Category Archives: grief

Down the line

12 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by in Autumn, beauty, Body, departing, distance, grief, honoring, motion, poems, poetry, presence, wind

≈ Comments Off on Down the line

An acoustic guitar and a train track beat…

we’re chugging rugged countryside,

rounding bends,

wind streaming through open windows.

I think I’ll watch every dry yellow leaf flutter

and fall,

each flock of grass nod, swish and bow to the sun.

Sometimes grief’s a tar sticking in the lungs

and working to let it go means little

but waiting, waiting becomes the story,

waiting until it decides to let go of you.

The strum will fill your warm heart

as the clack-clack rhythm moves you through time–

be with what is,

it’s got its own magic, which you hold

and holds you,

growing in clarity, in beauty

somewhere on down the line.

New

18 Thursday Sep 2025

Posted by in ancestors, beauty, devotion, grief, Healing, heart, history, home, liberation, Life, medicine, mystery, new, Opening, poems, poetry, question, shame, song, transformation, unlearning, violence, waking, weaving, welcoming, wonder, work, world

≈ Comments Off on New

Confusion tumbles out of us,

violence and shame, ever pointing–

over there, over there.

Look in the mirror, friend, we each must

consider our part, the veins of ugliness within,

ignored, denied, pushed away.

Wounds need care,

sunlight and tenderness.

Otherwise, they fester.

None goes unhurt, none walks without darkness

to be held.

Point not that way, and that,

drop the pointer all together.

We are a we, and in it together to reweave

an old, old decaying story into blessing and art,

connection, nourishment and song.

What beauty brings us here now?

What Beauty to be bestowed back to Life?

Ask the ancestors,

they know,

ask the ancestors for help–

healing takes everyone, form and formless alike.

Let the new story begin..

it breaks through already

in the most delightful, unexpected ways.

Egg rolls and IPA

28 Wednesday Aug 2024

Posted by in Earth, gratitude, grief, laughter, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Egg rolls and IPA

Egg rolls and IPA,

Agatha Christie, pop R&B and kids parading

in and out.

A strange and satisfying blend.

From a walk to the library to pick up,

among other things,

a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh

(multiple readings required) after news harsh enough

to melt one’s ears or harden one’s heart,

and stress enough to keep a person in bed,

I tip back my head to breathe in towering trees

and warm evening light.

It’s a funny world,

a funny, funny world we all share.

Awkwardly, magically,

and with plenty of bedevilment.

Keep laughter ever ready

in your blessed little back pocket.

It’ll never short-change you.

In her corner

18 Thursday May 2023

Posted by in anger, father, food, grief, mother, movement, pain, poems, poetry, story, water, words

≈ Comments Off on In her corner

She sits in her corner, turning page

after paper page…

Held by two walls, floor and wood ceiling,

she removes herself

from still more broken connection.

Out there, nothing but loss.

In here, with pictures and stories, friends and

a giving, participatory world.

With father gone for work, back for dinner,

home only for irritation, judgment and sleep,

With mother avoiding pain through worry,

busyness and food,

anger unthinkable,

The girl is left knowing–

beyond the material,

she’s on her own.

Books act as balm

until, later, distance and exploration

return her to the early grief

of being alone

surrounded by people.

The nectar soothes her broken heart,

tear by reclaimed tear.

Enter the back field

16 Tuesday May 2023

Posted by in giving, grief, poems, poetry, receiving

≈ Comments Off on Enter the back field

Enter the back field,

forgotten field,

the ignored place,

avoided place,

and wait.

In that expanse,

glacially, co-arising finds faces

to show you.

As knocking starts,

though there are no walls,

no door,

trust who comes…

Way out there on the dirt

created by every death ever,

soon enough including your own,

while it feeds infinite Life,

a quaking begins in your heart,

echoes of the pulsing earth upon which

you stand.

Do not run.

Throw off your shoes, find your feet,

let the soles of you do the listening.

As the countless losses

that have brought you to this moment

wash through, over and around you,

within those faces being shown,

greater understanding dawns–

eventually.

