The truth was an avalanche—
an avalanche midsummer,
which is to say
it didn’t seem possible,
but it happened.
And I was buried
beneath the cold
immense weight of it.
Crushed but still breathing—
another impossible truth.
I know some would like to see
the uprooted world
already green and lush again,
but anyone who
has wandered through
old avalanche paths
knows it takes many seasons
before the fallen old growth trees
have moldered into soil,
many seasons before the new saplings
have grown into forest again.
One truth is, the healing begins quickly,
but takes a long time.
Even then, the forest is never the same.
One truth is, so much of transformation
happens beneath perception.
One truth is, we all live
in the avalanche path.
Posts Tagged ‘winter’
Meeting Some Truths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalance, loss, truth, winter on February 24, 2022| 8 Comments »
Apricity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged miracle, presence, stillness, warmth, winter on January 22, 2022| 12 Comments »
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
Today the miracle is to sit
in the sunlit room and be
in the sunlit room,
to be here and only here,
here in the bountiful silence,
here in the shifting shadows,
here in the hands of midwinter,
not in this same room five years ago,
but now as the tulips
drop the soft curls of their petals
like lingering pink praise.
So seldom in these grief ridden days
do I feel a feeling so pure
as this peace that arrives
on the low-angled light
when I am quiet and still
and the world invites me
to show up for whatever
slim warmth there is, and
know it is enough.
This Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, cold, grief, song, winter on January 17, 2022| 8 Comments »
It is true, every day
brings a sadness—
sometimes like a blizzard,
sometimes like sleet,
sometimes like a clear morning
of fifteen below,
but I do not wish any of it away.
On the coldest mornings here,
the birds that choose to stay
fluff up their feathers
to trap in the chill air,
warming it with their own bodies
until it becomes their insulation.
This is, perhaps, how it is with grief—
by holding it close,
it transforms from something
that would hurt me
to something I infuse
with my own being,
thus becoming something
that allows me to survive.
It would be wrong
to say I like it. But I hear
how, with every day,
it is teaching me
a new way to sing.
More
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, emptiness, love, sunset, trees, winter on January 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Inspired by dark and naked aspen,
she’s been practicing emptiness—
perhaps you, too, have seen the way
that barren arms can better hold
the changing colors of the sky.
The less she holds, the more love
seems to fill her, pours into her
like the winter sunset, vast and brilliant.
All these years she thought the point
was to be full. Now she marvels
at how resonant she is without
so much clutter—how resounding,
the honest beating of her heart.
One in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, shadow, snow, song, winter on January 3, 2021| 2 Comments »
One Connection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, family, walking, winter on December 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »
walking in chill air
beside the frozen creek
warm words
Forty Years Later, The Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged earth, poem, poetry, snow, winter on December 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
When we were nine, we’d build
elaborate cities of snow
in the fifteen minutes before
the wail of the recess bell.
The boys would outwait us,
and as soon as we’d run
toward the school, they’d
knock our snow realm to the ground.
What is it in us that loves
to create? To build worlds?
To imagine a life taking shape?
And what is it, equally human, that
thrills in seeing it all fall down?
This morning, without me
lifting a finger, the world
remade itself in snow—
everything softer now,
smoothed and linked,
a unified kingdom of sparkle,
crystal and shine.
And once again, I am nine,
the winter grand. And once again, I long
to protect it, this beautiful world,
want to give it my imagination, my hands.
Like an Icicle, A Thought
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged icicle, poem, poetry, thinking, thoughts, winter on March 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »
It is the child of cold and warmth.
It is right it should show up
both cloudy and clear,
this union of opposites,
shaped like a spear, piercing
the silence with dripping, dripping.
It forms itself
the same way it disappears.
One Not Arriving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged icicle, poem, poetry, winter on March 2, 2019| 2 Comments »
One Growing Clarity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clarity, poem, poetry, snow, thoughts, winter on February 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Awake at Midnight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, moon, poem, poetry, shoveling, snow, winter on February 20, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The snow was light and the moon was near full,
and the shovels skated across the drive.
The rest of the world was asleep
except for the shoveler and her shovels and the moon.
The snow was light and her thoughts were quiet,
quiet like leafless cottonwood trees
with branches that tangled with the forward moon.
There are nights when though we are alone
we are not alone,
nights when the darkness doesn’t seem so dark,
nights when our work feels not like work
and we step out of our homes, then out of ourselves,
and we are somehow unsurprised
by the way everything shines.
One Friendship
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
Yet the Past Would Suggest
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged faith, garden, poem, poetry, seeds, winter on January 8, 2019| 2 Comments »
Reading seed catalogs
on an eight degree morning,
how improbable they look,
those royal chantenay carrots,
those pink seashell cosmos,
those bright sugar snap peas,
so greenly dangling.
