road scenes.

Being Gentle in the Journey
It's hard to hold the whole long space
between here and there lightly;
to hold it like our lab
held the fragile baby bird that summer--
how he brought it in his jaws
like a thing to be preserved.
He held it between his teeth.
It rested on his clean gums.
He carried its warm, precious body
and set it alive, uncrushed at our feet.

still becoming.

We hung our heads over scrapbooks,
over a table set with laughing,
over pictures of ourselves
in the middle of becoming.

We said, "Remember that day?"
and "Oh, look your cheeks!" and
"Ah, how you loved that leopard-print speedo!"

We laughed like wild:
it was our solemn and serious vow
to love and to cherish
what is always still becoming.

the interesting corners of a day (distractible)

This morning it's raining in little wet pebbles,
all of them rolling and aiming for each other,
running in lines into a heavy collective.
I could snip pictures from the scene (with my phone) all morning (so pretty!)
instead of writing my last papers, making my last efforts for school.
I could let myself loose to get up a hill around here,
or get lost in seeing how the lady sitting
(elbows on her table)
at the table kitty-c to mine
is spreading cream cheese over her bagel
in the exact way my dad rakes the zen garden--
in a pattern, for the beauty.
I think, if I let myself do it,
I could always get lost in the corners of a day.
I could get lost in the peripheral beauty
which is maybe actually the center.

Sacred Heart.

When I was fifteen
I often ran this loop of
gravel that circles a hole
in the ground where
my first home used to be:
a hole where the trailer used to sit
on my parents property,
the one they brought me home to
after I was born,
after that process that broke my clavicle.
I was born at Sacred Heart Hospital
with a broken clavicle--born broken!
But all of us were: broken
in one way or another.
But we don't lose hope over that
or give up our eyes to see and notice
the people who carry us,
the ones who hold us so well
and carefully,
our eyes to see the Sacred Heart!
New day! Today is just that.
We get to running,
get to finding the things
that are today's gifts--
the ones we will give and
the ones that will be given to us.

knowing a good thing.

PHOTO: DR. MOORE (93-YEARS OLD, STILL PRACTICING MEDICINE) AND WIFE ELAINE IN OLD O.R. AT FLETCHER HOSPITAL.

I want to be playful in the middle of decisions.

And by that I mean: 

not fretful, not over-thoughtful.

And by that I mean:

I don't want to strip a good thing of its Great goodness 

by putting it on a scale or a meter

and measuring it in units

that don't account for magic.

Magic!

I want to know the things

that are knowable,

and to swim in faith/trust/hope with 

the things that are not.

the expiration of light.

PHOTO: MOM AND DAD
The other night when I couldn't sleep in the loft of the cabin at Priest Lake (the best place I've found to be yet), I fixed my open eyes steady on a patch of sky and watched the meteors come and go as they do. And I don't know about you or about what it is you are thinking of when the meteors go falling at midnight on those nights when you cannot sleep. I don't know if you have a something still pending that is quieted and closed when the meteors go burning up into flames overhead, across a black August night. I don't know if you have a thing that receives the resolve of those moments; don't know if, when you watch a meteor expire, you take that momentum or inspiration and use it to quiet and to celebrate and to honor that thing that has been traveling through the atmosphere of your young but knowing heart. I don't know about you or about how your life goes--how it moves on and moves ahead from one minute to the next, but when I see the way a tide of light ignites and then flies, falls and then fades when a meteor goes; and when I think about all the coming and going, all the beginning and ending that will likely be a part of the beauty of everything from here on out, it helps me to celebrate the things that fly and fade after traveling their course--down through the atmosphere of your young but knowing heart.

a woman of good winters.

