Dear Friends,
I was so grateful to be invited again this year to participate in a poetry reading against sexual assault int he Teen Love & Consent week at my local high school.
I wrote this poem for those students–because I believe that it is essential that our NO is heard when talking about who has the right to touch our bodies, and I also believe that it is essential to dream of the world we do want. What does it look like, a world of deep respect, equality, kindness? What do I most want to say yes to?
I wept (I know, surprise, surprise) at the candor and valor of the students and teachers who participated. I am so heartened by the courage and strength of our teens.
When We Say No
When we say no, we mean
this body is my forest
and you are now a trespasser here.
We mean I will not be
one of seven hundred thousand people
raped in America this year.
We mean no to all rape,
any year, anywhere.
When we say no, we mean
yes to our choice, we mean yes
to our freedom, yes to our safety,
yes to our peace, yes to our trust
and yes to respect. We say yes
to our own inner flowering—
may we continue to flower.
We say yes to the power of no.
When we say no, we mean
never again. We mean
you have the duty
to not hurt, to not take,
to not cut down our bodies
like saplings. We mean yes
to hope, yes to making it right,
yes to not having to fight
for the right to be safe,
yes to our voices mattering,
yes to the silence shattering,
yes to each of us growing
like a forest, our boundaries clear,
our bodies sacred.
Posts Tagged ‘yes’
From Shatter the Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged no, sexual assault, yes on February 16, 2024| 11 Comments »
By Now You’d Think I’d Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choice, communion, music, yes on July 31, 2022| 4 Comments »
There is a secret music
that hides inside each yes.
At first we think we know
the tune. Heck, we might
even think we wrote it.
But soon, after yessing,
we learn there is a much
grander score than we ever
might have guessed,
and now we hear how
just one yes,
plucked like a string,
creates harmonies
and dissonances
and asks us to listen again,
not for what we think we hear,
but for everything else—
the soundtrack of the infinite after,
Perhaps you notice it, too,
how the masterpiece
needs you. How each note
informs the song forever.
When I First Read Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged James Joyce, literature, ulysses, yes on June 17, 2022| 4 Comments »
a musing on Bloomsday, June 16
That was the first time
I fully understood
the sway of yes—
how what Joyce called
“the female word”
could seduce, could affirm,
could acquiesce,
could mountain flower,
could undress a grown man,
could slowly caress
others’ tenderest parts,
could trespass like perfume,
could rewrite the past.
Joyce said it signaled
“the end of all resistance,”
and I who tried
to be good, to be tame,
to do right, read Molly
and lusted to be
the one in the red yes
who lives with abandon
and recklessness,
and yes, I thought, yes
I could live into yes,
I slipped into the word
like a silken digression,
and thirty years later,
I still dream in yes,
my heart beating mad,
a riotous clash
when I yes, pulse with yes
did it enter you, too,
this radiant yes,
beating yes,
oh this yes.
I Bless Every Yes I Said
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, grief, loss, mother, son, yes on January 20, 2022| 13 Comments »
There were nights when my son
would come to me late, like midnight,
and say, Mom, come on, let’s go drive.
And though I was tired, and though I knew
the canyon roads would make my stomach turn,
I’d say yes, because I was glad he’d ask,
and we’d get in the Ford and I’d feel the thrill
as it flooded him each time he’d sit at the wheel.
The night was our cathedral.
And we’d talk, or we wouldn’t, and he’d drive
us up to the top of the Dallas Divide.
I’d feel like heaving my guts every time. But damn,
how I loved those nights. The hymn of the wheels.
His smile. His laugh. The quiet canticle of breath.
No matter what choices came later,
I have those times he steered toward joy,
Those nights when we were so alive
and we’d drive, just drive.
Getting to Yes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, yes on October 23, 2021| 9 Comments »
Today yes is letting
my hands hang limp—
though it’s less
that I choose to not use them,
more that life insists.
Yes has lost its leaves.
Yes wears no shoes.
