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Posts Tagged ‘vision’

Eyesight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 21, 2025| 9 Comments »

 
I’ve never seen the world the bee sees,
a world of iridescence in which petals
change color depending on the angle,
a world in which a field of sunflowers appear
not as a smear of yellow but as individual
blooms. I’ve never seen the bullseye
pattern in the primrose or the pansy,
these human eyes unable to perceive
designs in UV light. Today I look out
at the empty garden where just last week
there were marigolds and calendula,
and I see the absence of flowers, but also,
I see mounds of golds, yellows, oranges, and
I see the boy who used to sit on the edge
of the wooden beds and I see the young
version of me, not yet gray, weeding
the rows, while the boy tells me stories
about school and the things he longs
for beyond what he has. They’re there,
I know, the flowers, the woman,
the boy, though somehow they’re so far
beyond the spectrum not even
the bees can see them.

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Widening the Vision

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 10, 2025| 12 Comments »

Almost by accident
I saw through the blaze
of my anger and fear
to the bunny in the yard,
his sweet brown body
so still and attentive
in the short brown grass,
and it’s not that I
became any less angry,
but when I let myself be held
by his steady brown eye,
I was touched by gentleness
and remembered what else
I am capable of. Oh self, this
is how you stay whole hearted—
by keeping your eyes wide open.

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When I Was Feeling Alone After My Father’s Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 22, 2024| 6 Comments »



 
 
In a vision, I knew the universe as seamless—
a place with no horizon, no anchor,
no tether, no foundation. And though
it was beautiful—a water-color wash
of pinks and blues and grays and greens—
 
I was terrified, feeling myself formless
in the vast sea of space, too free, too free.
I wanted an object, a person, a shape,
a something to belong to.
And Love spoke in words I did not hear
 
but somehow felt, and said,
The only thing that will ever ground you
is not the object of love, but love itself.
Now, sitting in my kitchen, I feel it again.
Though my feet are on the ground
 
and I hear the hum of the cars on the highway,
though there is a cat that desperately wants
to sit in my lap and I taste the dark and bitter leaves
in my tea, though I am undeniably in a body,
I feel it again, the seamlessness, the communion
 
of the great everything that is, the underlying all-ness,
the domain of no division. But in this moment,
I know freedom not as terrifying, but as generous,
as uncontainable love that runs through everything.
The only thing that will ever ground you
 
is not the object of love, but love itself.
To write this is to touch the truth again,
a beauty that can never be broken or fractured.
Every cell of me disassembles into beauty,
opens with awareness, even as the cat yowls,
 
even as phone rings again.
 
 

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These Days When the Veils Are Thin

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 28, 2021| 5 Comments »




Leaning into the vastness
of the star drunk sky,
my heart a vehicle,
to my surprise
I heard a small click,
like the sound of a car door
opening,
and your voice,
Mom, hop in.
Let’s take a spin.

I startle, as if
waking from a dream,
heart pounding,
astonished to find you
in the driver’s seat
as you love to be, and me
just one yes away
from a joy ride
through the universe,
if only I can find
the door.

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Only in Retrospect Can I See What I Did

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 8, 2015| 5 Comments »

This blank page of a day.
Last night, I had already crumpled
up the paper and thrown it in the trash.
With twin fists, I made it so small,
told myself there were no stories
I was interested in knowing.
This morning, picking it up again,
I watched the paper unrumple itself,
and unfold and unfold until
it was a million million times larger
than any page I could imagine,
big enough to have any story
fit on it, any story at all, even
happily ever after.

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Happily Ever After

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

Your eyes. I used to believe they created me.
One look from you, and I became chalice,
lotus, lioness, crane. Woman. Without your gaze,
I was unformed clay. Your absence, my absence.
It was like some strange twist on what Ptolemy said—
he believed that rays emanate from the eyes,
rays that traverse the air and find the object, allowing
it to be seen. If a woman dances alone in a room,
and you do not see her, is she really dancing?
Does she exist at all?

But Ptolemy was wrong, love, and so was I.
And this is not really the story of photoreceptors
and environmental stimuli. It’s the story
of how we long to be seen—it begins with such
innocence, a longing to please. It’s the story
of how eventually a woman might find herself
dancing for the leaping, whirling pleasure of dancing.

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Ah, But the Scent of Spruce Still Comes In

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 17, 2014| 1 Comment »

one leaf near the eye
covers an entire forest—
I begin to suspect
I have thousands of thoughts
like leaves

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