I want to be the kind of woman
who worships when the
wind-wild storm whips in because
she suspects that something
tender and holy will soon after be coming;
the kind of woman who
is not easily scared indoors;
the kind of woman whose children
learn to pray while standing on peaks,
their bodies bundled and bursting
with intuitive wonder
at the things that are special.
I want to be a woman who knows her mother
and her grandmothers well,
and who spots herself in them,
who celebrates those bodies and hearts
that are hers + several decades,
who sees the very fabric of her wires
in the beautiful ways they brought her up;
the kind of woman who sees all the
identical quirks that are triangularly mirrored
between herself and them and who says,
Woah, hey woah! This is us, this is us.
And when the quirk is hard to swallow,
when we make our million mistakes, says,
Woah, hey woah! We've got grace for times like these!
Grace for the times when a flaw flips up
in any one, in any friend,
in the middle of the most inconvenient time.
I want to be the kind of woman
who has got few things to lose.
And I want to get old properly.

And by that I mean--
I do not want to miss a minute or a year
because things are different than they seemed
or because things didn't come easily.
I want to be the kind of woman
who thinks the best of things

and people and of the indiscernible future;
And when there is not a scrap of good to think upon,
I want to be the kind of woman
whose knowledge of brokenness 

in herself and others
is always a bridge and and never a wall,
never a low ceiling, never a stiff palm.
I want to be the kind of woman who watches
the winter come in and goes for wood,
lights the fire and says, 

The winter is at our door--

our very own door! How special are we?

hard-bodies.

When we were kids hauling ourselves up mountains
or lifting logs into the wood-splitter before winter,
my dad would smile and say we were "hard-bodies."
It was all about spirit, not about muscle.
And I always love the image behind an image,
the thing encased by the thing,
the spirit inside these bodies--
these deceivingly soft-looking shells.

singing in through the linen.

When I am lucky to wake at dawn

as the light is ripping through

the linens that are hanging over

the light boxes of my new attic room,

I grab my phone and snap a still.

Because even my half-lit mind 

knows that the simple salmon song

that sings through the linen is like

the minute that a baby slides out to the table:

the moment before breath,

before his lungs light with life.

a way to go.

I don't know if you know the 4-point breath

that starts in your belly and fills in through your ribs.

It goes like a charm, like a trick, like this:

belly to trunk, through chest, into back.

You're probably thinking, a breath in my back?

And I know what you mean

cause I thought that, too.

But it's been nice to find a way to go

to get more deeply back on my feet.

giving a pound of flesh.

It seems like every other gift I give I want back.

I'm not talking Christmas or birthdays--

I'm talking everyday, every vulnerable day.

Maybe I'm 4 degrees too warm or one inch too open.

You know, like instead of stamping a genuine kiss

on a day and leaving it there like you meant it,

you get up in your head and hash it over until its

bird food--until it's jammed with all

the self-conscious over-thinking

that strips a good thing of its goodness.

Actions only get to be authentic once--

after that they're all just re-acting and editing, 

the stuff of the movies.

And wouldn't it be horrible if we were all stuck

in movies that we knew had been so 

whitewashed/brainwashed/perfectwashed?

But I still find it hard to cut out a pound of flesh

and not feel like I'm bleeding.

on the defense: where judgement grows.

Judgement grows in the secret blind corner

where we don't look or sweep or clean.

On the morning I moved from the west ghetto of Stewart, I finally chatted with the gruff smoking women whom I'd judged for their habit on many early mornings. At 7:45, day after day, they had puffed together toward a certain impending death--in their robes over nightgowns, smoke circling their heads. I, headed to work, had walked the same straight line--past them in my heels, on a mission, on concrete: the clack of importance, two inches of power.

I think the reason we never spoke 

is that each of us in our differences 

felt the other was perhaps unsafe.

But that morning that I moved my things out on the curb,

the woman on the right broke the long-standing silence.

You leaving? she asked, as if she'd notice when I was gone.

I'm moving, I said, just a few blocks up.

Good for you, she smiled, theft is getting bad.

We talked robbery and children, 

work and the summer season.

We exchanged smiles and well-wishes

and good luck and goodbyes.

