I haven’t given up on humans yet.
Though here in America where masked agents
pull women and men from their homes–
people who build our communities, our country–
we are so far from the goodness I imagine.
In second grade, I remember making forts
at recess with small snow balls we’d
squeeze in our hands. So carefully,
so gently, we would place them, one on top
of another to create a small home.
And then, maybe every time, when
the recess bell rang, a group of boys
would linger and at the last moment
they would kick our snow walls down.
It is in all of us, the bully, the one
who enjoys destruction, the one who
wants to feel powerful, strong.
But it is also in us all to speak out
for each other, to stand up for each other,
to say no, this is not okay. It is in us all of us
to gather the way we did in second grade
with our small mittened hands, going out
the next recess, and the next, and the next,
to build together again. Because we can.
Posts Tagged ‘voice’
Building the World We Believe In
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bully, community, politics, standing up, voice on January 7, 2026| 10 Comments »
One Stifled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged freedom, restraint, river, singing, voice on January 27, 2025| 8 Comments »
this winter
I’ve turned into a river
beneath the ice, so much song
Steadfast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, connection, freedom, inauguration, resilience, voice on January 19, 2025| 12 Comments »
Though a cold
wind is howling,
we’re not birds
without wings—
and as long as we
have voices
let us sing together,
sing of freedom,
sing what’s true,
let us sing.
- “birds without wings” is from John Lewis’s speech, January 9, 2005, at the Kennedy Center, at a choral tribute honoring Dr. Martin Luther King
Today I Realize
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, grief, phone, time lapse, voice on December 27, 2021| 12 Comments »
I can still call your phone
and hear your voice mail.
And so I do, I call it,
and the low tones
of your familiar voice
reach all the way in
and squeeze my lungs.
This is you know who.
We are you know where.
Leave your you know what
you know when.
I hang up at the beep,
and then I’m gasping,
choking, making sounds
I don’t recognize.
And then the house is quiet.
The ache is like a time lapse
of a rose in bloom—
first clenched, then
opening and opening
and impossibly opening,
then fading, then dropping away.
Every day a new bouquet
of ways I miss you.
Today, I miss the deep
song of your voice
how it opens in me
fragrant, like home.
*
this poem has been published in ONE ART
Trusting that Voice: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, invention, poem, poetry, voice on July 7, 2019| 2 Comments »
It was this day, eight-nine years ago,
that Otto Frederick Rohwedder,
a jeweler from Davenport, Iowa,
got to see his invention in action—
yes, in Chillicothe, Missouri, a baker
used the bread slicer. Everyone said
it wouldn’t sell. Everyone said
the bread would go stale. Everyone
said the idea would fail. It’s compelling,
sometimes, what everyone says.
But sometimes, perhaps like Otto,
I hear the voice beneath the others.
It tells me to believe in improbable things.
Like poems changing the world.
Like Keatsian love. Like the immeasurable
pleasure that comes when the lever
goes down and all through the kitchen
floats the warm and earthy scent of toast,
the morning improving two slices at a time.
Though We Focus So Much on Finding Our Voice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, poem, poetry, silence, singing, voice on March 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »
The sound of your breath is the quietest of songs.
—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Maybe on that day
when we think, I forgot
to sing, that’s when we
realize that all day long
we harmonized with the world
in the quietest of songs—
joined in without any effort,
no striving at all,
and maybe that is the day
when we stop trying
to be heard and start
to notice the song
inside every other song,
the song inside every other being,
how perfectly in tune we are,
how easily we join—no conductor,
no notes, no beat, just one perfect
air. Maybe that’s the day we hear
the metronome of our own
steady heart and say to it,
I will trust you, feel the truth
of the song as it slips
from our lips, then
rushes in to fill us again.
And Then It’s a River, a Tide
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, transformation, voice on February 5, 2018| 1 Comment »
I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.
—Theodore Roethke
There is a secret music
that fills us from within,
a clear song that rises
as the mud of our thoughts
settles out, how quietly
it arrives at first,
our own true voice.
Genesis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choir, poem, poetry, Steven Nightingale, unity, voice on December 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Who said your real voice is not the choir?
—Steven Nightingale, “Who Said, Who Decided, Who”
and if you are not only the melody
but also the baseline, the harmony,
the descant, then who’s to say
you’re not also the quarter rest,
the fermata, the coda, the clef—
and perhaps you are also
the hand that wrote the score
and the woman who loved
to take that hand in her own
and wander the halls toward bed.
And perhaps you are also the rumpled
sheets, the ones that never made
it to the choir, the sheets that fell
to the floor while the notes
made their way uncomposed
into throats of the singers,
the air full of such improvisational grace
you’d swear the angel choirs
were singing, too.
One Unlearning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, surrender, voice on April 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
After Years and Years of Nice, I Consider Expanding My Range
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growing, poem, truth, voice on March 11, 2013| 6 Comments »
Here, voice, speak
for my thighs.
Speak for my fists.
Speak for all the places
I try to hide. Speak
in cobweb. Speak in rust.
Speak in siren. Speak
in fog. Speak ugly.
Speak rancid. Speak
lost. Speak sour. Speak
stammer. Speak red dress.
Speak busy signal. Speak
fool. Here, voice, take
your slippers off. Take
your apron off. Take off
your corset. Remove
your belt. Consider me
your vessel. Use me up.
Speak it all.
Dedication
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, audience, poem, voice, women on August 12, 2012| 4 Comments »
I wish you were writing this poem
about those two days you hid in the woods,
partially scalped, your legs broken, your two kids
with you, hiding from the man who promised
to kill you when he came home.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the places you go in your mind
when the men mount you and start
their furious pumping.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the day you knew for sure
that you were not beautiful.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the look on your child’s face
the moment you slapped her
for calling you Bitch. And another
poem about the moment after.
I wish you were writing this poem
to the woman who slept with your husband,
asking her everything you know
you will never understand.
I wish you were writing this poem
about the way the light hit the empty room
just after you packed all your things to leave,
and how in that light for a moment
you thought you could stay,
loving in that moment the room, the potential,
and still you knew you would go.
It would not comfort you, this poem
that you are not writing, would not make
one thing better. Would not fix, not heal,
not redeem nor transform.
But something would happen,
something unnamable and mysterious—
and from that broken, torn,
shredded place, you might create,
surprising yourself, a little more space.
one of those days tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poems, poetry, tanka, voice on February 17, 2012| 8 Comments »
forgive me
for not hearing today
beneath the wailing
the boy who just wants
so desperately to be heard