In soil not yet worked this spring,
two perfect rows of parsley emerge
in a curly leafed celebration of green,
vestiges from last year’s planting.
Where is not garden?
Good hands, what will you do
with this new trust rising
out of what looked like failure?
Posts Tagged ‘trust’
In Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged failure, garden, parsley, patience, seeds, trust on March 28, 2026| 6 Comments »
For What Ails Us
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, connection, friendship, healing, heartache, medicine, trust on March 25, 2026| 4 Comments »
Wini weeps as she tells me “everyone is so broken,”
and a small shrine appears in the tear on her cheek.
I kneel inside it as it slips to her chin.
My throat clenches, my own heart widens,
enlivened by how deeply Wini cares,
and somehow her heartache begins to mend
my own grief for this cruel and callous world.
More than any beauty. More than the uplifting song
of the red wing black bird trilling through the open window.
More than the scent of basil and lemon.
More than the dark silhouette of two herons winging
through the nectarine sunset. Wini’s tears heal me.
Shared ache becomes its own medicine.
No. Not the ache. The medicine is in the love that fuels
the ache. It feels so right, I forget to wish it didn’t hurt.
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| 6 Comments »
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.
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?