We lay on the porch in the dark
marveling up at the sky, Orion’s
belt at our feet, Jupiter just up
to the left. We chatted of satellites
and the soft milky way glow; we
named the constellations we could.
And when young Winston laid his head
on my chest and I felt the gentle ease
in his small warm weight, I was equal
parts universe and human—
astonished again by how, in this vast,
cold, expanding world, we have been given
the capacity to trust. And no matter
how bleak it sometimes gets on earth,
there are also moments such as this,
when we come together to gaze into the night
and, lingering in immensity, we feel it,
side by side by side by side by side by
side by side, the gift of loving each other,
dark though it may be.
Posts Tagged ‘trust’
Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side by Side
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged constellations, family, love, night, trust on March 13, 2026| 3 Comments »
In that Tender Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, friendship, honesty, tenderness, trust on February 22, 2026| 6 Comments »
for Paula
With one fingertip
I drew gentle spirals
on the smooth, bare
skin where only weeks
ago her hair had been
and her eyes fell closed
and her breathing slowed
and I felt her whole body
soften, felt how strong,
how brave she has had
to be for so long, so long.
How I loved her then
in that moment when
she let me see beneath
the smile, beneath
the shine, beneath
the laugh. How I loved
her then when she let
me in, how honest
her exhaustion,
how precious,
how rare,
her trust.
In These Dark Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amaryllis, dark times, hope, life, life force, trust on January 28, 2026| 4 Comments »
From what darkness in its center
does the amaryllis call forth
the tall green stalk, the muscular bud,
the voluptuous petals pealing back
from the center like radiant red bells?
What impossible sun shines
inside the rough-skinned bulb
to generate such lushness,
such extravagant beauty?
I want to know it, to trust it,
this bright immensity that pulses through
what is darkest in me, this life force
that cannot fit inside, that thrusts
through the desiccated skins
of my exhausted hopes to reveal itself
vulnerable and soft, vital, astonishing,
belonging to no one, alive within us all.
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, connection, love, trust on June 23, 2025| 12 Comments »
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
It was the boy at baggage claim who started it.
His elation! Each time a new bag would drop,
he would point at the suitcase and squeal,
then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight.
His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed
at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words
a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch
than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think,
I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen.
Didn’t need to know their stories to know
they were worthy of love. Everyone a grandchild.
Everyone a light. It was like, how on these midsummer
nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields
and everything, every whole and broken thing, is beautiful.
Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine.
Russia. Somalia. Yemen. America. I will never know you,
yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange
and beautiful spark. Each of us longs to belong.
No matter what our leaders do, the light is right
to see how much we all long to be safe, to be seen,
to be kind, to be trusted, to meet on any street,
in any room, all of us slivers of divinity.
In Times Such as These
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, friendship, trust on May 2, 2025| 6 Comments »
In the night dark room
we sit together and speak
in tones tender enough
for anything to be said,
even vast things
that frighten us most,
even shimmery things
that surprise us,
and the night is a spindle
that twines the honesty
and courage of our words
into yarn, and trust is a needle
that uses the yarn
to stitch us together
so even when we are apart,
I can tug on one of those stitches
and, from half a country away,
I feel you tugging back.
How It Is Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, doors, opportunity, possibility, trust on February 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In every moment, doors appear—
not literal, of course, with knobs and locks,
but metaphoric, yes, with thresholds and casings
and simple invitations I feel
in my body, an architecture of possibility.
I didn’t used to notice them.
Was it because they weren’t there,
or because I simply had not yet learned
to see them? Now I marvel
at how omnipresent they are,
and all they ask of me is that I choose
to step through them or not.
I recognize them more in my body
than with my mind. As if the body
has spent decades learning, oh, this is what
it feels like when a door appears.
As if the mind is at last learning to say
yes, body, I believe you. Now I trust
that I can change everything with
just one step across that invisible
threshold. Or not. Now I know
once I take that step, I can’t return
to the place I had been. And there will always be
another door. Another door. Another door.
Falling Asleep with My Head in My Mom’s Lap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged age, daughter, mother, relaxation, trust on December 16, 2024| 11 Comments »
Mom slips her fingers through my hair;
my eyes close, and I am again
a sigh of a girl, a wisp made of trust,
and I don’t know where she goes,
the middle-aged version of me
who works, who carries, who forges on.
It’s not that I ask her to leave,
she just disappears as I curl deeper
into the den of dreams, my body limp
as a kitten picked up by the scruff.
Maybe I purr. I nuzzle in deeper.
I forget to remember there is anything
else to do. It’s a lifetime before I wake.
Request
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, generous assumption, love, trust on December 8, 2024| 11 Comments »
I’m thinking of a woodland chapel
just beyond town standing tall
and straight as it can. Though
the floorboards sag and creak,
its doors open to receive whatever enters,
be it resistance or praise.
Its walls have witnessed
such laughter, such sorrow.
And the songs sung here for years
are now as integral to the structure
as the rafters. This is a place
made of love. I have found my way
again and again into its sanctuary.
I have knelt here to pray in ways
no one has taught me, prayers that rise
natural and primal as moan, as sigh,
never knowing what to expect except
that I will be safe here, that I belong.
Is it possible to make of the heart
such a generous space? A place
that generous, that sacred?
Make of my heart a woodland chapel
just beyond town standing tall and straight
as it can, a place you can enter
somehow certain you are wholly loved
no matter what you do.
I want to offer you refuge here.
Will you trust me to give that to you?
When Augusta Showed Us a Two-Minute Video of Starlings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, interconnectivity, starlings, trust on September 9, 2024| 6 Comments »
Though I don’t have wings
and though I cannot fly,
with my whole body, I felt it,
the longing to be so aware
of all that is around me
that I, too, might move through the world
like a starling, veering and rising,
turning and dropping, whirling
and doubling back in an elegant
response to what my neighbors
are doing. Does the starling
harshly judge its neighbor
when it flies the other direction?
Does the starling worry
it’s not good enough
to be in a murmuration?
Is it jealous of how its neighbors fly?
Does it wonder how
to get out of its own way?
Such human questions.
How would it be to wholly trust
we are all moving together
in some great mysterious dance?
Now I can’t stop thinking
of what Augusta said:
When we move together,
we like each other more.
It takes just one thought
to inspire a change in course.
What might happen now
when I walk out my door?
Beyond Sight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, dream, god, hand, surrender, trust on August 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
All around me, the world
was normal—people eating dinner
or walking down the street—
but my world?
Some massive, invisible hand
kept capturing me, then
tossing me into the air.
And I’d somersault
and fall and be caught,
then placed upright again
on the ground. All night
it went on like this.
I’d be walking and then
I’d be flying and then
I’d be falling and then
I’d be caught, until finally,
by morning, we couldn’t say
that it wasn’t disconcerting,
but we could say I
had become more fluent
in this strange upheaval.
We could say I
had begun to trust
the same hand that tossed me
would catch me.
We could say that when
I woke up, I was still myself
and nothing felt the same.
And though my feet
never left the ground today,
I was tossed.
And then I was caught.
Even now, I almost feel them
around my chest,
those great fingers
as they set me on my feet again.