When I sweep and when I clean

that secret blind corner, I'm disappointed

to find unconscious beliefs growing.

I clean house fervently, pray fervently

for a new heart and new spirit.

Because how much more in common do we need

than to be humans together living in the ghetto?

explorations by bike.

We pumped pedals by the orange groves,
traveling on a four-inch shoulder--
hip to hip with a Lexus, a semi, a Toyota.

We glided under a net of oak shadows,
by a pen of tame zebras,
over the Union Pacific tracks.

There were honey bees living in boxes.

I watched my knees rise up and down
over the conveyor-belt-backroads which
brought minute after minute of personal bliss--
as if bliss could come in bags
to be collected and carried on home.

in the fold.

Peace comes when I rest in the heart of grace.
But where is the heart of grace?
Where can we go to find it?
I think it is there--
in the space between the two arms
that are held out like limbs,
that are open like books.
It is in the space where all things can come
and then be wrapped, included.
All things get folded in.
The heart of Grace is in the fold.

lyrics: write 'em down or lose 'em.

PHOTO: GALAS AND TEMDA.

Bitter is the bottom of the last hollow autumn; we were waiting for winter.

The scent of the sun is meant to be sung by your deep chords in summer.

Believe in the needs, believe in the trees, believe in your enemies.

You sang the words, a song so absurd, your honest heart opening.

Bright was the knowing, the freedom in showing; you held back nothing.

Letters from Him, reminding again, of the places you're going.

back in a cranny.

I cannot coax a crab to
come out of the cranny
that shields his back
like armor and guns.
The ocean is less caring than love--
with less heart and less intention,
and yet you don't fear it
or run from its waters.
Home is your ocean--
this ocean is yours.
So forward with readiness,
out with love--all fearing
hearts swim in time.

rare things.

What became rare was
the way we stared at
the moon when it grew

round;

the making of space 

for the souls and the faces

and the places that were gifts

to us; 

the opening and slowing
and bowing to the 

most important things.

We became accustomed to a routine
that did not include being 

spontaneously stunned by

the most immediate minute.

And what especially became rare
was the conviction that our beliefs mattered--
and that our thoughts did, too;
to know that the things
that we gave our
heart and mind and time
to would be our driving
and seeing forces;
that what we believed and what we
talked about would point us toward
our destinations, toward the alleys and mountains

that would be the very dimensions of our story.

the definition of seasons.

Have you ever held out your hands

and hoped to catch snow?
On your warm palms wanting
the flakes to stack up to inches?

You'd say, Winter is here.
Do you see? Tis the season.

Have you ever needed proof

on your palms (to know it on your palms!)--

your palms that are hot 

with the blood-pumping-proof 

that this moment is a real one--

be it winter, or doubt, 

or a season of waiting.

Have you ever wanted proof

of the season's definition?

Proof more than life,

beyond your very own body?

Could it be enough to know
that today you are here?

burning at the pace of a cigar.

There's a man smoking a cigar opposite the glass from me here at Cafe Linne. You could match the face of a nickel to its thick and smoking end or, with the tilt of your head, hold your thumb up to its side and say "Bout the same." The cigar is this man's meal. It's his coffee. His newspaper. His three piece suit. It's his hint of perfume--the smell his wife takes in when they meet for dinner. I think the cigar is a part of this man's manners even.

I will probably never smoke a cigar.  Maybe I will, but it doesn't seem like my three piece suit. But I like seeing the cigar burn back toward his fingers and knowing that there is an end to it. Only five inches of tightly wrapped tobacco and then its over for the same reason cups have bottoms and the sun splits its time shining on half and then the other half of the world. Setting limits and a pace. I'm forever looking for the right pace.

togetherness.

When an avocado skin
is so thin that a spoon
cannot moon the meat
from its shell,
I begin to believe
that its seed--or the soul,
lying still on the table
holds the genes, or the secret
to growing together.