Category: From Hafiz

• Birds work all through the night

  I don’t know what they do this time of night. I just hear them squawking. And they sound a little bent out of shape. They chatter with one another, voices strained but constant — New parents whisper loud through the nursery wall trying to get their baby down, exhausted, having lost all sense of night…

  Jenifer

  May 9, 2018

  From Hafiz, Parenting

  Family, Nature, poem, Work life

• It is no wonder

  Is it a wonder that I am more drawn to watching the birds flit than to reading your words, again? You would not blame me I think. They dive in the mist over loch and glen, feathers soaked from the constant drip. No tree a harbor, being waterlogged as well; some find cover under our…

  Jenifer

  June 27, 2017

  Art, From Hafiz, Muse, Nature, Traveling, Work life

  poetry

• What love could learn from fungus if it would only listen

  I wish you could spread in that restless, vindictive, ambling way — to not be held back, to spew spores whenever someone tries to uproot you, sloppy, lazy enough to reproduce anywhere. How I wish you did. It would all be so much easier if you did. ——— Something along the lines of Hafiz.

  Jenifer

  June 8, 2017

  From Hafiz, Love, Meditation, Muse, Nature, Violence, Yoga

  poetry

• On healing and revolution

  Gazing up this terrible mountain, you say, love is not enough, though when I add together everything else and stack it high above my head, everything else is not enough either. So I fall back on love, and it nudges me back to the task of gathering everything I can find – a pick ax,…

  Jenifer

  December 3, 2016

  Bite-sized sampler, Chicago, From Hafiz, Love, Political struggle, Violence, Work life

  poetry

• Your body is returned

  i. I know because you are me. You came here afraid, chased by storms. You huddle with spare, odd friends who you doubt you can trust. As the noise kicks up all around, you hunker down, raise strong the barriers, but they are cracked, indifferent. I know, because you are me. You curl up in…

  Jenifer

  November 17, 2016

  Childhood, Dying, From Hafiz, Grief, Pain, Political struggle, Violence

  poetry

• Wondrous grit of life

  o’ wondrous pain, illuminating discomfort — how you have painted this earth to suit your ease, the slow swing of your step it is perhaps a sign of your privilege that you praise cuts and bruises to small children who do not know to defend your princess could not sleep with even a pea under…

  Jenifer

  November 4, 2016

  Death, Dying, From Hafiz, Grief, Love, Mother, Muse, Pain, Tanka, Violence

  poetry