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
of 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.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nightingale, philomela, poem, poetry, truth on January 25, 2016| 1 Comment »
cut off my tongue, then,
so I can’t say what I know,
and turn me into a nightingale
there are other ways to sing—
feel the sun, how it always tells the truth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lie, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, surprise party, truth on July 29, 2015| 1 Comment »
When they ask what you did this morning,
tell them, “Oh, nothing much.”
When they say, “What are you doing tomorrow,”
shrug and say, “Oh, I’m busy.
We have plans.” That is true.
Say goodbye today as if you mean it.
Do not mention the cake, the balloons, the gift.
I know. It’s hard to keep a secret.
And just when you think you would burst
if you could, remind yourself
it’s for their own good.
Tell yourself, it is better this way.
No. Sweetheart. Forget what I say.
If it’s not a surprise, that’s okay.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, poem, poetry, self image, sweet clover, truth, woman on July 1, 2015| 2 Comments »
The field is full of sweet clover.
This is the truest line I can write.
There was a time when,
with discriminating precision,
I cleared this field of sweet clover,
preferring only rushes and grass.
Now, after a rain-rich spring
and a sweltering summer,
the deep field is startlingly aglow
with millions of tiny yellow flowers.
The field full of sweet clover is beautiful.
This is an opinion.
A woman can think what she wants to think.
Sometimes her thoughts think her.
Beautiful. Not beautiful.
This argument stretches
past the open field.
Sweet clover has a taproot
is difficult to pull up when the earth is dry.
This is a fact.
In a woman, there are ten thousand
tap-rooted lies about how she looks
and who she is. If she pulls one up,
and even a bit of the lie remains,
it comes back twice as vigorous.
The field is full of sweet clover.
There is something so comforting
about knowing it is true,
so comforting I say it again.
The field is full of sweet clover.
There are thousands of honeybees.
The field is full of sweet clover.
I look into it like a mirror.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moment, poem, poetry, truth on October 16, 2014| 4 Comments »
It had not yet hit the cement floor
and shattered into incalculable smithereens.
I was, of course, in a hurry.
It was, of course, glass.
I can freeze it, the moment
I knew the bottle was going to fall
and there was not a thing
I could do to stop it—
that moment as brief as when
I decided to tell the truth
after he asked the question
I hoped he would never ask.
All those shards—they never
go back to a whole. How the sunlight
gathers in them, thousands of prisms
scattered all over the floor.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blank verse, lie, poem, poetry, tall tale, truth on August 25, 2014| 2 Comments »
I know you’re kinda mad I’m late. I’m sorry,
but you see there was this tiger trapped
up high inside a tree who offered me
a cherry tart if only I would help
him down. What could I do? It just did not
seem right to leave him stranded there. And so
I asked a large tarantula to weave
a silken net to catch the tiger when
he leapt. Well, she was tired from having laid
nine hundred eggs the day before, but when
she heard about the tart, she said she’d try.
A tern and toucan flying by said they
would help me hold the net to catch the tiger
when she leapt. What luck! I didn’t know
they lived around here. Anyway, a toad
in a tiara started teasing them.
He said our plan would never work, that birds
would not be strong enough to catch a tiger.
That’s when the triceratops came rambling
by and said he’d help us, too. But he
began to sneeze, his allergies were acting
up, perhaps it was the tulips? Or
the toadstool? I don’t know. The bummer was
he sneezed so much he had to go. The toucan
and the tern, offended by the toad,
flew off. They said, “A tart is not enough
for this abuse!” So there I sat beneath
the tiger, not sure what to do. That’s when
a turtle sat beside me and suggested
we could use his thimble as a diving
pool. The tiger had his doubts until
he saw a trout tail swish inside the thimble.
And he dove! And landed with a splash!
And came up with the trout between his teeth!
The bad news is he left the tart up in
the tree. And then the grumpy toad began
to throw tomatoes at the turtle. And
at me! And so I ran the whole way home.
I don’t know where the tiger’s gone—he mentioned
wanting to audition for a band.