After the Land of Sweets
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, persona, poem, poetry, The Nutcracker, winter on December 23, 2018| 5 Comments »
Believe me, the bon bons are even better
than they look from the audience.
Mother Ginger has made them
with something far sweeter
than Belgian chocolate,
sweeter than old fashioned caramel.
And the snowflakes that fall
at the end of Act One,
they are the best kind of snow—
the kind that never melts
and never make you cold,
the kind that glitter and shimmer and shine.
Believe me, it’s hard to leave.
Before the final curtain’s drawn,
I wave goodbye and smile,
and the golden sleigh
carries me off stage right
as the Nutcracker Prince
waves goodbye and the Sugar
Plum Fairy blows me a kiss.
Believe me, it never gets better than this.
Every time I wake the next morning,
I look at myself in the mirror and notice
the diamond tiara is gone,
my white gown hangs rumpled,
a lily left out of water too long.
Don’t cry, I tell myself. Don’t cry,
though the tears start
to sting in my eyes. Don’t cry.
I tell myself, soon enough
my parents throw the big party again
and Fritz will wail on that blasted trumpet
and Drosselmeyer will bring me
my slender prince, disguised
as a nutcracker, and I will travel
through the strangest dream,
the most wonderful dream,
though I swear it is real.
For over a hundred twenty-five years,
it’s happened so many times
how could I not believe it?
And though I have always
managed to kill the king of the mice
just before he stabs my prince,
every time I fear this will be the time
I will miss with my shoe and
I’ll lose my prince forever.
And every time they push my sleigh
off stage, I pray it will stop
before it reaches the curtains,
pray that this will be the time
I get to stay. This will be the time
I wake to see the prince’s face,
and he’ll beam as he waves his hand
toward the window where the snow
is falling, catching the light,
and the symphony plays on,
a lilting waltz that spirals through
the applause, through dawn.
Concentric
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ice, inner child, parenting, poem, poetry, winter on November 26, 2018| 2 Comments »
See, I want to say to my son. See
how the pond has frozen in thick,
continuous curves. See all the lines,
how they ring each other, like dozens
of tiny orbits. I want to show him
the marvel of it all, but he is too old
now for marvels, or perhaps too young,
the precise age where beauty is boring.
And so I take the child of myself to the pond
and show her the rings. I resist the urge
to explain how the meltwater formed them,
how surface-tension forces make liquid melt
cling against the lower parts of the ice.
Instead, I let her gaze at the miracle,
trace the concentric bands with her fingers.
How curious the rings are, like frozen halos
that fit enormous angels. How astonishing
in their design. Just wait till I show her
we can walk on it, too. I let her amazement
become my own, our feet slipping
across the smooth surface, our breath
rising in white ephemeral curls.
One More Storm that Didn’t Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, snow, spring, winter on March 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Just a few days before the new year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginning, faith, new year, poem, poetry, seeds, winter on December 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
the seed company sends their catalog
with 162 full-color pages of vegetables ready
to harvest. From snap peas and bush beans
to shallots and quinoa, plus every shape
and curl of leafy green—red ursa, red ruffled,
red Russian, Bolshoi. This is the same night
my son asks me as he falls asleep to explain
the difference between science and religion.
One, I say, is based on fact. The other,
I say, is based on faith. Though tonight,
as the temperature falls below ten,
and I regard the carrots, dark orange
and almost glowing off of page 29,
I begin to wonder how different
the two really are. I notice how the promise
of a slow-bolting, scab resistant
varietal sounds like a psalm I love—
the Lord, it says, will keep you from all harm—
and I look at the Royal Chatenays
and the Yaya Nantes and say out loud
to the dark kitchen windows and
to the cold winter air, I believe, I believe.
One Brilliance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adjust, poem, poetry, winter on December 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »
frost in the dried weeds—
sometimes it takes the cold
for things to find their shine
As Winter Remembers Itself
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, winter on December 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Despite the wind with its whipping twists
and the sting of the fierce face slaps of snow,
the day invites us to enter, to go lightly
into its rumpled hills—though the path
is erased by drifts, though we fall and struggle
to stand again. Sometimes the call
to fall in love with the day is easier to hear
when it’s hardest to imagine how.
Bitter gusts and swirling gusts
and gusts that steal our words.
Trying to fall in love never works.
It is more a matter of getting out
of our own way—not trying to orchestrate
the storm, just finding a way to play in it.
Heavy snow. Dim snow. The sky rushes
to fill in the tracks where we’ve been.
There are no tracks for where we are going.
There is this call to fall deeper in.
Quietly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, poem, poetry, winter on November 5, 2015| 1 Comment »
There is snow
all around us now
and no tracks leading
from the house
into the wood,
into the white—
Please, I need
to walk in snow
and have beside me
you, there’s something
that the winter
wants to teach us,
I don’t know
what it is, but
it’s not only about
the cold, not only about
the way that some things
seem to disappear.