Ahz mah (So what)

On Thanksgiving For what shall we be thankful, we humans who keep hurting ourselves and one another in our tragic pursuit of happiness? For what shall we be grateful? For every blessed thing — not just the shiny easy happy things, the turkey with stuffing, the sweets. For what shall we be thankful? For a nor’easter in October, for power lost and power restored, for burnt sienna leaves against a cobalt blue sky, for anxious eyes above a mask For the raucous sparring of blue jays at the feeder and the deadly precision of a red-tailed hawk, For the fog of confusion, the sting of disappointment, the rumble of regret. For the weight of sorrow on the chest, the ache of breath bone muscle. For what shall we be thankful? for every blessed thing, for every blessed thing

This poem arose from a roll of the Metaphor Dice: hope = silent + curse Those words fell away at some point, but their scent remains... Jackie O She dreamt I would be Caroline to her Jackie O. If Caroline worked at a foundation (for so said the New York Times), then I must work at a foundation.                                                           Never mind that she had no clue what a foundation was. A foundation was clearly an uptown castle for a princess desiring to give the appearance of working without actually exerting herself, doing discreetly philanthropic things without God forbid ever encountering an actual needy person. I would write tasteful prose, mingle with fellow philanthropists at Soho ...

Home is a silent meadow. Although meadows aren’t silent, really— bees and insects drone, birds chatter, life hums everywhere, pushing up into the sunlight and down into the soil. How is home like that? Home is where wild ideas scatter and take root, and love is the sunshine, the wind, the rain, the pollinator and this would be more believable if I actually knew a meadow, or if I could recall having ever, myself, been in a meadow, not merely imagining it second-hand from photos, films, and Mary Oliver’s rapturous poems. Home could be like that though, I imagine. It could be devoid of the sounds of busyness and commerce. It could be spacious, in primary colors, humming with unscheduled life. #MetaphorDice

Once, years ago, while I sat quietly in a forest in Central Massachusetts, a thought came to me so clearly it was as if I heard it said out loud: Love everyone, yourself included. That is work enough for a lifetime. At the time, I think I most needed to hear the “yourself included” part. Lately, though, I find that the “love everyone” message is more compelling. What is love? The question has occupied poets, philosophers, dreamers and song-writers throughout human history. Try to define it and you run smack into one of the most profound mysteries of the human experience. But I want to define it, because the love we yearn for is not about “chemistry,” or infatuation, or lust, or obsession. The love we yearn for is not even about “liking.” What is love? Love is not a feeling. Love is not an abstract concept. Love is a verb. Love is something we do . So here is my working definition of love: Love is radically accepting, and nurturing the growth of, a human being.   The “radic...

  Pebbles Once there were two vintage apothecary jars. This one I kept, the other one I gave  as a sharing of my heart, filled with water and ocean pebbles clinking against the thick glass— Jersey shore pebbles, iridescent  shades of taffy, cotton candy, caramel, mocha— each one a remembrance of an encounter with the ocean​— vibrant and sparkling like  smooth young bodies lying  on the sand, wet skin glistening in the summer sun.  But the water  has long since evaporated,  and the cork stopper  won’t budge now,  and the pebbles are pallid shades of yellow, grey, brown. And the jar I gave away?  Maybe lying dusty  in a storage unit, or forgotten  in a bottom drawer, or long ago discarded, crushed by the metal jaws  of a trash truck, pebbles scattered  in a midwest landfill far from the ocean. Pebbles - for R. A vintage apothecary jar filled with pebbles sits in my meditation space  alongside an old photo of m...

 Another toss of the Metaphor Dice: my birth + broken + drum He was playing poker across town with the guys,  laughter and cigar smoke mingling  with whiskey and sodas. She was anesthetized in the women’s hospital, the surgeons bantering about golf and  martinis, the machinery droning. Someone washed me, wrapped me, placed me  in a tiny crib in the nursery of other tiny cribs, last name and gender handwritten on a card  above my head.  In the cacophonous symphony  of a city that never sleeps,  my birth was a broken drum—  drowned out by the buzz and clatter  of post-war efficiency  and the blare of horns  on Amsterdam Ave. #MetaphorDice

my soul + unspoken + curve-ball That summer, hat tilted low  against the glare of your certainty  about who I was and who I could be,  my soul threw an unspoken curve-ball— distracting you with my seemingly wild  trajectory, propelling me beyond  your desperate swing #MetaphorDice

The Filmstrip, 1964 Mrs. Karian showed us a filmstrip about the solar system. In eight billion years,  she said, the earth will fall into the sun and be obliterated. You burst out crying,  and couldn’t stop. Mrs. Karian  sent you to the boys’ room  to get over it.  What are eight billion years when you are six?  I probably heard never , or at least I don’t have to worry about this right now . But maybe you heard when you’re older , or even sometime soon .  And maybe the newness of your being cried out  against the terror  of not being.                                   Wait!—                                  ...

Companionship Their companionship was like the fir tree growing out of a roadside rock formation, improbable and slightly ridiculous— it shouldn’t be here, after all— yet almost regal in its solitude, trunk jutting out at an unlikely angle reaching towards daylight, unseen roots threading down through unseen cracks extracting nourishment from deep within the seemingly impervious granite. Want to receive notifications of posts on this blog?    

Claire Two children squat on the sidewalk outside their apartment building stirring a mud puddle with twigs after a storm. Hey this looks like chocolate milk! Whoa. We could give it to Claire in a dixie cup and say it was chocolate milk, and maybe she would fall for it. How does it first arise, I wonder— the flash of cruelty, the severing of connection. And by what grace do we transcend this callous othering?

After a wonderful Aha! moment of understanding Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken," this series of alternative endings came to me:   What He Might Have Said I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: 1. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  I went blank. I froze. Two roads? in the woods? A friend told me once about the distinction  between a choice and a decision only in the moment I couldn’t remember  which  was which.  I couldn’t move.  Darkness fell. 2. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  I prayed. I lifted my eyes and prayed for  guidance, for courage, for clarity of vision. And I heard a voice calling out to me as clear as day, accompanied by a sudden shaft of sunlight illuminating the path ordained for me. I had no doubt. 3.  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  I was pissed. Where are the f-ing trail markers,  those primary color breadcrumbs nailed to the trees by those do-goody Eagle Scou...