He said he plays the triangle. It’s weird,
I know. So weird I worried that you’d not
believe me. I thought maybe I should lie
and tell you that I’m late because I didn’t
want to leave my friend’s house in the middle
of our game. But lying is so rude.
I knew that you’d appreciate the truth.
*This is a T poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie, http://www.alphabetmenagerie.com
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, truth on June 13, 2014| 1 Comment »
I’ve erased
every word
I’ve written
for an hour,
not one of them
as true as
this splinter
in my finger,
this naked moon,
this voice in my head
that says,
“Turn it inside out
and tell me
if the opposite
of everything
you’ve said
isn’t also
true.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, found, hiding, mother, poem, poetry, truth on February 22, 2014| 4 Comments »
The truth doesn’t care if I try to hide.
It knows exactly where I am and what
I am doing. It is perhaps like the game
I play while walking downtown
with my daughter. She runs ahead
on the sidewalk, then tucks her body
into a breezeway between buildings.
I pretend I do not see. Vivian? I call.
Vivian? Yooo hoooo. I walk past her,
while looking the other way.
I know that she knows that I know
that she knows that I know where she is.
Here, truth, here I am, I could say. As if I could be
anywhere else. As if I am longing for it to call
out my name so I might run toward it,
my arms open, laughing at the very joy
of being found at last, the joy of knowing
I was never really lost at all.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self discovery, truth on December 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
heart to heart
with myself, the eavesdropping crow
calls liar, liar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amma, Joi Sharp, poem, poetry, truth on June 5, 2013| 3 Comments »
You should long for the truth like a drowning man longs for air.
—Amma
Laying face down in a puddle,
a woman might think
she is drowning.
She could, in fact,
drown, though anyone
around her can see
all she need do
is roll over.
How many puddles
have we lain in,
lips to the pavement,
eyes closed, feeling
the million points
of panic rising in our lungs,
shrugging off the hands
that would help us,
caught in the drama
of our own doom,
flailing, thrashing.
drowning.
What saves us,
even if we manage
to roll onto our backs,
is never ourselves
but the air rushing in
to fill us, the air rushing in
as if it longs for us
the way we long for it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, failure, father, love, piano, poem, truth on April 20, 2013| 3 Comments »
At thirteen, after eight years
of piano lessons, I lost myself
in a Mozart Sonatina. It was
a competition. I was sitting
at a grand piano at the front
of a church. The judge sat
in the first pew. My dad sat in the back.
I made it through the long runs
of the first movement. Through
the slow diminished chords
of the second. I was clumsy,
my rhythms uneven, my fortes not
convincing, my arpeggios stuttered.
My fingers did not know what they were doing,
though we had been practicing
together for months, though they
had had many good teachers.
I wore a pin-striped tuxedo,
a white ruffled shirt. It was fitted too tight
in my shoulders, but it made me
feel what, like a man? At least
not like a girl. God, I wanted
it over. At the end of the third movement,
I reached to the top of the treble keys
before coming back down
in the final run, but somewhere at the top
my hands returned to the notes of the first movement.
There was nothing to be done
but to finish the thing the way it had begun.
The judge shuffled through
the sheet music, trying to discern
what had happened. I did not cry,
not until I left the room
and I held my dad and he told me
the terrible lie that I had done fine.
He said it with so much love,
but it wasn’t true.
I don’t know where the lines are
between truth and love. Why do we
protect each other the ways that we do?
What else could he say? It doesn’t much matter.
He loved me. I grew out
of the shirt. I told myself the truth.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doubt, lie, mothering, poem, truth on April 9, 2013| 1 Comment »
I do not believe him
when he says he sees
the sea turtle. But there
it is, like a giant round of driftwood,
disappearing into the turquoise
waves and unkempt white froth.
And there another.
It is so hard to know
what to do when
we doubt
is proved to be true.
Now what to do
the next time I know
he is lying or exaggerating.
Already, he is swearing
he sees the gray whales
off the dark cliffs and already
I feel that flock of doubts
rise up and swarm my thoughts.
So human, I tell myself,
to question him, so human
to want to believe.
I don’t know, I tell him,
that seems unlikely.
My eyes scan the tousled sea.