After Grief

 "having sensed the barest hint of sun still buried

like a bulb beneath the horizon, and decided

that's all the proof it needs to say its own

small yes to life in this new season."

This...these words describe how it 

feels to be alive in this vast universe...

yes, minuscule as we may feel,

we can sense the barest hint of sun

and murmur our own small yes to life...

Each one of us is doing this in our own unique manner.

Eeking our way through our days with

everything in us as fuel toward the sun of goodness...

We know who we are and who we wish to become.

We will not be deterred from our goal.

We're in this together.

We are not alone.

Like the crocus,

in our reach toward the sun...

we find ourselves in a field of blooming.  

Hope

There is a catch in my breath every time I read this.

It describes how hope feels these days...

dense and dark and sorrowful

and utterly beautiful.

"It lands in my body with all the fragile gravity

of mist suspended in light."

This description is so precise it steals my breath

and steels my resolve to cherish it 

beyond every ounce of strength I possess.

Yes, hope is the thing I'll follow 

in the darkest times, a living root I'll cling to

as it tenderly threads through the rich soil of my sorrows."

Oh my heart...a living root as it tenderly threads through

the rich soil of my sorrows.  

Everything inside me sighs in recognition of this truth.

It touches the sorrows I hide from and lets them breathe.

It reminds me how this "living root" also threads tenderly

through the rich soil of my drudges and my delights...

If I concentrate, I can almost detect its slow, steady winding...

circling and spiraling...

 grounding and centering me in the mist of hope.

 

 

Wage Kindness

"Wage your sorrows as blankets for the shivering.

The thought that my sorrow could be useful to another

is something I have not considered. I would like it to be true.

This lets sorrow have its full range,  even though it seems a stretch 

to actually end one's shivering.

"Wage your despair [to] feed the fire of hope."

Yes, feeding the fire of hope.

My despair is plentiful and ready to blaze.

"Build bridges for the repentants, for the returning.

Yes, even them. Wage an open hand in forgiveness."

These are the lines that propel me to share this poem.

I confess to a certain amount of cynicism given

our history in this country.  May our forgiveness

bring about truth and fairness.

May it not feed a fire of revenge.

Wage yourself against the evidence of dying,

and give life to another."

We are all in the process of dying...

bringing joy and gratitude

into the gravest of situations

is resistance of the bravest kind.

It is everything.

 

Lives In My Chest

I don't know about you but this "messy, howling creature"

has been acting this way for quite some time now.  

I'm not sure it's necessary to calm her down...

better to give her a magic carpet and a map to places 

that need to hear her roar.

Perhaps lend her a band with trumpets playing reveille

to gather goodness into one giant song 

weaving us into one boisterous chorus,

with speakers reaching every heart...

to reconnect us and put an end to indecency, 

 so we remember the forgotten,

 rebuild and strengthen fairness...

applying it generously...leaving no one out.

 Return honest justice to our lands and people.

Then we can begin repairing what's been broken...

 healing what is ailing...

 reconnecting neighbors...  mending divisions...

 honoring lost lives...  comforting those hurting...

letting teachers teach... evening the playing field...

ripening what is unripe in ourselves and our world.

Let's welcome this "messy, howling creature".

We need her.

We need us.

 

Sing From Your Soul

". . .over every holy place of death

 in your story."

This quote touches 

a very tender place for me.

There have been deaths 

in holy places in my story, 

so excruciating I can no longer resurrect them,

 leaving blank places where I long 

to hold vivid, precious, memories.

"Serenade the dry, cracked pieces..."

My serenade is

 the opposite of musical...

it's a circling around, 

focusing my mind

on what shards of memory are there...

and peering through the haze 

hoping my body will help

 my mind recall the treasures 

of when my girls were small.

The wonder of it is this...

the wild beauty exists 

in their presence today...

and that's what matters most...

for which I’m infinitely grateful.

In Case You've Forgotten

"There are waterfalls that exist beneath the ocean, 

larger than any on land and places 

where no light has ever reached, 

yet life still exists there. "

How I would love to explore beneath the ocean.

That fact that "no light ever reaches yet lift still exists" 

fills me with amazement.

". . .jellyfish that can return to an earlier stage of life instead of dying."

This is something I was not aware of.

If the T. dohrnii jellyfish is exposed to environmental stress, physical assault, or is sick or old, it can revert to the polyp stage, forming a new polyp colony.^[5] It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, which alters the differentiated state of the cells and transforms them into new types of cells.

Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal,^[3][6] although in practice individuals can still die. In nature, most Turritopsis dohrnii are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the medusa stage without reverting to the polyp form.^[7]Wikipedia

" . . .animals that can sense the earth's magnetic field, 

navigating entire continents without getting lost,

. . .your own heart has a magnetic field that extends beyond your body."  

Of course Monarchs come to mind

and many, many other creatures who navigate the globe by instinct.

"You live on a planet where your senses filter out most of reality

 just so you can function, meaning you are always 

living inside a version of it and never seeing it all."

While this sounds comforting, especially if we would be

nonfunctioning if we were able to take it all in,

it would be interesting to experience, for a minute or two.

If one could tolerate it that long?

Life these days in this country might be a tiny taste of it?

It's easy to become stagnant and numb 

when things are overwhelming and threatening.

I'm happy to be reminded of the astonishing happenings

going on mostly unnoticed in the universe and

feel enormous gratitude for those who study and explore

and share their findings, letting us in on the marvels they encounter.

It's why I want to do whatever small thing I can to 

treat our planet the way it deserves to be treated.

 

 

Dear Peace

"You are one of the few things left that cannot be purchased,

but must instead be cultivated and shaped over time."

This hurts my heart with the decades spent cultivating

peace in the world destroyed in a rash act of aggression.

We all find ourselves like the Spring Beauty, with 

"mouths searching for the right words to speak or sing."

We are still cultivating and shaping precious peace

whether we're doing so quietly through simple acts

of gentle kindness, or loudly with posters,

phone calls, and solidarity with decency.

Even when it seems futile, we know it is not.

It matters.  We matter.  ALL of us matter.