Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, walking on November 11, 2019| 6 Comments »
One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?
—Rachel Carson
And so I memorize how it is
that the cheeks nearly freeze
but the body’s so warm,
how the river informs every measure
but the thoughts sift to silence,
how the body thrills
in its ability to swing one foot
in front of the other, how
walking is just another name
for recovering from falling,
how strange it seems now
that I was once afraid of the dark.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, nature, poem, poetry, walking on May 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
I like when I evergreen, current and berry.
I like when I mushroom, avalanche, cliff.
And everything is yes then, and everything
new: wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, walking, winter on February 5, 2019| 4 Comments »
—for Kyra
walking the icy hill
every step a triumph—
and us,
crazy enough
to walk it together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hiking, journey, lesson, poem, poetry, road, walking on February 2, 2019| 2 Comments »
I followed the road as if it were a teacher.
It went up, I went up. It turned, I turned.
It was a long time before I relearned
that the road is not the only way to go.
The first day I walked away from the gravel,
I fell. That was the day I learned
staying upright is not what’s most important.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, hill, poem, poetry, walking on August 22, 2018| 2 Comments »
You walk fast,
she said, and
I said, I was walking
fast to keep up
with you, and
she said, I was
walking fast to
keep up with you
and we laughed
at ourselves as
our feet found
a new rhythm,
our hearts, too.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged nature, poem, poetry, walking, work on December 12, 2017| 2 Comments »
Even on a Monday it can happen,
you step out of the office
and instead of going to your car
or making another call or running
to the bank, your feet
and legs conspire to move you
toward the woods where after
only ten minutes you are more breath
than brain, more here than anywhere else—
water drips in the creek bed,
sunlight pushes through empty branches,
and at your sides your arms swing
as if they were made for this.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, forgiveness, Inuit, poem, poetry, walking on September 12, 2017| 89 Comments »
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry.
Anger seems reasonable. But perhaps
we will do what I’ve heard the Inuit do—
spend the emotion on walking, walk a line
until all the anger has left our bodies.
The moment the Inuit notice the anger is gone,
replaced, perhaps, by sadness or fear,
compassion or just a quietness,
they mark that spot with an object
to show the extent of their anger.
And perhaps, if we’re lucky, when we walk
this way, it will be a long enough walk
that we arrive at each other’s doors,
object in hand, and when the object
leaves our grip, we’ll be able to use our hands
to greet each other, touch each other’s faces,
point to the horizon to all the other places
we might choose to walk now together.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, poem, poetry, recovery, walking on August 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »
walking four blocks with my mother,
every step an arrival,
every step a reason to praise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, prayer, walking on August 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Before you slog the next mile,
God sits beside you
and rubs your feet and ankles,
tells you jokes,
and spills his heart to you—
the next day,
still exhausted,
you find yourself laughing
grateful to have feet.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged path, poem, poetry, rededication, walking on November 10, 2016| 4 Comments »
It is not that the path
has disappeared. It is only
that, stunned with grief
and kicked by fear,
we sometimes lose our will
to put one foot
in front of the other.
But we are not lost.
Already in the dark
we have found each other.
What astonishes is
that there are so many of us,
and already
we are building bridges
made of light.
The world shakes,
we stumble
and we help each other rise,
and now it is time
for us again to put one foot in front of the other—
not to escape what frightens us
but to walk unflinchingly
toward the messy center of things.
The path we choose now
is not one we’ve walked or even seen before,
the path is one that appears
beneath our feet
with each step,
and we persist,
travelers in the frozen dark
who begin to see the light as it shapes the horizon
and know, though it’s cold,
that the change we dream of
has already begun to arrive.
