the struggle is surreal

this door I'm trying to close quickly

knowing you're trying to come back

touching this emptiness to another

as open and unmeaning as chanting 

it's sadness so cavernous I can hear 

exhalations from your lungs empty

universes of understanding, fleeing

like meaning between our thoughts 

like a sunset stained on the horizon 

speech is clumsy and stumbles trying

to save us. And so we have words/tears 

and they fall--only one feels right as rain 

Monday dun-day

Yes, it's still pretty dun and uninteresting out, and it even snowed all day today although it didn't stick... but the hellebores (lenten roses) are coming up in a nice reminder that even in Michigan, spring is here. 

Theres a lot of birdsong so it sounds like spring and it even smells like spring.

Wow, I sound like I'm trying to convince myself. 🙃  

Also that's Huck in the picture, Scout stayed by my side. I hope we get to do this again this spring.

the sun rises

A sunny Easter day. It started with a meaningful and mindful heart-to-heart with Nu, and it got better when we got to sit and sing together at UU. Big A returned; At stopped by for dinner (the puppies and I got really excited).

We had our usual Easter egg hunt in the backyard with rhyming clues. (I rhymed "elm that fell" with "morel"--and they didn't get that one easily--oh, well.) Then a very early dinner together, and a very short round of Coup.  I even got a nice walk-and-talk with At before sending him off. Tried to watch Severance, which people seem to love, with Big A but didn't make it past the 20-minute mark. 

I'm grateful for the quiet, quality time with loved ones this weekend.

lunar halo

 I'm taking this hazy lunar halo to bed with me. A long day: long hike, long hours in the garden prepping, long international phone calls with my mom and a friend. 

But it's nearly 3:00 am, so I'm not surprised I don't have a lot of thoughts to string together.

Sad about Covid-related drama nixing our Passover Seder with J and M this evening; but "next year"--as they say.

mixed up

A form rejection and also a publication in a special place (Madras Courier); a dear colleague's retirement gauntlet and also a dear friend's new baby's babbles; my sister's envy-producing trip to Chennai and also her unenviable task of taking my dad to visit his brothers (plural!) who are very sick; a lovely day with Nu at work (a run, lunch, long commutes) and also a silly fall (as far as I can tell from collecting my things for a meeting) that gave me a bruise spanning the entire inside of my arm.

This week brought me so many mixed feelings.

Pic: The amaryllis kit that AK gave me for Christmas bloomed spectacularly--three giant blooms and one waiting in the wings.

the bitterness of mustard seeds

"Men!" she says, rolling her eyes

sputters: "Think--even the Buddha causes suffering."

I heed her assembly of outrage

the mustard seeds going off like grenades in the pot

it is true, yes, no one is to blame

yet she's assembled a list of people who are to blame

she speaks for Kisa, the grieving mother

desperately asking the Buddha to revive her dead son

so imagine her chest and eye sockets 

hollowed out with grief, imagine her hollow voice

her feeling stupid at the moment of asking

if he could bring her son back to life... but asking anyway

what's the worst that could happen, right?

what if he were gathered into life? What? it could happen...

And to think of the coldness of his lesson plan

his moment of asking her back--to quest for mustard seeds

from a home unscarred by anyone's death

Where do you keep scars? Can he see or imagine hers?

See her desire colliding with his wisdom

see her as the collateral damage of this one's own theology 

He might say it's nothing personal--it's true 

perhaps exactly what's missing, in his insistence on moving on  

on nights there is thunder, there is rain

I feel this whole world as an angry woman I do not blame

as I lay me down to sleep

it's time for me to be embedded 
into the dark

it's time to kneel at night's altar
quieten thoughts

to swallow answers into silence

and survive 

for I'm too wild for sleep to be

anything pure