and changes the feel, the warmth,
and the power to perceive,
the right word, too,
can be a beam, can shine
into an evening, bring
glimmer, tidings of light,
make even the darkest corners
shine. Yes even one word
can become a prayer,
a gate we pass through
to find ourselves luminous.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, poem, poetry, self talk, toaster, transformation on May 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
It’s not like the toaster
keeps secrets. Everyone
knows that all it does
is add heat for a short
duration. But that’s
all it takes to turn
something stale
into something
somehow sweeter
and warmer and
oddly much
more itself.
Heat. For a bit. That’s all.
And even knowing
this, I let the stale
parts of me stay
stale. I know from experience
that that the heat
will come whether
I choose it or not.
Though sometimes it
will burn down the house
just to toast one slice.
Better to take things
into my own hands.
Sometimes, I take
my own advice.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, river, stone, thoughts, transformation on March 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »
the rocks move
more than we think they do—
after the ice floes,
the mudslides, high water in spring
take note, you stone-like thoughts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, transformation, voice on February 5, 2018| 1 Comment »
I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.
—Theodore Roethke
There is a secret music
that fills us from within,
a clear song that rises
as the mud of our thoughts
settles out, how quietly
it arrives at first,
our own true voice.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, dave aschwanden, poem, poetry, transformation, wine on July 7, 2017| 2 Comments »
Dave slips the wine thief
into the barrel and siphons
the young red wine. Into my glass,
he spills it and asks what I taste.
Pineapple. Pepper. Currant.
In another, there is cinnamon.
In another, sunshine and almond.
The thief dips again and again
into cab franc and merlot, syrah,
and grapes I’ve never heard of before.
They are all changing,
Dave explains. Come back again
in a month, he says, and they
will all be different. I think
of what a difference a month makes,
how the heart, like wine,
stays essentially the same,
only it’s ever transformed—
the notes it carries, innuendo,
the balance. At last, we reach
the barrel of white, Gewertzraminer.
In my glass sings pear and grapefruit and
summer still shy. Though it, too, is unfinished,
I could drink it all night.
All around us, inside us,
so much is changing. I tell myself
not to fear. There can be pleasure
in this art of change,
exotic and sweet,
a hint of rose petal, spice.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heron, memory, poem, poetry, transformation on April 22, 2017| 2 Comments »
The heron flies away
and its great blue wings
touch the surface of the water.
For a time, after the heron
is gone, the twin concentric wrinkles remain.
If you leaned far enough, you could
see your reflection in ripples,
your image warped by the memory
of flight. The water
returns to its stillness,
your face again your familiar face—
but that is not the way
with all memories.
Sometimes, we
never see ourselves
the same again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, transformation on April 22, 2017| 2 Comments »
You are the elephant
and I the room,
you the lark,
the missing spoon,
you the question
that swallowed the answer,
you the music
inside the dancer,
and I am still
the waiting room—
or, perhaps, dear elephant,
a cocoon.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, Joi Sharp, poem, poetry, transformation on March 24, 2017| 4 Comments »
This is the path of failure. We see that our definition of success is what is not working. What is working is deep, unseen. —Joi Sharp
Even a small discontent is enough to shut us down,
convince us that the world is cold and indifferent.
Everywhere there’s evidence of this: The slush
that falls on your car seat when you open the car door.
The carrion eaters with their great black wings
that linger beside the road. You pray for sun,
and it gets darker. Someone asks
you a question, and you see your whole life
fold into one small envelope of failure.
Then one day you hit against the same
impassable wall you always hit and this time you fall
to your knees, not because you are weak,
but because at last you are ready to be opened.
Oh sweet failure, how it leads us.
Any unhappy ending is only an invitation
to crawl into the blank pages
of the next unwritten chapter.
It was never success that transformed us—
always the breaking. Not the breaking itself,
but the mystery inside pushing through us
like bindweed through pavement
making cracks in everything
we think we know so that the world
can come streaming in.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, transformation on November 20, 2016| 2 Comments »
with thanks to Mirabai, Lorca and Judyth Hill
I want my body to fall down
into a heap of sandalwood.
I’ve been made of crystal too long.
I have spent too many days
trying to love what I do not love.
I want my body to fall down
into a heap of mahogany.
You ask me why. The square root
of negativity is negativity.
My prayers want more than
a new language, they want
new lips, a new tongue.
Golden ideas hammer
against my facts. Before the moon’s
up, it’s already down.
I want my body to fall
into a heap of walnut or cherry.
Carve me into un violencello,
un bandalon, un arpa, smooth,
warmed and played
by curious hands into song.
The rose says this:
the square root of bliss
is bliss.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged perfume, poem, poetry, quince, transformation on October 18, 2015| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, poem, poetry, shedding, surprise, transformation on October 9, 2015| 2 Comments »
carrying that sled
uphill for so long, I forgot
it was for riding
*
shedding the roof
when the house no longer fits—
now nothing between us and the stars
*
but I miss the weight
say the hands, too free after
setting down the stone chest
*
running full speed
into my own fear, I ricochet
into the arms of god
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, poem, poetry, transformation on January 1, 2015| 3 Comments »
for Michelle
On a snowy hill
with the sky soft gray
and the wintering sage
all scrubby and dark
we wandered in circles
around the white knob
and spoke in circles
sage and gray, about
the dark and what is soft,
we were not lost, just
happy to be wandering
inside a snowy afternoon,
we found our own footprints
and stepped in them again,
though already we were not
the same women who’d made them.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self-destructive behavior, transformation, unlearning on June 3, 2014| 1 Comment »
I am perhaps like the fish
who is attracted to the hook,
the thrill of the line—
though barb is sharp,
at least for a moment
I know what it’s like
to fly.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, possibility, spring, transformation on May 26, 2014| 1 Comment »
From across the parking lot
on an early spring afternoon
you see a yellow butterfly
just before it disappears
behind the roof of the grocery store
and I am certain no scientist
could ever prove this, but
in that moment on the pavement
in the swirling chill of breeze
you are somehow saved, though you don’t
have a hint what that might mean, except
that it feels like, at least for that instant,
everything is possible.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, transformation, unfolding on May 23, 2014| 1 Comment »
just a hint of pink—
all day I fall in love
with the unfolding
*
it looks like waiting—
betcha the caterpillar
has a different story
*
the heart opens—
but first it erases
its list of shoulds
*
and what is it in us
that keeps opening—in each
blossom the next seed
*
kicking off
its shoes, the heart loves best
barefoot
*
oh foolish woman
who saw a prison here
instead of a playground
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, light, poem, poetry, transformation on May 15, 2014| 1 Comment »
in the rearview mirror
a sunset so extravagant—
I pulled a u-ey
on the main street
and stepped on the gas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, apple, pleasure, poem, poetry, transformation on September 8, 2013| 2 Comments »
Not once
has the worm
said to the apple
your flesh
does not taste
good enough.
But it is so much
nicer, you don’t
need to be a worm
to understand,
when the fruit
is full of sugar
and the dark,
lonely work
is also sweet.