Yes is a winding road
with no guard rails,
no pull outs, no passing lane.
Yes feels like one leg extended
over a high desert cliff,
the other about to join it midair.
It tastes like black tea
steeped too long
with no milk.
It tastes like the meal
I didn’t order,
but was served
and told to eat.
Yes is the song
with a one-word lyric
that now I can only hum.
And if yes is a drum,
I stumble along.
And if yes says
Square your shoulders,
the best I can do today is be cloud.
The best I can do today is rain.
One Indestructible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, no, yes on February 6, 2020| 2 Comments »
just when the sledgehammer of no
takes its best shot,
finding in me an invincible yes
When It Comes to Ideas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, ideas, poem, poetry, sheep, yes on November 11, 2019| 2 Comments »
I am perhaps like the mama sheep
who rejects the lamb that is not her own—
snorts at it, won’t let it suckle,
shoves it away with her nose.
Though her own lamb was born lifeless,
though her teats are full to leaking,
she will have nothing to do with the alien.
It’s not the lamb’s fault it has the wrong scent,
just as it’s not the idea’s fault it was born
in another’s mind. It’s likely a good idea,
just needing a bit of nourishment.
But there are skilled herders who know the art
of grafting, who make of the dead lamb’s skin
a jacket and wrap it around the alien lamb,
tricking the ewe into taking it on as her own.
Then it’s a matter of bonding.
Don’t think I didn’t see you as you stripped the skin.
Don’t think I’m unaware of what you’ve done.
The truth is, I wanted to foster it, to claim it
as my own, to see it frolic in these fields of sage.
I was made for nurturing. It’s just that loss is difficult.
It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to say yes.
Positively
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calendar, no, poem, poetry, scheduling, yes on September 21, 2016| 9 Comments »
Saying yes to too many things at once
is like eating dark chocolate truffles one
after another after another. The first
is infused with wild raspberry, which leads
to a caramel truffle with fleur de sel, which leads
to two smooth champagne truffles, which leads
to a tummy ache, bittersweet. My calendar
has a tummy ache. Its numbered squares
are filled in with rows of rich invitations…
a book club infused with Louise Erdrich
and Sauvignon Blanc, a meditation retreat
handcrafted with extra silence, a trail run
through aspen groves filled with silky light.
How could I pass on any of these delights?
Saying yes to too many things at once
is like crossing a remote border at midnight,
and though your pulse races with the thrill,
you have no idea if you will ever know
what home means again. Saying yes
to too many things at once is in fact
a disguise for saying no. No to openness,
no to spontaneity, no to whatever surprise
might have found its way into the vacant
possibility of that deliciously empty square.
Without a Doubt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, what does life want?, wind, yes on March 17, 2016| 3 Comments »
Could be you feel
like a tiny bird
flapping hard, hard
as you can
into the wind.
Though there
is no sign that says
Dead End,
you are not going
anywhere and can’t
imagine you ever will.
Could be
all that fluttering
exhausts you
until
you stop all that trying
and turn away
from whatever it is
you think
you are flying toward.
And then
perhaps
you understand—
not with your head,
with your whole being—
that wherever the wind
is going to go
it will go. Could be
you find yourself
saying yes to the wind,
the same wind,
you know this, that fills
your lungs.
Could be that it
is so beautiful,
this new kind of flying,
that you forget
to be frightened
that you do not know
what will happen next.
Could be you’ve never
been quite so aware
how infinite
the sky.
A Few Good Reads on Yes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged book recommendations, Drew Myron, Push Pull Books, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, yes on February 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Looking for something great to read? Drew Myron has a fabulous site, Push Pull Books, and she polls artistic folks about what they’re reading on a certain topic … the theme she gave me, aptly, was “yes.” I had a great time reading the other themes and book recommendations … thanks, Drew, what fun!
You can read my three top picks at her site here.
I’ll just say here that the other book I would have put on the list is “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” by George Lakoff, which among other things explains cognitive research around why it is so important to frame things positively.