I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.
Posts Tagged ‘winter’
Walking at Night after the First Big Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, moon, snow, winter on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Why I Go Nordic Skiing in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embodiment, losing the self, skiing, winter on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
Because the world.
And then, with one step,
I slide into snow-mind
in which I am glide,
sun-bright and crystalline,
field-vast and drift-found,
a boundaryless being
of sparkling immensity
moving inside a glittering realm,
and whoever else I might be
in the small world of rooms
and stoplights and
screens and keys is not lost
exactly, but is too little here
to not see beyond as I become
soft meadow, receiver
of birdsong, inhaler
of evergreen, an ecstatic
point in infinite space
sliding from grace
to ever expanding grace.
And Then, All at Once, Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, silence, song, winter on January 18, 2025| 8 Comments »
in the barren cottonwood tree
dozens of birds, all of them still,
as if, like me, they are enthralled
doubtful they could ever improve
on all this glorious silence
One Night Before Christmas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mystery, stars, trees, winter on December 24, 2024| 1 Comment »
ornaments for the galaxy
between bare cottonwood branches
hung by what great hand, the stars
How Things Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, doubt, hummingbirds, self, summer, transformation, winter on July 25, 2024| 10 Comments »
Between when the hummingbirds come
and when too soon they leave,
we sit in the warm dusk and watch
as broadtails and black chins dart
and dive, defend and chase—
the feeder a loud, competitive zone
where small feathered bodies block
and jostle, crowd and race—
almost impossible to imagine
five months back when this deck
was a still, chilly silent place.
That’s how it is with transformation.
The first thing that must go is the self
who doesn’t believe it can happen.
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
Growing Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, silence, spring, trust, winter on March 29, 2024| 2 Comments »
Inside this silence
with its hum of life
and shush of wind
is another silence,
a pure silence
I have never heard
but trust is here—
the foundation
of all sound—
just as I trust that
inside my imperfect
love with its pride
and its pain is another
love—a pure and
generous love.
Sometimes when
the voices of hate
in and around me
are loudest, I feel
my understanding
of what trust is adjust—
the way trees in winter
continually adapt to keep
their vital cells alive,
the way animals deep
in the dark of the ocean
keep evolving
to make their own light.
Skiing into the Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chaos, instability, skiing, wind, winter on January 8, 2024| 10 Comments »
I love the days when it feels right
not to turn from the storm
but to move deeper in,
when the body doesn’t shy
from the cold and wind,
when the smile arrives
as the storm magnifies
and a whoop rises from the lungs
like a fierce and hardy bird.
What is it in us that feels more alive
in these moments?
Is it the part that rhymes
with instability,
the untamable part
that knows chaos, too,
is holy? And the gusts
swirl and the chill bites
and the smile
incredibly widens.
Letter to Myself in the Future
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged quiet, self care, sun, winter on December 11, 2023| 6 Comments »
I want to give you this quiet hour
spent outside in the winter sun,
the slipknot of the breeze almost not there,
the sky an incandescent blue,
the river a murmur in its growing ice,
the dried grass barely a rustle.
How warm it is, even midwinter.
What I most want to give you
is not this hour, but the memory
of how you said yes to it,
how you set aside the phone,
how you turned off the screen,
how you let the book stay on the shelf
and did not touch the piano keys.
Remember sweetheart, how it felt
to slip between the cracks of the day
right into the fullness of being,
how you were so welcomed
by the air, by the light.
You could do it again,
slide out of your self.
Become wind.
Become the light.
What Holds Things Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged entropy, love, rangers, winter, yosemite on August 21, 2023| 10 Comments »
for Karen, Lindsay, Sarah, and the other Rangers and Volunteers in Tuolomne Meadows
Marcelo says he’s interested in fasteners,
in nails. He likes thinking about how things
hold together. He’s a carpenter and a poet,
and it follows, his fascination with structure.
Because I am me, I think about love.
I think of the ranger station I saw at Yosemite,
the roof collapsed by heavy snows. I think
of the heap of picnic tables I saw,
metal legs twisted like pipe cleaners,
unable to hold up the weight of long winter.
Things fall apart. And yet.
I think of the rangers who love this place,
who return every year to shovel, to teach,
to clean, to rebuild, to organize, to guide—
their devotion essential as any screws,
as any glue, as mighty as high alpine weather.
Love, the force resilient enough
as the world falls apart
to hold what’s been broken together.
Traveling to Scandinavia in Spring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Scandinavia, spring, travel, winter on April 17, 2023| 3 Comments »
After the long winter,
we choose to travel north,
choose to move deeper into winter
to wander fjords and cobblestones.
We choose again the gray,
the ice, the snow, the cold.
Now I know there is something freeing
about choosing to explore
what isn’t easy.
