well, it didn't go exactly as planned, but...

resurrection days

first poppies of the year, stark orange against the lilac
violet, white, and lavender, crowding all the streets you run
some bloom already fallen, other trees only beginning to bear any trace of green

spring's shed, a million leaves of norway maple (the ones that look like helicopters)
dancing in the windlight, tiny fragments tossed into your squinting eyes
other springs recalled

of daily sojourns in golden gate park, riding the #9 bus down potrero from market
the jesusita fire and east mountain sunsets (with or without you) of santa barbara
in london, borough market, the tate modern,
the british museum & its stolen rosetta stone
just blocks from your own life
monmouth coffee and fragment jasmine in a city of car exhaust and trash
the wetlands and birdsong on cedar street in the house with hardwood floors
oh, how many miles these feet have walked!

and finally, baleadas and thunderstorms, corina's desayunos deliciosos
(buen provecho),
giovanni driving us into the city para la ocifina de inmigración
singing worship songs with Nuevo in the morning,
teaching those 27 precious & adored ones the anthems of another tribe
oh the turmoil and suffering, the beauty and passion of that other land!

yes, spring hurts
as K. expressed on the miles of another tread
and yet these are Resurrection Days
and One continues to call us out of death and into life
to move from orphanhood and into daughterhood, sonship, in every stream and river

so leave that foul grave, that empty tomb
put to death your own bitter heart, hopelessness, and vanity
be made new
filled with the breath of the air of the country of heaven
which, as we know,
is colonizing earth.

Trust: the antithesis of stress / belief as everyday work; to gut-believe in the good touch of G-d towards me
*a discipline, a practice, a vocation: the work of trusting Love. Intentionally.

''The full life, the one spilling joy and peace, happens only as I come to trust the career of the Lover, Lover who enver burdens his children with shame or self-condemnation but keeps stroking the fears with gentle grace.

Trust in the wholeness of the gospel--including this moment, good news too--and be saved. Choose stress, worry, anxiety, reject what God has given now, which is good news too--refuse to trust--and be condemned.

Without trust in the good news of Jesus, with out trust in the good news of God's saving work even in this moment, without an active, moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe? This is the trust I lack, to know that if disaster strikes; he carries me even there.''

-A. Voskamp, A Thousand Gifts

Went out to cut dogwood and tamarack branches. The sun is strong today--my scarf, sweater, vest almost too much. Five days of sun and hardly a cloud in the sky. Glory be, spring is really coming.

Now a small wind moves through pale, bedridden stalks of grass. Stalks that will miraculously revive and stand tall and green to sing their song in a matter of weeks. How do all these seasons move? Just when you feel you cannot bear another grey morning, another colorless afternoon--the first resurrections of spring come exultantly.

I've been thinking of that afternoon, that evening spent at the Flats with the orchard one, passing the soccer ball back and forth, back and forth, until both sweet spots on my bare feet were numb and I was smiling into the sunset, all the endorphins of pain and pleasure, summer and sunlight and friendship filling my stomach.

Now I have traveled East and West, have lived South of here for seasons that were rich, but when it comes to a Northern spring, or murmurings of one, well I have never found its equal, and that's the truth.

was it birth or was it death?

she sings she sings she sings her soul
even when she does not know the song

i will look you in the eye when we are talking
dearest darrelle taught me that,
and also a boy i know

"congratulations, class of 2006" (wasn't i just hearing that last month?)
what do three years mean?
days like this it seems the torah was literal in recording ages and years
"not one woman's life only, but a lifetime burning in every moment"

i only just met dr. delaney
he just convinced me to major in english
(and to think it felt so radical at the time!)

but tonight, it was goodbye.
goodbye, last undergrad essay
goodbye, london
goodbye, dr. delaney
goodbye (again), westmont.

~

"Ashes to ashes," a friend writes, "and all of life is leaving it. All of life is leaving it to find it again in something else. 'See,' Jesus says to me, 'don't I make all things new?' But what he means is, Don't I destroy all things to ash? Just when you're learning to love, don't I take it away, burn it, and smear it on your forehead in the shape of a cross?' "

Ashes to ashes. So we grow up.

Happy birthday, Kate!

She is my oldest friend, my true hermana. A traveler, an artist, and an (up-and-coming) midwife.



To 21 more years together, full of home-grown vegetables and painted murals, of adventures walking and many long hours talking over a glass of wine or a mug of tea. We burn at both ends.

Stratford-on-Avon

the scratch of a nearby man's charcoal, river scene translated to parchment
moves the pencil between my fingers
and quietly seconding the prayers, few and far between, of an aging woman
can calm a stormy, seasick heart.

these days are changing and swift, lit by silvery light
(and how am i still starved for words, for art, for friendship?)

on the path to anne hathaway's flowered cottage this morning,
sleeping ducks turned running footsteps to the softness of moccasins
silent i tread, not to wake them

in willows sweet, cooing pigeons roost in twiggy nests
and serene river banks itself in green, green, green
disguising the cholera, polio, & flesh-eating bacteria (what?!) it carries

when john fainted, he hit his head so hard he thought he was blind
i touched his arm, i held his hand. i was afraid.

now i meditate in graveyard, along dirty, pretty river,
across from manicured golf course
(oh, i long for wildness!)
but this will do, this tourist trap of a town, its scones and rich tea,
this will do.

growing up

Addendum: we were evacuated a few hours after the last post.

