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Dreaming of My Mother

Last night I dreamed of a rainbow The deepest, most vivid, complete rainbow I have ever seen I could see the left side and that it stretched boldly across the sky Clouds and trees obscure it, but I know she is there This strong, vivid reminder of a world in full color A universe that knows how to dazzle us My mother is in the kitchen at a sink with a window looking out in the direction of the rainbow. The land is flat–like Kansas in the Wizard of Oz I desperately want her to see the rainbow. “Look!” I … Read the full post

Tree-age (“Triage”): When Life Gives You a Hurricane

Over three months since the Storm and today I felt ready to go and walk among the trees off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I knew it would be both medicinal and mournful. What we found was a tree graveyard. Hundreds, maybe thousands of trees mangled and tangled with each other. Still. Broken. Battered. Eery in the residual story they tell. Without thinking, my husband and I began talking about death–trying to remember how old family members were when they died. Reaching back into latent memories about sacred transitions and loss. My mother was eighty-four. His mother seventy-nine. My grandmother on … Read the full post

A Poem from Catastrophe

Down-turning the turn-over, Over-turning the turning-down Catastrophe comes always fast and slow, always announcing itself and stealthy, steely, revealing what has been there all along. Time and catastrophe get lost in one another Enamored by the power the other has to conceal and death-deal. Collectives reel, wheel through rubble calcified and unsure. Some sift through the silt and the mud to find people. Others search to find any residue of home, family, familiar. Others miss their favorite restaurant, or the parks where children played. Others know this way of life as the norm—crisis to crisis, dust to dust. Others walk … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Poem-A-Day Post #30: “New Life/New Death”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. Today’s post is #30 and so my last of this series. Today is also my son’s 23rd birthday. I wrote this poem many years ago and it appears in my first book, Let the Bones Dance: Embodiment and the Body of Christ in my chapter on pregnancy. NEW LIFE/NEW DEATH There was an opening— a way in, but not all the way. It was all so natural. I knew. I knew. Confirmation. Heart beating. Elation. Each morning I woke enchanted by my body/proud/beautiful. I was the pregnant runner—full of life, not missing … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Post #29: “Mississippi”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. I wrote this poem after a trip to Mississippi after my mom’s death to visit the grave of my sister and my grandparents and great grandparents and cousins. And to honor my mom’s memory and the ancestors there. Mississippi You are not easy to get to long roads, live-oak concealed weeping canopies swaddling roads haunted by sweltering memories and days lost, family faded, jaded, dilapidated. You hold blood fables, moaning in starlight Homes built, lived in, died in The ruins of a faulty foundation. Echoes of sweet familiar, turns of phrase, … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Poem-A-Day Post #28: “Repenting”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. Yesterday I spent pretty much the entire day with people with whom I am in community who are doing the intentional, internal, and collective work of dismantling the pathologies and patterns of white culture. I wrote this poem last year around this time. This dance with repentance, reckoning, and transforming continues. Repenting Startled repentance Fed my soul Turning, rolling Churning, boiling That word holds Pregnant call Prescient pause You are not what you should be. Burning, troubling Purposeful learning Growing, knowing the world needs to change Repentance is turning around who … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Post #27: “PTSD”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and it is also #SexualAssaultAwareness month (I just found that out yesterday!). So today I am combining my Poem-A-Day post to speak to both. I am a rape survivor. And someone who has chronic PTSD. I wrote this poem last summer. PTSD Mind racing. Stomach turning, churning, chest burning. Something is not ok. Brewing, chewing, stewing with it all. The disequilibrium. The dread. Thoughts darting, dipping in my head. What will he do with the softest parts of me? With the moments of truth? With the powers that be? I’ve exposed more than I ever thought I … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Post #26: “Estrogenesis”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. I wrote this poem in 2010. Now that I am through this stage of my life, I wonder how this deep embodied wisdom gets to speak truth these days. Maybe some menopause poems are on the horizon. The beautiful art is by Ani Rose Whaleswan called “Body Mandala” Estrogenesis A sweet fragrance speaking with sincerity A life-giving metaphor a spirit-filled guideline Estrogenesis is my new name for PMS–an estrogen driven new/re birth with labor pains and all to go with it The veil is lifted–a monthly personal apocalypse. life and death … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Post #25: “The Family Business”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. I wrote this poem as my sabbatical was coming to an end last summer. The Family Business Generational know-how coursing through my imagination about who I should be in the world. Work comes easy–so easy it can seem like it suits me. Like armor protecting me against overstepping or undue exposure to shame or impropriety. It seems harmless enough following in the footsteps of fathers. Even groundbreaking to be the first woman. But why do I want to step into these indentations left by men seeking after respectability and virtue in … Read the full post

Poetry Month 2023 Post #24: “Present”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth and I am posting a Poem-A-Day. Today’s post is one I wrote last summer. It settled into me how we are surrounded by a world where somethings put down roots (trees) and some things are always moving on (bird migration). Present A ghost of the beginning of time. Primordial memory, mist moving over mountains. Possibilities baptize void and vista. Two people look out from a porch on a hill. Searching, perched on the edge of unknown tomorrows, painful yesterdays, and a present impossible to describe. The world soaks in the night’s storm. Some still thirsty. Others saturated … Read the full post

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