Friends & Neighbors
Easier With Two
I said,
I don’t know
how to do this,
and you offered me
a hand,
and suddenly
we were in the boat
together.
Wild Magic
You don’t know who they will be, the ones who open your eyes to life’s wild magic, but when you find them, it will not be hard to tell.
Spark
There are more with a spark like the one you carry in your loving heart, so I know we will never be lost.
Secret Admirer
I probably won’t admit it in person, but I think you’re pretty great.
Core Team
Don’t take your family for granted, because people who love you even after they know you don’t come along every day.
Bad Monsters
Trying to pass themselves off as monsters, but the smile in their eyes keeps giving it away.
Everything
Nothing feels more like everything than love.
Shine
For everything you’ve done and everything you are, thank you. You are the light that shines.
Walking Together
I am proud to see
the one you are,
and the one
you are becoming.
It is no small thing,
this chance I have
been given
to walk the road
beside you.
Potential
This is for the times
you held me in your thoughts,
knowing
I could be more.
Stubborn Love
All those times I wanted to quit,
slip out through the escape hatch
and disappear without a trace.
But you weren’t having it,
no,
you and your stubborn love.
Heart Lines
There are invisible lines
connecting everything together,
and I am particularly fond of
the one that connects me to you.
Listening Well (for Erik) (fem)
She had the gift of stopping time & listening well so that it was easy to hear who we could become & that was the future she held safe for each of us in her great heart & you may ask, what now? & I hope you understand when we speak softly among ourselves & do not answer just yet for our future is no longer the same without her.
World Peace
I have a friend who took all the doors out of his house one summer. It reminds me there’s nothing I have that’s worth hiding, he said. No secrets is the key to world peace. He put them all back on that winter. I decided it was peaceful enough for me, he said.
Wish Children
my kids could draw like this, he said & I said he was lucky they didn’t because I would not wish children like me on my worst enemy & he didn’t have anything more to say to me
Wish List
I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there.
Without Hesitation
After all those years, she was nothing like I remembered, but my heart leaped across the gap anyway without a moment’s hesitation.
True Things
They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday.
Toothpick Fence
He built fences of whole boxes of toothpicks because he didn’t have enough money for redwood. I know it’s small, he said, but I don’t want everybody just thinking they can walk right in & some day, it’ll be bigger. Fences take practice for everyone.
Tofu Pup
taunting the neighbor’s dog with meat-flavored tofu because he can’t get anyone else to eat it.