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.
But some will. Some will.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, ars poetica, blank, question, truth on August 11, 2020| 6 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.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, truth on February 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, psychology, reality, truth on February 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Thank you for blessing me with reality,
for showing me when I’m guilty
of what my friend calls cognitive slippage.
It’s like stuffing a big scoop of wasabi into my mouth,
thinking it’s guacamole. The mind believes
what it wants to believe until it’s shown otherwise.
Thank you for demonstrating how sometimes
I disconnect from the facts—especially when
emotions are involved. Like when I think
I’m a pool of warm soothing water
another could enter, but really, I’m a woman
made of bone and corpuscles. Little can I hold.
I always thought imagination was a gift,
but not, perhaps, when it puts me at odds with what’s true.
Dear moment, I want to be attentive. When you pull out the rug
from beneath my thoughts, I want to be the rug.
And when you poke my theories full of holes, I want
to be the hand that pokes, the fresh air that rushes in.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, seeds, speaking, sunflower, truth on January 20, 2020| 2 Comments »
Inside the bright words
there are other words
that want to be said—
small words
in dark shells.
.
It reminds me
of the sunflowers
that grew in the fall—
how we loved them
for their golden petals,
but they were true
to the small dark seeds
that grew them,
to the small dark seeds
they grew.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heaven, poem, poetry, stealing, truth on October 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, parenting, poem, poetry, truth on April 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The Truth and What-I-Want-to-Hear
sidle up to me like two old drunks,
one wearing a heavy coat and the other
stark naked.
“You know,” says the one,
leaning in to whisper,
“You know you are doing thish
perfectly. You are the besht mother
there ever was. Your children
are sho lucky to have you ash their mom.
You desherve a medal. Really. A medal.”
She hiccups at the end.
“Don’t lishen to her,”
says the other, grabbing
my arm and tugging me strong.
“You get it wrong a lot. And even
when you do your besht,
there’sh always more to do.
You fuck it up even when you’re trying
to get it right. It’s jusht what mothersh do.”
And we walk like that through the alley.
And we walk like that through the store.
And we walk like that through the living room.
And we walk like that to the car.
And the naked one laughs like a maniac
as she tugs on my arm again.
“But you love them, don’t you,
You love them chillens. Love is never
enough. And it’s all we have.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, horse, kindness, mother, news, poem, poetry, truth on March 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she said, is it true? And it wasn’t
that I’d tried to keep the truth from her,
it just never came into conversation,
old horses are sometimes used for glue.
Yes, I said, wishing I could soften the message. It’s true.
She knew its truth already, but don’t we all
sometimes long to be wrong? New tears dammed
in her eyes before they fell. Is that really
the world I belong to? she rued, then buried
her face in the couch. Two hours later,
I thought her same thought as I read the news:
Anti-Semitism. Bribery. Child sexual abuse.
I wanted to hear the stories weren’t true.
Oh world, so broken, still, unglued, I choose you.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged coffee, poem, poetry, practice, seeking, truth on January 30, 2018| 6 Comments »
I asked the world
to teach me of truth
and waited and waited
for a lesson. Anything.
A bird. A rainbow.
A bug. A storm.
But nothing.
And so I went in
and made a cup
coffee—ground
the beans and steamed
the milk and cradled
the cup in my hands.
And I tasted it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, poem, poetry, truth on October 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
How soon the flowers wilt.
Wasn’t it just yesterday
you planted them, just an hour ago
there were mounds of bloom
shining in the rain?
You want to believe there’s a flower
that never stops opening,
want to believe that flower
is you.