There’s release, somehow,
in being on the path less warm
when it’s a path
I feel I’ve selected.
So I don again the coat,
the hat, the down.
I wander the streets
with their chill winds
and think, I want to be here.
And it’s true.
There is joy then,
in the bite, though some days
it goes deep.
Joy in being so present
in winter I forget
I could choose something else.
Then I Stood There a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, failure, falling, let x equal x, standing, winter on March 10, 2023| 11 Comments »
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
—Mary Oliver, “It Was Early”
There is no lovely way to put this.
It was sleeting. I am not going to tell you
how the gray sky unfolded like a somber rose,
how the misty air softened every dark
and barren thing. It was sleeting.
And slick. And when I fell, it hurt.
A lot. But I got up. I got up.
Tobogganing with My Teenage Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, play, slow, snow, speed, time, winter on February 24, 2023| 7 Comments »
Perhaps I wish for something dangerous—
a rush, a breakneck ride, a snow-drunk risk.
Instead, my daughter and I slide the toboggan
down the drive with a languid, slow-motion
sluggishness. And we laugh as we urge
the wooden sled forward, creeping
down the hill. After a few laps, the run
is fast enough we can build a small jump
at the bottom, but it’s more of a bump
than a launch. What is it in the heart
that loves a surge, a swell of excitement,
a dance with danger? Why is it fun
to be out of control when the stakes are low?
Oh, my girl and I know, we know what it’s like
when the stakes are high. No wonder
we laugh as we slide at the pace of a stroll.
We know what it’s like to be out of control.
We know. I hold her by the waist as we barely move.
And part of me longs for speed. And part of me
is grateful to move in a way that lets me hold her
a little bit, even just a few seconds, longer.
That Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenge, snow, storm, winter on February 21, 2023| 11 Comments »
It was like driving through a winter storm
for years, day after week after month
after night after morning of white-knuckled,
stiff-shouldered worry. No tracks to follow,
no sign of a centerline, no rails on the edge,
and where are the snowplows, and what
good is a map when you can’t read the signs?
There were whole months of white out, driving snow-blind
and slow, whole seasons of running the wipers on high
in an attempt to see just one inch further.
It was icy roads, skidding with the baby in back.
It was wishing I could ask someone else
to take the wheel. It was frozen-slick and slippery
with no studded snows. It was sliding with no brakes.
It was what I woke to everyday
and what I dreamed at night.
If there was beauty, I was too afraid to see it.
I wish I could tell you I was brave.
It was slow to change,
like a spring that arrives only to leave again.
One day the drifts were gone and the roads
were dry and the sky was wide blue and clear.
But it wasn’t like snow, was it?
Some things don’t just melt away.
Some storms transform the landscape forever.
Some storms transform the driver.
Starlings in Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, friendship, skiing, starlings, winter on January 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
for Christie
Deep in the snowy woods,
we startle at the sound
of starlings as they braid
above the branches.
How often do I miss
the song of the moment?
But today, beside you
I could not miss
the sweet shushing of skis,
the sacred huff of breath,
the lyric of our laughter
and the strong refrain of my heart
as it wheeled like a starling,
a wild and soaring thing
drawn to fly with others,
ready to sing for no reason
except the joy of singing.
In the Second Week of the New Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gardening, healing, planting, winter on January 18, 2023| 8 Comments »
Outside it’s a blizzard,
Inside, I plant seeds
for six heads of lettuce.
I plant cherry tomatoes, yellow,
and tiny seeds of basil.
I plug in the grow lights,
add water, wait.
I’m well aware
how much growth can happen
in the most unfavorable seasons,
how sometimes when the world
feels cruel, we might yet be met
with light, warmth, care.
It brings me real joy
to plant these seeds today
while outside the wind
and snow and cold
do their wintery work.
In a week, there will be sprouts.
In a month, there will be greens.
Though they will be bitter,
they’ll be tender.
I will savor them.
I will share.
How I Made It Across the State
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, romance, winter on December 3, 2022| 6 Comments »
Through sleet, then slush,
through blizzard and ice,
I drove mountain passes
and listened to a love story—
and as my hands gripped
and my shoulders tensed,
my heart cheered for forgiveness.
And as snow fell
and SUVS flipped
and semis slid,
love put its hand
on my hand on the wheel
and though it did not promise me
my own happy ending,
it did crook its finger as if to say
just one more mile, sweetheart,
in the dark current
of the world,
now one more,
now one more,
now one more.
News of the War
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, ice, news, ukraine, war, winter on February 25, 2022| 7 Comments »
The newscaster speaks
and beneath you
the floor becomes ice
and the world
is speeding
on balding tires
and the moment
is the highway
and all is fishtail
and the brakes
are useless now—
and the cliff so close
and you brace
against nothing
and the only way
to correct a slide
is to turn
into the slide—