Be in your finest hour she said quoting a man she knew his wise words Is this transformation into a most miraculous version of myself? Or realization that every moment whatever its character is stunningly, simply, fine? I may spend what is left of my gentle days learning what it is to be in my finest hour
Tag: free-verse
Grief
How many griefs can be hidden in one body and still she rises up and greets the day?
Better
There is ever only this: longing for the people we might be and the ones we hoped would love us more or better than they did
Listen
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver
Listen: it's time to face this thing you are fearing. Hiding can't protect you in the end, but keep you from breathing in the midst of this Just stop here for a minute A life of being loved will be better Little by little you will let yourself relax and lean into others' strength Calling yourself a coward is unkind It is better to call yourself, your true self a lover. This is what you need, a life, a love, full to overflowing
Slowly
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I'm wondering what you're up to where and how you live and if this life of yours is what you dreamed. To come alive takes everything. Be honest with me: are you slowly ever so being born?
Dining Room
We stood together in the dark pressed against each other alone in the house so I don't recall why that room why standing I remember at least the shadow of intensity the breathlessness of that moment both of us fully grown hearts beating in our throats low voices wanting so much unable to imagine a way forward together or apart in the end we found neither only a wide expanse of pain
More
What I need is something more miraculous than what you are offering
Teacher
Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, f we could only realize it.
Pema Chodron
What I want from my life some solid ground, is never what will be given. A life does not behave, is not good like a child pleasing the teacher but is unruly, beautiful and unwilling to offer a guarantee. This life is good is best, the truest friend when I trust all things are safe in hand, are becoming, and always destined to be what I need in their own time. Transition frightens me, but if I am willing to breathe deep we can be friends, could make something only alive in this moment, realize the beating heart of it
Choose
Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
Adrienne Rich
How much did I lose when I did not choose or chose unwittingly ignorant of life squandered?
Flight
I want to leave here stripped bare by my own hands, of course willfully, though not defiantly lifting off every old, ill-fitting thing See the trail I leave: scuffed shoe in the car blouse draped on the curb skirt abandoned at security baffled staff lacy underthings discovered where I drop them at the gate the surprised, delighted gaze of my seatmate as I settle in, rosy pink, for this leap between worlds
First published in Reveries (January 2022)
This Verse 