for Summer, Autumn, Lulu and Katie From the garden, the girls brought a small bouquet of late summer’s loveliest flowers: snapdragons, nasturtiums, lavender, salvia, and the fernlike leaves of marigold. And there in the center, like a guest who did not care what clothes she was given to wear to the ball, was the white globe of dandelion gone to seed, its white filigree quite unlike all the other petals. How could I not notice this orb of wishes still waiting to be wished? How I longed to spend all the wishes on these girls who had seen this fragile sphere as a gift. May they be happy. May they be sure they are loved. May they know their own beauty beyond any mirror. May they flourish in all soils. May they believe their own hearts. May they trust their own voices. May they find friends wherever they travel. May they feel vital in any bouquet. May they know love. Again and again. Live into the fullness of each ordinary moment. And wherever they grow, may they know for certain the earth itself will carry them. |
Posts Tagged ‘youth’
The Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, dandelion, flowers, wishes, youth on August 16, 2022| 8 Comments »
The Woman Who Wears Only Solids Remembers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, clothes, life, youth on February 12, 2021| 2 Comments »
That was the year I only bought clothes imported from Bali—
baggy pants in a geometric black-and-white print,
long swishy flowery skirts in bright blues
and thin dresses with intricate knot designs.
I don’t know what became of them all—
Good Will, I suppose. Not that I want them back,
but I miss the girl who felt like a treasure in them,
who wore them lightly, who danced and ran in them,
who twirled in the middle of a field
so the fabric would ripple out and would fall down
in the grass and not worry about the stains.
I miss the girl who shrugged out of those clothes
every time she was near an alpine lake,
slipping nakedly into the icy clear water.
I miss how she wore her life back then,
like something exotic, something beautiful,
something new she couldn’t wait to try on.
Castilleja scabrida
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, desert, flowers, plants, youth on April 6, 2020| 2 Comments »
It’s not that they are hiding—
it’s more that they know
the power of a red dress.
Between slabs of red sandstone,
the tiny yellow green flowers
of the desert paintbrush
decorate themselves
with bright red bracts,
colorful flame-like spears
that attract butterflies,
hummingbirds and bees.
It’s what we do to survive,
those of us born plain,
those of us otherwise ignored.
I think of the homely girl I was
who wanted to wear
gold combs in her hair
to the middle school dance,
as if something shiny and bright
might attract the honey boys.
I want to go back to that gym
with its streamers and balloons
and take the gold combs
out of her mousy brown hair
and tell her the brightest parts of her
are inside. I want to tell her
that being a small green
and yellow flower
will serve her.
I want her to know
that a day will come
when she’ll walk in the desert
and feel so at one
with the cliffs and the scrub brush,
the lichen and the Mormon tea,
and that in that moment
when she loses her sense of herself
and merges with slickrock
and paintbrush and sky
it is then she will be most beautiful.
Walking Past the Old VW Bug at the Car Show
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cars, love, nostalgia, poem, poetry, religion, youth on September 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »
And coming closer, I catch a familiar scent
and lean my head in the open window,
breathe in, and I am sixteen again, and Peter
is sitting beside me and The Russians Love
their Children, Too is playing on the tape deck
and we’re singing along, the windows are down
and the night is warm and we’re finding a place
in the dark where we can park and practice ways
to fit our tall thin bodies into the tiny back seat.
And it’s summer. And I love him. And he loves me.
I’m downshifting and he has his hands up my shirt
and we’re laughing and we have no idea yet
just how much it will hurt when we learn
that love is not enough when it comes
to scripture and doctrine and who marries whom.
No, tonight, it’s just me and Peter and the generous
dark and Sting and the backseat just big enough
and the indifferent moon.
Two Chairs
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, poem, poetry, self talk, younger self, youth on August 20, 2019| 2 Comments »
I pull out two chairs. One for me.
One for the girl who didn’t want
to become a woman. The girl
who, at night, would use tweezers
to pull out any hairs that tried to grow
where her skin had always been smooth.
The girl who tied a bandana around
the small lumps of her breasts
to keep them from growing.
The girl who wanted to believe
she could stay a girl. I know
she would rather be outside
by the lake, fishing. Or exploring
the woods, looking for treasures.
Or making potions out of bark and grass
and berries in her mom’s old silver pot.
But she sits here with me, awkward,
slouching a little to pretend she isn’t so tall.
She tells me she wants to be a poet. How she
loves to play with words. How she knows
the other kids tease her behind her back.
How she sometimes thinks she might disappear
into light when the sun streaks through the clouds.
I just listen and nod. I know exactly how she feels.
I know she won’t believe me if I tell her
she’ll lose the battle with the hair.
That the bandana trick worked, perhaps too well.
That the joy she finds in writing will never leave her.
That she’ll forget the names of the kids
who teased her, but she’ll always remember
what they said. And despite all these tethers,
she’ll learn to disappear into the light,
to give herself completely to the world.
It will be so beautiful.
But for now, this reluctance,
this longing to remain a girl,
this certainty that there is magic
here in childhood that she never wants to lose.
On Second Thought
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, youth on November 17, 2015| 3 Comments »
Love, yeah, sure but really
it comes down to damn hard work.
I might have told that to those younger
versions of ourselves if they’d asked
what makes a partnership last.
But they weren’t asking. Too busy
building fires and climbing peaks.
Look at them, stars in their hair,
rivers in their blood. They look
so awfully happy, don’t they?
Shhhhh. let’s not tell them.
They’ll find out soon enough.