And though the grief you’ve held away,

both knowingly and not,

feels like it will do you in as, finally,

you agree to do more than encounter

this abiding friend,

how concrete and personal it all has seemed

now shimmers,

quivers,

like water,

like air,

and its permanence–never real–dissolves.

Traces remain,

beauty of fossils, of exoskeletons,

and strength to take another breath

is given,

not simply found.

Lightness accompanies darkness

in their timeless marriage

consciously

once again.

Sweep the threshold

12 Friday May 2023

Posted by in freedom, generations, ghosts, grief, home, honoring, movement, poems, poetry, ride, unlearning, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Sweep the threshold

Sweep the threshold,

unlock the door,

put the busyness away–

what comes is far

too important.

Build a fire,

quiet the house,

all your sensing is required.

Hear the hoof beats?

The full horse breaths?

Mice may scratch in the walls,

spiders rattle the roof,

you’ve nothing to do

but be home.

Movements beneath your skin,

flashes of thought,

quickening heart,

allow them.

This is a welcoming.

You don’t know who approaches

only that they must.

Freedom blooms

as we set

a place for everything.

What you carry in your blood

has voice–

Let her sing.

So long ago

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by in Body, grief, naked, nature, poems, poetry, return

≈ Comments Off on So long ago

What kind of oppression is this

for women to hate their own bodies into submission?

To tuck, flatten, cut, shape, build, color,

paint, starve, carve, feed, hide, cover, sculpt

and bind

such unique beauty and presence

to conform to something else?

For someone else?

Many are even convinced they do it

for themselves.

What, and whom, does it serve?

How long have we lied to,

hated, pushed away, contrived

and disappeared ourselves?

It goes beyond gender.

(Choose any system and look at how

we’ve turned it against ourselves.)

Ever noticed a peacock, tiger, or,

hell, a goat

do the same?

How ridiculous.

And cruel.

To what god have we bowed

when discarding the body we have been given,

one never to be created twice–not ever to be seen again–

to be wanted? appreciated? included?

Ohhhh let’s gather another tribe instead,

shake ourselves loose from those heavy chains

clamped on our wrists so long ago

we couldn’t possibly remember.

Devotedly

12 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by in devotion, friends, grief, Loss, poems, poetry, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Devotedly

At 8 I lost my best friend,

with the end of the school year she skipped right up two grades,

and there without I continued on,

no one near.

At 11, overnight, my best friend decided she hated me

and the girl to whom I’d tied my heart,

living right up the sidewalk at the top of the hill,

was gone.

At 15, my best friend, girl who searched with me dark star-filled skies

and distant philosophies, disappeared

right in front of me. On a path

between two pines, she separated,

saying it was over. No reason given. And walked away.

Years passed. Each returned

for a moment.

The first in a market near a pile of avocados,

wandering through with friends on a visit home from college.

Word reached me later

she died of cancer far too soon after.

The next circled back simply to say

she’d left me because everyone in her life had left her first

and she was keeping that from happening again.

The last found me by phone, states away,

wanting to say she’d ended our friendship

because I asked too many questions

and she, being confused enough on her own,

couldn’t take it.

More recent losses diminish even those crushing endings,

hitting harder still than death–

that visitor being inevitable, embraceable and understood.

How loss does shape us,

at times the shape taking decades to decipher.

Wonder steps in,

the companion who never rejects or abandons.

Wonder walks alongside, reverently,

devotedly.

A reminder comes in the morning song of hummingbird…

turn towards wonder, always

she sings,

towards wonder.

Allow her to move

24 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in abundance, devotion, grief, movement, poems, poetry, rage, welcoming, work

≈ 1 Comment

Grief stagnates

into rage.

Allow her to move;

Plant a stone,

Bury a broken song,

Sing another to a place on this earth dry

with sorrow.

Open to the endings,

without them nothing begins.

Unimaginable are the possibilities

for they

have yet to meet their own conception.

Offer the moistening river

your enormous grief.

Follow its movements,

dances are born in the currents.

Much has been taken,

now much can be given back;

Return grief to the Beauty–

tender Life may run again toward you.

Allow her to move.

Life is saying,

she needs her juice back

through the body of you.