You will sit naked in the center
of a circle, aware others are watching.
They’ll have white hair and point at you in delight.
You will reach beneath a fence to steal
something small, a black plastic man
with a coat that ripples in unseen wind.
Guilt guarantees the toy never brings you joy.
You name him The Stranger. He will never fit in.
Another time, you will tell your parents you wrote
your own name, then point to the teacher’s
perfect block letters. They will see through your lie,
make you sit in the corner and face the wall.
Eventually you learn being at ease with nakedness
is a superpower. Eventually you learn to delight
in the fact you will always need a teacher.
Posts Tagged ‘truth’
Child
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged child, memory, truth on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
Wonder Woman Writes Back
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poetry, superhero, truth, wonder woman on August 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
That strapless suit, those high heel boots,
those were lures. The invisible plane was, too.
The real story was always the Lasso of Truth,
that golden rope forged by Hephaestus.
Superman has his vision. The Hulk
has his strength, but sweetheart,
there is no power stronger than the truth—
the willingness to want it, the urgency
to find it, the longing to know it,
even when the truth is something
we’d rather not hear. I know you don’t
have the luxury of a lasso, but
you have poems, and they will help you
question everything you know.
Our greatest enemies are always
the ones inside us, especially
when it comes to the truth. Your greatest
gift is your wonder. Let it rope
around you, invite you into
a listening beyond the words.
What is true will always escape.
Still, devote yourself to such listening,
to a practice of circling what is true.
That circling is what will save you.
One Affirmation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged truth on May 19, 2025| 8 Comments »
cupping the truth in my hands
until my own palms
glow
Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eternity, resonane, self, truth on December 5, 2023| 18 Comments »
I am what continues.
—Joi Sharp
There is, perhaps you’ve felt it,
a moment when the day falls away
and your name falls away and
everything you thought you knew
falls away and for a moment
you know yourself only
as whatever it is
that continues—
your whole body abuzz
with the eternity of it—
and you quiver
as if struck by the great hand
of what is true,
becoming pure tone,
more vibration than flesh,
a human-shaped resonator
tuned to the frequency
of life itself,
and though later you might try
to dissect what happened,
in that moment you’re too abloom
to wonder how or why,
you simply are
this ecstatic unfolding
knowing the self as I am,
so alive and so infinite
you tremble like a song.
What the Mermaids Sang
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged depths, ekphrasis, klimt, ocean, truth on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
Truths are hidden from the surface.
—motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.
Longing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged click, trust, truth on September 8, 2023| 7 Comments »
I want to hear the click of authenticity.
—Adaline Kent
Like the clicking of crickets
on a warm Nevada night,
or the click of a camera
as it captures what’s here,
like the click of the keys
of an old typewriter,
or the click of the light
as it switches to on—
that’s what I feel when
my mind meets the truth—
as if the gears of the world
have been tickity ticking
and some sweet inner cog
has been snickity snicking
and then with soft precision
all clicks into place and
for a moment, it’s quiet,
and I’m still with what’s real,
and I soften, I lift as I trust
(can you hear it?) the click.
When My Friend Asks Me a Difficult Question
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged langauge, truth, water lily, words on August 25, 2023| 9 Comments »
I close my eyes
as if the truth might rise
from the dark
the way leaves
of water lilies
float greenly at the edge
of two worlds.
When the words do come,
I taste shine in them.
Now I don’t want to speak
in any language
that doesn’t open like lilies,
nourished by depths,
encouraged by light.
Freedom Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, shame, spaciousness, speaking, truth, words on August 23, 2023| 4 Comments »
All those words
I was afraid to say,
I gave them wings—
dark ink black wings—
and watched them
fly away, watched them
dive and circle,
swoop and soar,
enchanted by their flight.
The cage of shame
I’d kept them in,
it disappeared,
till all that was left
in me was sky.
One at the Film Festival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged film, truth on September 5, 2022| 7 Comments »
a happy ending, nice,
but what the heart most longs for—
the hairshirt of truth
Walking with Lisa to Horsefly Mesa
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, conversation, courage, friendship, truth on May 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
Beside the purple lupine
she says, “The thing I most
don’t want to talk about—”
and then, with a sigh,
she talks about it,
and the path and the wild iris
and the bear bell and I
all listen as she meets
what she most wishes not
to meet. There are moments
when we step right up
to the line that delineates
the world that is and the world
as we wish it would be,
and no matter how much it hurts,
there is such relief in meeting the truth
that I swear as she spoke
the world was even more itself—
the lupine more purple,
the sky more blue,
and my heart more a heart
because of her courage
to take off her mask
and says this, this is what’s real.
Meeting Some Truths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalance, loss, truth, winter on February 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
The truth was an avalanche—
an avalanche midsummer,
which is to say
it didn’t seem possible,
but it happened.
And I was buried
beneath the cold
immense weight of it.
