Tag Archives: love

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Burning

Rumi’s chickpea poem: http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_chickpea.html

I took the stealthie on the first ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge yesterday morning. A quiet ferry with very few sleepy people…..

 

The dust stirs
This is not Konya
I am safe

Water falls from the sky on the dust
This is not Turkey
I am safe

The sun warms the dust
I am not of Islaam
I am safe

A seed stirs in the dust
I am not of Christian either: raised atheist
I am safe

A plant grows
I am not a man: a woman
I am safe

Peas ripen
I do not read the Koran
I am safe

Peas are harvested
I have no mystic tradition nor teachers
I am safe

Peas are dried
He does not ask a question
I am safe

Peas are soaked
He is not religious
I am safe

Peas are placed on slow heat
He chooses sex not love
I am safe

Peas come to a slow boil
He refuses love and leaves
I am safe

The ladle of the Beloved smashes down
None of it matters
I am not safe

 

 

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nurturance

I love you I will miss you I am going
I am going to the Beloved I am going quietly
I am saying goodbye and bless you and thank you
for letting me love you but now

I want to be loved too and I am going
somewhere there are people who will love me
nurture me care about me and I can nurture them back
I have spent so much time loving people who don’t

love me or perhaps they love me but in a small way
in a limited way in a very closed off way
and now I am breaking the boundaries again but not
with the people who want these boundaries

I am looking for people who want to love and be loved
like the sky like space like the deepest ocean rift
who are not afraid of passion and arguing and loving
who are not afraid to be afraid to be joyous to be sad

I am looking for people who are not afraid to be afraid

 

I took the photo in a friend’s woods yesterday.

Also published on everything2.com today.

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Fear stands

For RonovanWrites Weekly Haiku Prompt #79, the words are crystal and hope….

fear stands strong don’t look
crystal water reveals rocks
open eyes give you hope

 

I took the photograph in 2012, when my sister was referred to hospice for breast cancer. I took three trips to see her before she died. She was still very engaged with everyone on the second trip. But when she was not talking to anyone, her face was different. She was looking at eternity. She knew that I could see her doing it, because we knew each other so well. She did not want to talk about it to me until my last visit with her in this life. I felt so blessed and honored when she did talk to me, and I hope that she feels loved.

 

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Go on

I must go on without you
the Beloved opens the path before me
let the past fall behind, the clear parts
and the murky, we alter each memory when we
pull the file in our brain and refile it,
I have duty you see, though I will miss you
terribly and keep inviting you along
as our paths diverge by millimeters
I wonder if you mind perhaps you are relieved
or perhaps you refuse to feel whether you mind
or not, we walk in parallel for now and can still
touch fingertips across the gap, more than
fingertips actually, but not for much longer.
I am still small compared to you yet when I said
to the Beloved that I don’t see how to
carry all of this, my back was infinitely broad and strong
for a period, as if a dream. Kiss me and leave, then,
if you must and I will love you always.

The picture is of early morning fog clearing 1/10/16.

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Leaver III

I have subsided back to where I was

before I fell for you

before I fell

you said, thoughtful, meticulous and shy

I am quiet, thoughtful, meticulous with patient charts
I am not shy so much as lonely
and mistrustful

I don’t trust many people

my small child self still loves you
but it’s a child love
and she knows you’re leaving
everyone has left her before
so she is very sad
everyone but me and the Beloved
so not everyone
but you are the first not me
that she opened up to

so yes, shy
she is terribly shy
she hid for years under rock
bedrock
in my soul

now she and I and Beloved
are walking hand in hand
in the gardens of my mind

thoughtful, meticulous and

shy

 

the photo is me, my grandmother and my father

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Look longing

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #75: the words are charm and look. The prompt includes that the first two lines should make a sentence with the opposite meaning of the sentence made by the second two lines…..

you gift a young girl
I see your charm, look longing
see you lie to me

I took the photo across the street from my clinic just a few days ago.

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Last bonsai

This year both my children are 18 or over and they wanted this small tree for the Christmas tree. “Don’t kill a tree, mom.” they said.

This tree is the last bonsai from my parents. My mother died in 2000 from ovarian cancer. She was at home in hospice for nearly seven weeks and we had over thirty visitors. My sister and my father and I all ignored the plants: and most of the bonsais died with her.

My father cared for the remaining ones even as his health deteriorated. He died at home as he would have wished, in 2013, alone and a sudden death. Two of the three remaining trees died. So this ficus came home with me. I water it faithfully and brought out the small ornaments to decorate for the holidays. I don’t know how old it is. After we lose our parents, we wonder about things: where is this from, how old is it, was it important to you, was it a random gift? Did you buy it, did you love it, was it not something that you cared about?

This holiday ask a family member to tell you a story about something in their house. Ask about something that you like, or is unique, or that really doesn’t fit in. Ask about a piece of art or a piece of furniture or jewelry. And write the stories down for the next generation…. while you can.

 

 

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Sea of Love

I go in the sea
of dreams
open the chest
the trunk
the saddlebags
Empty the dirty laundry
Of emotion
On the floor
Grief and joy
Fear and hope
Mine
All mine

There is a place
Beyond words
I see you in that place
It is very old
And very young
It is so frightening to go there
Lose words
The first time
It is haunted and hunted
Are you aware
Of that place
Do you go there
Of your own volition?
Or do you struggle
Fight and suffer in the
Choppy boundary between air and water
Fear drowning
Water surrounds you
Above you too
You are in the wordless place
Over your head
Are you too deep?

Open your eyes
In the green water light
A mermaid waits to lead you
To a rope to a raft
And me

But first you must open your eyes

 

I did not take this photo: it was taken at the Weyerhaeuser Pool in Seattle in 2009 at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. The professional photographer asked our girls to jump in so that he could get some practice shots from the underwater window. No one else was allowed down to that window. My daughter was in her third year of synchro and already so comfortable in the water that she and the others just mugged and played….

First published on everything2.com.

The Honeydrippers: Sea of Love

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Dream state

I am in the soft dream state
longing for my love and mate
my heart won’t stop or hesitate

I cross the border into dreams
nothing quite is what it seems
I stop and play in bubbling streams

I wander in the tall green grass
years since the mower’s pass
unsullied by the smell of gas

I lean against a tree
I feel quiet happy free
I feel accepted just as me

my childhood was a frightened place
the woods were the safest space
if I spoke my heart would race

my work is with adults in pain
scars deep as canyons bleeding strain
my tears fall as gentle rain

my youngest child has reached eighteen
she’s bright and smart and kind not mean
I wonder what her eyes have seen

my adult work is nearly done
it’s time for me to have some fun
beneath the tree in moon or sun

I wander as a child
heart gentle meek and mild
connected to the world so wild