A Lesson on Love
My dog and I do not speak the same language.
Yet every day, she tells me:
I trust you to know when I need to go for a walk.
I will let you hold me when you need to
and I will ask you for love when I need it.
On the days you are sick, I will lie beside you.
I will look for you in rooms when you are not here,
and I will greet you with so much joy
when you come home.
I will guard you when you sleep.
I will wag my tail and let you know
that everything will be okay
on your bad days,
and I know that you will do
the same on mine.
And from this I learn that my dog
and I actually do speak the same language.
After all, the universe is a kindly ancient thing.
It gave love as a mother tongue to every being.
Good Blood
My mother never says goodbye. Instead she says, Be kind. And by this she means, sometimes, pay for someone’s coffee behind you in line. When a small boy drops his bag of oranges on the train, help him pick them up. Hold the door open for the old lady with a walking stick. And offer the tired nurse your seat on the Underground. And by this she means, say thank you a little more. Give smiles away for free, even if you get none back or they may not be seen because of your mask. Listen with an open heart to everyone’s stories. Let the person behind you in line go first. Buy lunch for someone without a home who you see on the street. Grab the thing off the top shelf for someone who is struggling to reach. And by this she means, we must strive to give little joys to each other’s spirits now. Little compassions in a life that is hard for us all somehow. If it is hate that divides us, then perhaps this is where we rake our fingers through the dirt of these borders, and how we can build these sacred bonds again.
When my mother says, Be kind, she means, There is too much bad blood between us all. Leave some good blood instead.
How to Deal with a Painful Experience
Let it hurt,
let it bleed,
let it heal,
and then, let it go.
Reminder for Days of Uncertainty
You cannot mourn the life
you haven’t lived yet,
only one that has already gone.
You will never know the meadows
you could grow, if you are fixated
on the ashes of a garden you never had.
Abundance
My grandfather, with his bronzed hands
full of dark soil from planting dahlias,
tells me to focus on the bounty
we have been given:
A sky so wide and full
that it carries every color
of blue and pink and orange
you can imagine.
And a sun that warms us
from our head to our toes,
and gives us reason sometimes to say,
Beautiful weather today!
And a moon so gentle
that she even wins the stormy seas over
and gives us a beauty to gaze at
in the arms of our lovers.
And a planet of such abundance
that it gives us so much nourishment;
shade in the form of trees,
flowers that glow radiant for our eyes to see.
So do not despair at all your falls.
There is still happiness
to be had here,
no matter how small.
An example, my grandfather says,
while looking at my grandmother,
is that with just a good heart and some tenderness,
you, too, can have a love that lasts lifetimes.
What If
What if this is all there is?
What if the sickness is permanent?
What if we run out of food and water?
What if we fall so hard we can’t get back up?
What if we forget how to breathe?
What if all our stories have sad endings?
What if the night falls out of love with the day?
What if winter never leaves?
What if the sky decides it has had enough?
What if the earth gets bored of its orbit?
What if the sun becomes a black hole?
What if it swallows our solar system?
What if this is how it all ends?
Then the stardust that makes me
will still find the stardust makes you,
and together we will find a home again.
Daily Mantra 3
Things must fall to pieces,
diminish into dust, ashes to ashes,
before they pull themselves together
reassemble, reboot.
I mean, the world.
I mean, you.
The Last Rose of the Season
In the moments life feels like an empty word,
And my bones feel more burdens than they can bear,
I think of the last coral rose in my garden,
Holding on despite all her sisters
In decaying petals on the same soil
She has risen from.
Every day, despite frost and fog,
She stays, as if to ask me,
“Do you love life enough?
Do you hold it with both fury and tenderness?
Do you understand its fleeting nature
Or do you resent its darknesses
Forgetting to live
Because the pain is too strong
Or the tests too tedious and long?
Do you understand, for you, winter’s biting cold
Will always be followed by spring’s flourish
And summer’s honeyed warmth?
I only get to live for a season,
But you get so much more,
So live, live, live,
Because I cannot.”
In those moments, I thank her for her lessons
And tend to her gently,
Hoping for a miracle that
She lives through winter to enjoy spring again.
Essential
My nephew is six. All big brown eyes
and full of bright, shining curiosity.
His mother is a nurse.
An essential worker.
We are eating jam sandwiches
near the small pond in the park,
close to the water’s edge, when he asks,
But are we not essent-shual workers?
I nod somberly. No, we are not,
for you are a small boy and I am a poet.
He ponders this as he wipes
sticky strawberry hands on the grass.
What does my mum do?
he asks finally.
She saves lives,
I say.
Can I save lives?
a small catch in his little voice,
and I am about to say,
Maybe one day.
But his attention is caught by something
disturbing the peaceful waters of the pond.
A large ant. Its legs move frantically as it drowns.
My nephew takes the small discarded package,
empty now of our sandwiches,
and turns it into a bridge for the ant.
The ant makes its way onto the paper,
and scurries off into the grass.
And from this I learned
that ants deserve to live as much as we do,
that sometimes paper can become a bridge,
and the smallest of beings can save the littlest lives, too.
Listening to the Rain at the End of the World
And I realize no one has told it,
pattering on my window
as though it is knocking to get in,
that the world is coming to an end.
No one told the flowers in the garden
or the trees in the woods.
No one told the dandelions on the hill
where we walk the dog or the birds
that nest on the window in the shed.
