10 Sunday Nov 2024
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Belief, Eternity, Fear, Forgiveness, Freedom, God, Gratitude, Healing, Infinite, Longing, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Saguaro National Forest, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Spirits, Strength, Survival, Yearning
I thought, If all paths lead to God,
why should I care
about a right, or wrong, path?
I picked up a stone
and carried it four miles
through the desert to lay it down
at the broken, stone house.
But I took a wrong path, and laid it down
in an unmarked ravine, instead.
22 Wednesday Feb 2023
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Ash Wednesday, Dad, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fathers, Infinite, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter, Winter poem
The Aspen shivers, a little,
Its barefeet are covered in snow again,
Its white body exposed to a white sky.
I wonder if it is finally going to cry,
But it’s silent again, so I do.
The road shimmers again,
Like a road in heaven,
And they both contain death.
Ash Wednesday twenty twenty-three,
The day we lost you to morphine,
I arrived too late, down the icy road,
To ever hear my name again
From your mouth.
We had thought winter gone
But that was only an illusion,
One we wanted to believe,
After waiting so long for Sun.
24 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Alone, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Heaven, Hope, Ice, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Snow, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, The Universe, Winter, Winter poem
A white blanket was pulled over
Our homes, the earth, our heads,
As effortless as sliding on ice,
As uncontrollable as dying.
And, it was hard to see beginnings
Of fields, or endings of hilltops;
In that way, it was a blur of (also white) fog.
Who’s to say what lay behind it?
The infinite forever of lost souls–?
Just there, and there, look where
My finger is pointing, beyond the trees.
I see myself only as far as the fence-line.
All else sparkles back, a vision
Of what is here, and what has been here,
Always within the margin
Of what we can so easily see.
01 Monday Aug 2022
Posted in Poetry
30 Saturday Jul 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Alone, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fathers, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Losing, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Regret, Soul, Souls, Yearning
oh, they are right
with their cliches and memes
about how you will regret
when they’re gone
the missed opportunities
to hold them
to ask them
to listen
yes, it is obvious
isn’t it
but you are doomed
like I was
to never fully understand
the precious lives
so goddam important
to your own
so ubiquitous of shared moments
it is impossible to appreciate
their value
yes, it’s true
you’ll only know on the other side
of losing
welcome to being human
you will find it is full
of regrets
29 Friday Jul 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Dad, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fathers, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, wolfhound, Wolfhounds
Some gifts are better than others,
The way I saw your heart extend
Into past memories of her—
Tears from your uncrying eyes—
Her loss was the one loss
That broke you like that,
Like that,
The sobbing unashamed.
And then, it’s as if we fast forward
The great movie of our lives together:
You’re dying,
I’m a middle-aged woman.
You give me a dog.
A wolfhound,
Like the one whose loss broke you
Way back then. Riagan. Riagan.
Whose eyes held our gaze,
Whose eyes sought to impart wisdom;
Perhaps, her eyes saw beyond this life,
To where you are now.
Wouldn’t it be something
If our lives are that special,
They continue forever,
Two points–three–an infinity of dots
On some great line that extends forever.
23 Monday May 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Doe Mountain, Dying, Father, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Spirits
Moments, so beautiful they are painful,
Unless you take a deep breath
And carry them into your heart & lungs
Where they mix with the sweet oxygen
Of your body’s blood, pulse, beat, throb.
And you think, I will keep this, Lord,
Help me keep the memory of it,
Let me be changed forever to the goodness,
Yes, even the holiness of this moment.
(Because what is this, if not sacred?)
A poem can keep it, too, and as I read back,
I feel you in the flashing memory spots,
Where touch and sight and smell,
Ignite the latent feeling of you, still alive.
There you are, rising with other wonders:
The geese, flying through basalt cliffs,
The view, after ascending Doe Mountain,
The ocean, when I had not seen the ocean.
There you are among it all, in my mind,
And I can feel your love from this far away.
12 Thursday May 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Beauty, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Happiness, Hog Lake Falls, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, prairie smoke, Prayer, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spring, spring poem, Survival, The Universe, Truth, Yearning
Hog Lake Falls, a cool breeze,
One single, solitary swan.
I think I see him preening
From this vantage, far away.
Last time I hiked here, you’d just died,
And I thought, how lovely to know
I can bring you with me,
Free of the dying chair,
The dying bed, the whole dying room,
And house, where you’d locked yourself away.
Such days are ripe with feeling alive:
Prairie smoke droop their heads,
Their beautiful faces turned down,
As they wait for the kiss of a bee.
Then they will finally look up at the sky,
Say one last prayer, go to seed.
14 Monday Mar 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Belief, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Survival, The Universe
If there’s a heaven,
Who’s to say
It’s not right here,
Next to us,
Rather than far away?
Another dimension,
Our souls
Walk through at death,
More whole,
than in life.
Scientists say,
Our lives replay,
As we pass,
They can map
Our brain’s waves,
An almighty flash
Of memory cells,
Flashing.
What’s that about,
If not
Making us better?
And so
I talk to him,
In woods and fields,
My father,
Who loved woods
And mountaintops,
And me,
Less alone than before
He walked across,
Or flew across,
Or emerged across
The invisible line
Between life
And death,
The breadth of which,
Seems smaller
Than I knew before.
02 Sunday Jan 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Belief, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fear of Death, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, Winter poem
A fog over the snow-covered hills
Of the Palouse, loosed delineation
Of hill and road and sky,
It seemed an infinity of cloud,
A shroud, over our eyes,
As we returned from a ‘last visit,’
The one where we said ‘goodbye.’
