to grow a heart from lake water and an old
junk yard, from an empty classroom
and cheap novels bought at the second
hand store, two-liter bottles of diet coke
and a dusty dead-end road. There was more,
of course. An old plaid couch with a squeaky spring.
The spiraling cord of an old telephone. A rusty pan
with cornbread made with Mavis’s fresh eggs.
The breathing weight of my newborn girl.
What hasn’t gone into the growing of this heart?
An old red truck. The pinnately compound leaves
of Jacob’s Ladder. But it is the unpetaling
that astonishes now, how all the stories
of my becoming—all the particulars
that seemed so essential—begin to drop
No, not drop, exactly. It’s just that I nourish
these stories less as I turn my attention
toward the vastness from which all arose—
and in this turning, discover how the more
the heart is undone, the more
the heart can grow.
Posts Tagged ‘unlearning’
We could say it took me my whole life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growing, growth, heart, particulars, unlearning, vastness on September 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
En Garde
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fencing, learning, poem, poetry, self discovery, unlearning on October 9, 2019| 3 Comments »
Keep distance, the fencing teacher says,
and by this he means, stay close enough
to your opponent that you could, at any time,
extend, lunge and attack with your point.
All my life, I’ve tried not to keep distance.
All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid
the attack—from either side. And now,
with my silver lamé and my one white glove
and my face safe behind metal mesh, I dig
to find the part of me who craves engagement,
who seeks a bout, who wants to threaten
my target and exploit their vulnerability.
Keep distance, he says, and I understand
that this is how I show up for the game.
This is how I meet not only the opponent,
but, perhaps for the first time, myself.
Original Sin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, poem, poetry, relationship, unlearning on February 16, 2016| 2 Comments »
Tonight I will give you yourself.
All those pretty words you spun
into negligee, all those promises
you strung like pearls and then
tightened around my neck, all
those lovely leashes you made
out of praise, I give them back.
I have always loved being naked.
I think this is what you loved
most about me, too. Once. No one
is at fault for this strange game
of dress up we’ve been playing.
Perhaps it is what we were taught to do.
I unlearn this game. I want to give
you you. I give you your
own nakedness. Any robes
of hope I put on you, I untie
them. See them slip into soft piles
on the floor. Look at you now.
I see I never saw you before.
Out the window, winter is melting.
Everything loses its sheen.
I tried to hate you for the ways
you bound me, though the bounds
were beautiful. Now, all I can feel
is the thrill of this body so bare,
so new. I stare at my feet, my hands
and marvel at how they move.
Is this me? I never knew her.
I know her so intimately.
It is almost sweet now, so innocent,
how we tried to dress each other in dreams.
We didn’t know then that even
the softest words become chains.
I give you yourself, your longing
to be loved in the ways you thought
you needed. I give me myself,
I don’t know what that means,
already I am shedding.
I Told Myself It Was Impossible, But
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, unlearning on March 21, 2015| 10 Comments »
still unfurling into blossom,
this flower I thought
was fully opened
What the Guidebook Can’t Tell You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, poem, poetry, uncertainty, unlearning, wildflower on June 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
I don’t know the name of the flower
about to bloom beside the trail,
but it has the leaves of a lily
and a single bud that hangs heavy
off a long bent stem.
Just as I don’t know the name
for the feeling I have when
I want you to act a certain way
and I have not yet realized
that my wanting is the problem.
Neither of these things matter—
the names, I mean. We like to think
that by naming a thing we know it.
But I have stopped believing that.
Whatever we can name, we start to overlook.
The heliotrope, for instance.
I greet it as we walk by, but I do not
stop to investigate its tiny white flowers,
nor do I rub its leaves between my fingers
to better understand their shape.
Imagine I did not know your name.
So every time we met I would
gather everything I could about you—
the scent of you, the shape of your hands,
the weather of your moods.
And imagine I forgot me, too,
and in discovering you, I’d see
myself anew. And I would be unfamiliar
with words such as happiness or forgiveness
or wound or wife.
Ah, to meet each other like that, the way we meet
this strange flower. More inquisitive than convinced.
More curious, less sure. Less like gods,
omniscient, commanding, more as if we are the ones
with so much opening left to do.
Ready to Learn a New Way
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self-destructive behavior, transformation, unlearning on June 3, 2014| 1 Comment »
I am perhaps like the fish
who is attracted to the hook,
the thrill of the line—
though barb is sharp,
at least for a moment
I know what it’s like
to fly.
No Guarantees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, learning, poem, poetry, unlearning on February 22, 2014| 7 Comments »
It turns out I have loved
learning too much.
Star charts. Yeast. Omega 3s.
Tear fluid osmolarity.
Particle and wave.
I want so much to make sense
of things. Like why we have
so few words for smell.
Why only some birds sing.
Slave to purpose, slave
to the why, slave to the need
to know. I want to compare,
to contrast, to chart, to rank,
to graph, to prove. As if
that might tell me my place
in the world. So I pin down facts
like butterfly wings, splayed
and precise and dead.
Meanwhile the world expands, overflows,
moves beyond all that I think I know.
Let me live on questions. Let
me lose my absolutes. Let me be willing
to abandon my certainty. We are that
which breaks down the walls
of the learned—let me know this,
and unknow it, too.
For the Hungry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, unlearning on September 15, 2013| 1 Comment »
it bends
the dark
and sweetens
loss
it holds
the daughter
as
she coughs
it rides
on buses
slips
on tongues
it begs
to be
unlearned
undone
and when
the swagger
turns
to swoon
and when
the clock
has ticked
too soon
and when
the rain
keeps raining
long
it finds
the spaces
in the song
where all
the words
you thought
you knew
are different
now
it leaks
somehow
this love
this mmm
this empty
spoon
Five Ripples
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged learning, poem, poetry, tanka, unlearning on May 18, 2013| 4 Comments »
reading in my journal
the lesson I learned two years
ago the same lesson
I was so thrilled
to learn today
*
I leave the dishes
when you say “let’s play,”
not because I want
to play but because the day
will come when you won’t ask
*
the veil
of hurt, though it
weighs nothing
I am utterly unable
to lift it
*
sowing poppy seeds
in the meadow together,
though it will be months
before we see stems
already I feel blossoming
*
what would be left
if we solved all our troubles—
just a breathing
sometimes when I get very still
I am still not still enough
Driving Late Night with Vivian Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of self, love, parenting, play, poem, self, teaching, unlearning on November 1, 2012| 4 Comments »
Mommy, she says,
I can see right through myself.
What do you see,
I ask.
I see the night,
she says.
Are there stars,
I ask.
She pauses long.
Yes.
And then a few moments later
she says, Mom, I’ve disappeared.
How do they do it,
these young ones,
teach us to be
so wholly here.