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Posts Tagged ‘woods’

All This


                  after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
 
 
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.

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Little Explorer


 
 
To walk in the woods
is a kind of prayer.
Come in on quiet feet
and feel how you are not
alone. The golden trees
are full of eyes.
What are those sounds
you cannot name?
Whatever is untamed
inside you sings along.
Dwarfed by awe,
you might feel small,
but the inner song says,
you are all.
 

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There was a moment in sun-dappled woods
when I felt held by the peace that blooms
in the lungs, then spreads to limbs, to mind,
the peace that comes when I turn toward
the throbbing ache of hate and war
and don’t pretend pain isn’t here
and don’t deny beauty, either.
Amidst the peace of the quiet woods,
I wanted more, more peace
that spreads from woods to breath.
More peace, as if peace could be shared
like cake or bread or shelter or song.
I wanted to share it everywhere,
more peace that makes the mind a glade
with gentle light and ample shade.
How could I not want peace to spread
to war-torn homes in war-torn lands,
to war-torn hearts and war-torn hands.
So deep the peace of the sun-dappled woods.
And still I wish for more.

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After Difficult News


 
 
It’s enough to wander
alone in the woods
while the aspen
turn their leaves
into shimmering light.
This, too, is aftermath—
the brilliant red
of rose hips,
fat and sweet.
The clean scent
of rain. Holy fluff
that was once
yellow flowers.
The vast gold
field of grass.

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for an hour we danced
in the tiny kitchen
and sang with Dolly,
our voices braided
like eager vines,
and for that hour
I smiled and swayed
and I felt such spaciousness—
like a lost girl in a fairy tale
who has walked through dark woods
and arrived in a glade
with sunlight streaming
and flowers and bird song,
and though she’s still lost,
for this moment she’s safe,
not only safe, but happy,
truly deeply happy,
and when she reenters
the cold, dark woods,
as she must,
a bit of the shine
has twined into her.
Even now, I feel it,
the radiance,
how it shimmies
just like we did
beside the old oak cupboards,
how it glitters in the dark,
how it moves.

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