A great chain is about to snap,
The ties that bind crackle,
Grow weak, tremble, cry:
This too shall pass, everything must die,
But at last, we don’t believe it’s true,
Do we? Life is all we’ve known,
And its roads extend for our ever,
And ‘our ever,’ doesn’t come to a tidy end,
But it does begin to blur at the edges.
25 Saturday Dec 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Death Poems, Eternal, Hope, Infinite, Infinity, Life, Love, Multiverse, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Survival, The Universe, Unity
In his last days, he contemplates this:
In the multiverse, our universe,
In the universe, our galaxy,
In the galaxy, our solar system,
And in that, our planet,
Where you find us,
Small as we are,
Celebrating
What it means to be eternal,
To join the stars,
To become one with love,
Two points on a line,
That extend forever.
11 Saturday Dec 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Death Poems, Dying, Family, Fathers, Fear of Death, Forgiveness, Happiness, Infinite, Love, Memory, Parents, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Song of Sorrow and Joy, Soul, Souls, Spirit
II.
I’ve seen enough of spirit to know
that you’ll still be here
when I write of letting go.
How love becomes energy,
And energy can’t be destroyed.
The power of memory:
Imperfections, fade away,
Only Love remains,
As a steady anchor,
A steady hand through—
It’s been a while
since I’ve seen you laugh,
(There’s not much joy in dying,)
Yet, I remember your laughter, too,
Your tears wiped away from crying.
And it makes me smile now,
How we watched you break down,
Such a serious father,
Completely undone
By your laughter.
13 Friday Aug 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Death Poems, Dying, Gratitude, Infinite, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Mt Spokane, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Yearning
“I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down –”
I will trace your body with my fingers,
I will kneel before you with cupped hands,
Because that’s what it is to love,
To memorize this moment we inhabit,
To see your chest rise and fall
In mutual breath and beating hearts.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
All those who have passed, there,
beyond the smoke, is the mountain:
Minutes, seconds, days, and months
Turn to years, but always the mountain,
Who recognizes only eternity.
And here, we embrace in its shadow,
Speak words, like living things do.
Comfort, does it comfort you
to hear your name spoken from my lips,
To know, someone will fall down
When you’re gone?
*Italics are verses from, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver
05 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Poetry
The virtue of aspen:
quake of leaves
in soft wind;
you see one tree,
friend,
look beneath,
it’s a family,
a colony
of roots and starts,
a community of rattling souls.
I imagine, if one is cut,
all else will shudder.
15 Thursday Oct 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Forgiveness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Spring, Survival
“There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” Robert Frost
Yet, they do fall, and silent, rot
beneath the changing bow.
Birds gather to peck the flesh
making less of loss,
Or perhaps, no loss at all.
You see,
the Universe claims everything
we leave behind.
Our regrets, too,
like spoiled fruit,
eventually fall away
scavenged by the sun.
Seeds are revealed
inside what we took as dead.
Trust me, next spring
there will be a new start.
09 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, The Universe, This Pendant World
Wasn’t everyone born
thinking
they belong
here forever,
even death,
we hide
behind closed doors
praying it will passover
us,
the ones we love,
cling to,
this earth,
how it swings
on its chain,
from cold days,
to warm—our lives,
like seasons,
which go on and on;
how can it go on
without us?
28 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Courage, Death, Divorce, Forgiveness, Happiness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Love Poems, Marriage, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, Vows
New eyes, your eyes,
not their eyes, you see
yourself anew, beginning
to love again. How can that be
a bad thing? Love is not bad,
ever. Make it worth it,
she said, and she’s dead now.
If she’s right, you thought,
could it save us? A love—
worth it, worthy of—
holding past what we thought
it was, what they thought
it was, to what love is:
mostly forgiveness,
he said it, I’m sure,
in the vows. Forgiveness,
he went on & on
about grace, & letting go.
18 Saturday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Bird Poetry, Birds, Death, Divorce, Eternity, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Longing, Love, Love Poems, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Rain, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spring, spring poem, Starting Over, Survival, The Universe, Unity, Women's Poems, Yearning
Even the stars are made of this:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
What comes from above,
and we are made right,
our thirst, our life—
forgiveness,
after years of anger;
we finally feel love again.
The earth wreaks well of redemption,
grace permeates the dry ground.
And, the only sound we hear now,
birds,
who sing of starting over,
or, at least that’s what we hear,
like the smell of fresh water,
among grass, and clover:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
09 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Belief, Cedars, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Flower Poetry, God, Hope, Infinite, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Trillium, Truth, Unity, Women's Poems
O, Jamie, it’s beautiful—
everything is connected,
she said, before dying.
And Jamie thought of trillium
blossoming beneath musty cedar
at the edge of the sound,
the whole world epitomized
in heart of flowers,
and spirit of ancient,
mouldering trees.
07 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, aspen, Aspen Trees, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Happiness, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Maggie, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Winter, Winter poem
Looking back, I see you
looking back, smiling,
I say your name,
as if to summon
the dead to life,
and it works,
for a moment.
It’s winter,
and the earth feels
like your absence,
the once living things,
here, but not here.
How many times
did you sit
next to me looking
out at the aspen?
And now, here it is
bare again, waving
its naked branches again.
Today, it looks like
it’s doing The Twist,
and, I think, it hears
a song I don’t, no,
a song I can’t, hear.
Looking back, I see you
looking back, smiling,
your secrets, a dance,
a song that plays
while the world listens,
and twists to a secret melody,
it cannot hear.
Bits of Poetry 