Crushed but still breathing—
another impossible truth.
I know some would like to see
the uprooted world
already green and lush again,
but anyone who
has wandered through
old avalanche paths
knows it takes many seasons
before the fallen old growth trees
have moldered into soil,
many seasons before the new saplings
have grown into forest again.
One truth is, the healing begins quickly,
but takes a long time.
Even then, the forest is never the same.
One truth is, so much of transformation
happens beneath perception.
One truth is, we all live
in the avalanche path.
Meeting Grief Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, self, truth, who am I on February 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
I was wrong, grief,
when I said you had become me,
integral as bone.
It is true you are woven
through the fibers
of every moment.
It is true, you have taken up
residence here, like a cat
that sleeps in my bed.
It is true you have brought
the most beautiful,
unwelcome gifts—
silver songs that emerge
from keening—songs that crawl
before they soar—
and an openness
I once prayed for
before I understood the cost.
But we are not knitted, grief—
not bonded, not joined.
Whatever is most essential in me
is truer than the story
you’ve been written into,
truer than page itself.
Whatever is most essential in me
longs to know you,
longs to dance naked
and unashamed with you,
but it is entirely unchanged by you.
Whatever is most essential in me
thanks you for the lessons
that keep me asking who I am.
I closed my eyes, and the light came in.
Who am I? I asked, and I watched
the story disappear from the page,
as if the ink were a murmuration.
Who am I? I ask, and the only answer
alive on my tongue
is thank you.
One Memoir
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book, love, thoughts, time, truth on February 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
these beautiful thoughts
old pages turned yellow
every word still true
Hiding Comes Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiding, truth on January 27, 2021| 2 Comments »
The hiding doesn’t want to hide anymore.
It’s done with shadows and corners and masks.
All it wants is to show up. To step out.
To be seen. There was a time
when everything frightened it, when hiding
was desperate for a veil, a shroud, a disguise.
Hiding doesn’t remember what changed.
It only knows that one day it was no longer content
with holing up. Couldn’t. It no longer fit in its hole.
It wants big sky and meadows and space.
It wants to skip down main street.
Naked. It wants to know itself and be known,
to be as out there as exposé, as confession,
as a kiss on the sidewalk at noon. It wants
headlines. Declarations. Independence.
It knows things might get messy.
That’s why it brought a broom,
but damned if it will wear gloves.
It wants to get all that dirt in its fingernails.
It wants the callouses that come with revelation.
Choosing Truth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choices, survival, truth on January 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
And if I find I’d rather not meet the truth,
then I can notice the little girl in me,
the one who hides in the closet
when she is afraid, the one who plays dead,
the one who ends all her stories with happily
ever after, and I can choose to love her.
I don’t need to drag her out or force her to look
or tell her that sometimes the villain wins in the end.
Instead, I can remind the rest of me how alive I feel
when I meet it all, when I choose to enter the day
eyes open, ears open, hands open
and let the world in. That is how,
on this day when I know the truth
of how cruel we humans can be,
I can lean into that pain at the same time
I watch the sky turn pink behind the white aspen
and feel the cold air kiss my cheeks,
my breath rising in visible prayer
meeting difficult truths I walk right through.
Taking It All Off
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Kierkegaard, nakedness, truth on September 25, 2020| 4 Comments »
In order to swim, one takes off all one’s clothes—in order to aspire to the truth, one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one’s inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness, etc., before one is sufficiently naked.
—Søren Kierkegaard
And so I attempt to slip out
of the shirt of defensiveness,
slip off the belt of shame.
I wriggle against the jeans
of righteousness and tug
off the socks of distrust.
It’s scary to take it all off,
but everything else feels too tight
these days, and damn,
I just want the truth so bad,
want to wear it like my own skin,
want to step into it like slippers
I will never take off, want to
wear it like boots that will
carry me over any terrain,
want to wear it like
an eternal perfume—
something I am sure is there
even with my eyes closed,
even in the dark.
Finding Faith
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beets, faith, garden, truth on September 20, 2020| 8 Comments »
While pulling the beets,
it’s impossible to lose faith
in the world. Those tiny seeds
that once fit in the palm are now
large red globes,
dense with dark sweetness
and heavy in the hand.
They are like promises kept,
like small proofs in patience,
confirmations that sometimes
the good that’s growing can’t be seen.
They are like hard truths.
Not everyone will want them.
Some will.
Ars Poetica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, ars poetica, blank, question, truth on August 11, 2020| 8 Comments »
All these years of wandering,
toward what? On a blank page,
where are the secrets hidden?
How many mysterious paths?
If there is a truth, perhaps it, too, is blank.
If there is way, perhaps it, too, is wandering.
Sometimes I just want the answer.
Always it comes back to this:
An orbit. A spiral. A mobius trip.
A boundary curve where the question
is its own topology, where the question
is its own astonishing arrival.