24 Monday Jun 2019
Tags
Childhood, Children, Divorce, Forgiveness, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, Surviving, Trauma, Violence
What is the opposite
of the violence
you witnessed,
hostages to our pain,
too young to know
what normal should be?
But tonight,
all three grown,
and at my side,
the peace
of survivors who love
and forgive–
because what else is there
except to love
and forgive.
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.
17 Friday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birch, Birds, Family, floods, Grass, nests, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Refugees, Starting Again, Starting Over, Survival
Flood warnings, became flooded streets,
a gathering of mud, and other debris,
while in our yard, a branch broke,
from the old birch tree,
and in it, the grass nest,
a family of birds, now refugees.
And, I imagine them searching,
for a place to start again,
free of broken, flotsam dreams,
their past life, falling from this tree,
as the birch continued to bud,
and the grass continued to green.
16 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
09 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Humanity, Letting Go, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Survival, Surviving
We are veterans of dead bones,
products of love, and its loss,
memorizers of last breaths,
and what letting go feels like.
The front line of memory gives way,
what we held in our hands,
dissolves, like water on clay–
muddy water, returning
to muddy ground, then dust;
it is a fate that awaits all of us:
empty arms, encircled of sacred air,
grasping at remnants
of what we valued there.
08 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
aspen, Divorce, Hope, Loss, Love, Masochist, Metaphor, Pain, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, Violence
I searched metaphors to describe you,
the aspen’s branches beating against themselves,
waving for help, like desperate arms,
but that was the work of the wind.
The coyote, who devoured all except the head,
and what appeared to be a shoulder
of our girl cat, and left her among the weeds,
but that was the work of hunger.
Then I thought, maybe the foal,
when they drove off with his mother,
her whinnying, more distant and more distant,
as he crushed his tender body against the rails,
but that was the work of love being torn away.
No, in the end, I came up empty explaining
your helplessness against self-loathing,
our loss of hope, and leaving,
but that, it seems now, was the work of surviving–
surviving the things even poems can’t explain.
02 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Canada Geese, Cowboy, Freedom, Hope, Horse, Horse Poem, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, River, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spokane, Spokane River, Spring, Survival
We rode dirt and mud,
through standing water,
like ponds, to verify
the sun, and life
of returning things:
Canada Geese, wood ravens,
mule deer, grazing at dusk,
and the river, surging
with the spring run off
of our souls, singing.
29 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
aspen, Aspen Trees, Beauty, Courage, Death Poems, Dying, Hope, Life, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Spirit, Spring, spring poem, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning
early spring,
a cold aspen, clothed
in soft buds, robed in white,
like ash, born of snow;
to touch her is to quake
with the anticipation
of a thousand leaves
desperate to unfold;
a thousand leaves
desperate
to unfold you.
07 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Alone, Courage, Death, Happiness, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Survival, Tulip, Yearning
Like the yellow tulip,
who blooms every year
in the pit behind our house,
who was dumped, long ago,
after her blossoms were spent—
yet, she screams, I’m still alive!—
every spring, among garbage
and weeds; like that tulip,
you don’t belong here.
23 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Coffin Bone, Cowboy, Desperation, God, Gods, Horses, Lame, Miracles, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Prayer, Survival
If you don’t have a hoof,
you don’t have a horse.
He was dead lame,
broken coffin bone,
leg extended out in pain,
as if imploring me to mend
his severed part.
Heart of my heart,
I can only offer prayer,
to the gods who love horses,
as much as we love gods to care.
28 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
An amicable divorce is the scariest kind,
because we prefer our American ones
be macabre—on the edge of killing
without actually killing—
like, she tried to run him over,
but she also tried to miss—
and it all worked out, because
he married his lover,
she married hers,
and each say they’re happy.
Brian told me—
Sometimes, divorce is a mercy —
and just like that
the church granted his annulment.
Gibbons, wolves, french angelfish,
shingleback skinks:
monogamous for life.
Even the seahorse,
whose males carry the young,
and sandhill cranes
with their unison calls,
commit to each other
and never look back.
Yet, tell me what the seahorse
was asked to forgive:
a lie, an indiscretion,
a we don’t love each other anymore?
I literally woke and found you gone;
twenty years later,
I still don’t miss you.
19 Wednesday Dec 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
We all deserve to be loved—
and when I say loved,
I mean desperately—
the kind of love that clings to you,
that winds you together with the sheets,
that says, when we die
we want to be placed together
intertwined, like this—
that knocks on the locked door
because your lover
can’t sleep without you—
twenty years is a long time
and look what you survived
to be here—
his arms wrapped round your chest,
hands, cupping your breasts
