I wish I could give you the keythat opens this rusty cage of ache,or maybe wings to carry younot so much away from hurtbut toward some garden youlong to land in. A call to summon youtoward a night-dark meadowwide enough to twirl inuntil you fall down dizzy to stareat the star-bright sky and rememberyourself as […]
with thanks to Karly Pitman There is this stark momentwhen I see I am not my worry.When I do not chastisemyself for worrying, nordo I demonize the worry.I do not imagine the worryas a snake or a tick or a nail.I welcome it into my lap,uncomfortable teacher,and pause hereon the hard chair of curiosity.Softness arrives […]
It slithered in snakelike, the worry,and hissed in a sinister whisper,What if you said too much?Why can’t you just be quiet?I felt its eyes measure my long, bare throat,felt its fangs against my skin.Doubt in my safety flooded in.But I did not speak back.Instead, on instinct, my bodytook me to the noon-bright pondto float like […]
Over twenty years ago I walkedthis same trail to Hope Lakeand crossed the same creeksand picked my way throughthe same talus which is alwaysfalling in the path. I gatheredripe raspberries and staredat the red peaks all around.Who was I then? A strangerwith my same name. I don’tblame her for not knowing she was young. As […]
Something about the relentless beautyof the dahlias this year makes me forgetlists and calls and news and aches asI stand beside them in a splendor stupor,watching them bloom in real time, notwanting to miss a moment of the long stemsrising, the red color deepening then fadingfrom the petals as they age. I imagine a time […]
What happens when we fall in love with the world without trying to change it? Can we? This poem was written from a first line offered by Mirabai Starr. “The Medicine of Surrender” is the thirteenth track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the […]
Somehow we find each other,Though our gatheringdoesn’t fix or change the loss,there is tenderness, even beauty,in coming together. I have readin Switzerland it’s illegal to ownjust one guinea pig.It’s considered animal abusebecause they are social beings.We, too, are social beings.Perhaps we don’t sniff and nudgeand squeak and rumble strut,but we cradle, we hum, we hold.We […]
I love when he puts his fingersto his lips and holds them there,as if creating a tiny place to hide.It’s like a cloud attemptingto hide the whole sky. When we first met,I began to do it, too,hold my fingers to my lipsas if in this way I might becomea little more him. It felt liketrying on […]
and all the scaffoldingthat has held me upcrashes downand I stumblefrom the theaterto find myselfin my body,heart naked as a cloud.I crouch in the dry dirtbehind a building,weeping,unable to stand,stunned againby the truthof loving whatmust be lost.When finally I rise,my hat comes off.How rightif feels in my hair,on my face,the wind.