Category: Work life
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To William Stafford
Upon opening The Way It Is after a week that convinces me that this dark marathon is much longer than I expected, even in my most hardened moments Wake up my soul, I ask, please. It lies sleeping somewhere under a pile of emails, Congressional edicts, cruel comprehensions, that I have been picking through all…
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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,…
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When digging in my garden
Open spade cleaves mud, unwraps under-earth’s treasure-trove — twisted wires of plant roots clinging deep, no repentance, no shame. I ask when will you break free, leave us alone, untangle this mess? You grip on, silent as black, churning in your own direction, to your own end, to ours.
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From the ether
Late in the afternoon that day, as the low sun pierced the leaves like a thousand glimmering stars, each of my long-dead patients rushed me towards an unexpected, unearned bliss. Of course, it seems shallow how memories, obscured by our endless tasks, doings of this moment or that, can burst into our presence and bring…
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When walking through woods without my father
I am not sure if it is the breeze, wilder, more freeing than any in the city, or the wintergreen sending its scent up to play with the blueberries and pine that brings on this longing afresh. You would perch yourself on a ridge like this one overlooking the lake or a forested horizon, endless…
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Be it ever so
The light that morning came through a crack in the ceiling with me squatting over a pool, fed by some endless spring running far under ground, unseen, always present. The water made images of our faces flat with shadows, asked us to pause, fed us with wonder, perplexity, confusion, hope, disconsolation. I rose as always…
Poems from in between 