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Posts Tagged ‘wound’

Cleaning Mom’s Blue Glass, I Think of My Son

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2024| 9 Comments »


 
 
Barefoot, I balanced
on mom’s counters
and I handed her
the blue glass
plates and vases
from the highest shelf.
They were dusty,
as all things are
when unused. Now
they shine, draw
the eye upward,
bring beauty to the room.
It makes me wonder
what parts of my life
I have not touched
for too long—
like that wound today
I brushed so tenderly
with my thoughts.
What was dust
now gleams this evening,
has become the only thing
my eyes can see.
And though I might
avoid it if I could,
somehow the wound
makes everything around it
all the more lovely,
as luminous as newly
polished blue glass,
as shimmering as any tear.
 

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On My Daughter’s Fourteenth Birthday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 15, 2022| 10 Comments »




Though she has been shaped
by pain, she thrives.
She is like a tree, now,
that remembers its wounds
and grows differently
because of its injuries,
some of them deep,
yet is no less vigorous
as it grows new healthy wood,
as it reaches for sun,
as it grounds into the soil,
as it offers its fruit
to the world.

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Apulosis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 8, 2022| 4 Comments »




They’re almost invisible now,
these scars on my hands—
cuts from cat claws
and thorn bushes,
barbed wire fences.
I have long since forgotten
their stories.  
It’s what the body does—
forms new fibers
to mend damage.
But what of when
the wound has touched
every part of the body,
every part of the heart,
every part of story
of who you are?
How long will
there be healing
before there’s a scar?
Will it be raised?
Or sunken? Or flat?
I run a fingertip
along the thin pale lines
on the back of my right hand.
These scars, I see
are repairs made by time
and biology.
But some scars,
I believe,
are beyond the body.
Some scars
can only be knit
by miracle.

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Concurrent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

On a morning

when the snow

falls and drapes

everything in shine,

it is not that I don’t

feel the wounds—

raw and throbbing—

it’s just that it’s

so beautiful,

this tender world,

that I want

to praise it

forever.

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After All This Talk of Healing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

the only thing

that matters

is the wound—

from a dark nest

comes gold

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Two Reframings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 4, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

this wound—

re-teaching my tongue to name it

blessing

 

*

 

a sad song

so beautiful even the skylark

stops to listen

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Wrestling on a Wednesday Evening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 7, 2016| 4 Comments »

 

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

—Rumi

 

 

Even knowing that a wound becomes

an entry point for light, I do not want

the wound. I have been wounded, am

wounded, and yes, I have felt the light

touch even the most vulnerable places

with inconceivable tenderness,

but tonight I am not strong enough

to pray that the wound stays open.

Tonight all I want is for the ache

to stop, not just for me, but for the whole

aching world. Light is not all

that enters the wound. Any orchardist

can tell you what happens to an injured fruit.

Is it so wrong to want to ripen?

I can see my ideas are small. I go to push them

out of the way and I am dwarfed by them.

How strange to pray that I might want to pray

for a wound to stay open. One day,

perhaps, we will all have been wounded

enough that we will be made entirely of light.

One day, perhaps, it will be more painful

not to be wounded, not to be open

to anything that arrives to enter.

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