So I go outside to tell the rain
the flowers the trees the dandelions the birds
and they laugh and whisper soothingly,
We have been at this same end
countless times before.
But the earth is ancient enough
to know how to
reincarnate
and begin again.
People-Shaped Universes
Someone once told me,
We are the universe expressing itself
as a human for a while.
It makes me think
of every person I meet
as their own little universe,
each with their own planets of thoughts
and solar systems of dreams
and galaxies of emotions in their bloodstreams.
People are so much bigger
on the inside than they seem
on the outside.
Imagine a whole world
of universes constantly
bumping into each other,
listening and learning
and sometimes,
just sometimes,
building a perishable forever together.
Main Sequence (Resilience)
noun
• ASTRONOMY
Any star that is fusing hydrogen in its core and has a stable balance of outward pressure. Ninety percent of the stars in the universe, including our sun, are main sequence stars.
• INFORMAL
The stage during which a star is happiest and most stable.
More Reasons to Stay
In a multiverse full of infinite possibilities,
you only get one chance to love the people you have loved,
to be full of joy for the happiness that has walked your way,
to know the things that still amaze you every day,
to witness that sunset that changed you forever,
to stand before a view so stunning you’ll never forget it,
to know the people who are still here despite it all.
Imagine how much more there is still to see.
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
How to Be Strong
There are no rules.
You are already strong.
Even when you fall apart
in the most public place you know.
Even when your knees hit the floor
and your trauma meets you in floods.
Even when your body wracks with sobs
fashioned in the belly of a tsunami.
Even when the sorrow feels like
the endless nature of drowning,
your grit is right there
inside you.
Your strength is within you always
to call up when you want to.
And besides, didn’t anyone ever tell you
that endurance, that resilience,
that strength looks
so different on us all?
On some it looks like still waters and on others
it looks like a dam bursting as the water falls.
Lessons for Future Selves
What doesn’t kill you gives you trauma.
Time steals memories; it doesn’t heal wounds.
Nothing’s fair in love, war, life, or living.
It doesn’t pass; you learn to live with it.
When life gives you lemons,
hand them back and ask for flour
you can make a cake out of.
Mostly what glitters is kindness, not gold,
and you should use it everywhere:
the world needs more shine.
Time isn’t in the habit
of telling anyone anything.
It knows better than to get mixed up
with your messes.
Dance into love instead of falling
and dance back out of it grateful.
Drown in happiness instead of sorrow.
Everything is too perishable to last eternities.
Build your own blisses.
They will not last.
Celebrate each one anyway.
Daily Mantra 4
You are still here.
Still made of interstellar blood.
Still constellation skinned.
Still defying the world’s endless trials.
Coping through every bad day.
That’s all courage is in the end.
A reason to keep fighting.
Defying every odd to stay.
The Masterpiece
If all a lifetime must be
two silences,
then there is no reason
we cannot turn existence
into the most beautiful
masterpiece we ever make.
Let the sky feel like a symphony
God composed just for you.
Let the crimson roses
paint awake their brightest colors
all for you.
Let the grief
that is telling you stories
remember it is not invited to stay.
Let the love
you do not know how to give anymore
dance out of you another way.
Let every person on this planet
rise one morning and think,
What good can I do to nourish the soul?
Let there be joy
when we commemorate
the end of all things.
Let there be songs
as we see the endings
are only beginnings.
The Making of You
The universe had to fall apart into dust first
to become its majestic, infinite self.
What makes you think
this trauma, this devastation,
won’t be the making of
a more powerful you, too?
Kindness and Hate Meet for a Drink at the End of the World
They do it because their mother dislikes
how uncomfortable Sunday lunches have become.
Politics shouldn’t affect us this much.
She insists, Family finds ways to make things work.
Mum, please.
The apocalypse is his fault,
Kindness tries to explain.
But her mum is having none of it.
So Kindness, ever the dutiful daughter, sighs and agrees.
Even though she knows well enough
how uncordial Hate is going to be.
Their mother says, It’s just what he’s made of.
And Kindness is expected to understand,
she is always expected to understand.
So she arrives early at the pub
to work out their differences.
Hate is loud and late as always.
She hears him come in, fists clenched,
knocking over glasses at full tables
and breaking things just because he can.
She watches as he grins at the chaos,
causes an argument between a son and his father
who seemed happy a few minutes ago.
Thrives on the pain.
By the time he reaches her,
Hate has destroyed the jovial spirit in the pub.
Kindness makes eye contact with him,
smiles gently in greeting but walks past him,
goes to help pick the glasses up.
Calms down their tired nerves.
Helps rebuild what is broken.
Puts a calming hand on the father and son to stop their fighting.
Kindness gets under Hate’s skin.
Rage fills him as she walks back to him.
She buys pints for them both as he sneers and says,
You are such a bleeding heart.
Kindness shrugs, I just care.
He laughs. Why? What’s the point?
She looks at him carefully.
Community. Civic duty. Being good—
All of which is boring, he interrupts rudely.
Maybe to you, she says. But to me, it fixes the world.
Hate bursts out laughing.
You? Fix the world? NEVER.
Selfishness and Cruelty never did either,
she says patiently, trying to be better,
but Hate simply spits in her direction,
says, Get over it. The world is mine now, you lost.
Without another word, he leaves.
And Kindness doesn’t know if she can save the world.