But Graduation happened on time, and we celebrated among the ruins of carefully laid plans.

Because there is gratitude even in [our weak] adversity. And because yours truly now holds a Bachelor's of Arts in English. Rejoice!

[the real reason i can't wait to go home.]

Meet Pancake & Waffle.

to open like a hinge, like a wing

...to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun

wake up, wake up, leave cotton dresses and chickens to the world of dreams
pull on stockings, slip blistered feet into stiletto boots, button pencil skirt

you are Serbia, delegate to UNIFEM, urban-savvy
there are no trees, no holy week, and you are inside, eternally
passing resolutions on violence of a seemingly imaginary nature,
inconceivable in the conference rooms of a 45-story hotel

but pay attention young one, to the little things
pho with new friends, snowflakes in april,
paintings at the MOMA which take your breath away

this is where honest gratitude must be larger than dreams
when night comes, you may meet them again

n.y.c. musings

underground tunnels grind and grate in subway chutes too narrow
can you imagine being stuck here?
deep breaths now, honey

in a world full of people far more important than you or me
it is a little hard to listen (am i going deaf?)
(but then who is important, anyway? a farmer grows our food,
because of first grade teachers, we can read)

to participate in your death, so that i may also participate in your life
even in your, the word is foreign in my mouth, resurrection

oh, but these things are frightening and far!

can one word move you?

It snowed a little bit here today.

you can tell a lot about a man by his handwriting
you can find words unspoken by looking another woman in the eye
but both of these things are hard to come by

if i put on my grandfather's glasses, will i be able to see you better?

oh, tell me a story, of broken bikes and late-night jasmine
we'll sit in sand, hold wine in paper cups, and i'll listen

i'll learn to listen.

bring out your rake and hoe again,
ready your shovel for sowing season
we'll work all morning, or dream of it at least.

and when our shadows lengthen in the afternoon,
i'll pour you a sierra, we'll sit on front steps.

oh, it's been many years since easter eggs were hidden for our sakes
(but maybe if we just close our eyes a little tighter)

you are not being so clear with me
(but i can't say i hold it against you)
unfamiliar forests are still green
there is world enough, and time.

you burn right through my palms

what wisdom costs, we'll pay in pennies
but we'll pay, oh, we'll pay

when so much air conditioning has left wind meaningless
and grief has no place because suffering can't reach us

i'll pick lupins every morning though it may be scorned naive
i'll plant wildflowers in concrete jungles & i'll let tears fall over forgotten things

prophets are no stranger to sackcloth & ashes
and i'm not saying i'm a prophet (oh no),
i just want to tell the truth.

[you] stood too close to the sunset

Yes, yes, ridiculous, but fun. Even held at the Maritime Museum (with a sea theme)! It was Sadie Hawkins, so I asked this one.

summer solstice

I have arrived. Here I am in Lakeside, Montana, along Flathead Lake and within Glacier County, just miles from the National Park of the same name. The drive here was large, if you know what I mean. The sky was wide, the fields stretching, the mountains immense and green.

Everything in Montana seems to have a name like Whitefish, Great Falls, Bear Paw, Big Sky, Yellowstone, Birdseye, Blackfoot.

This is the West, so different from my Northwest (did I ever know?). Ranchers stroll the edges of their land along the highway, and I drive by at 80 miles an hour (Montana just installed speed limits a few years ago, and they are still very high), listening to Jackson Browne and taking it all in.

There are a few backpacking hitchhikers on the way here, and I smile and wave good blessings to them as I drive. Two hawks swoop over carrying large fish in powerful beaks.

And I have lived at the Golden Gate, at the doors of the West in that foggy city we love, and I have lived along Lewis & Clark's trails and pathways, their "almost-there" Western summit. But now here I am in the Shadowlands, in the Western stretch of the journey, at the top of the Rockies.

Last night, we walked down to the lake, sat on the docks, took pictures, laughed. All the snowy mountains around the water were dipped in sunlight, and the evening stretched until the 9:45pm sunset: we celebrated the day for 17.5 hours of its light.

Wendell Berry prays, "At night make me one with the darkness, in the morning make me one with the light."

Oh, the North, the fabled West, its overwhelming summer solstice.

Happy hinge-point, my friends. I hope your spring was well.

Pretentiously enough, I sometimes find myself almost wholly convinced that I own the state of Washington.

I planted these trees. I was here when these dirt roads were laid. And how many days have I spent climbing these ladders, pruning and thinning and picking this fruit?

I walk the earth like the original buyer, the contracter, the builder, the dreamer. This is my state. Welcome Home.

rejoice! we are almost home!

Now that my final final, as it were, is taking place tomorrow morn, it seems appropriate to break the studying in order to publish an abbreviated list of summer intentions. And you? I would like to hear yours, too, please.

+Acquire a pair of ducks (friends, of course).
+Read a great deal, especially of Mary Oliver's poetry & dear Annie Dillard's prose.
+Learn to make fig cake. Mmm, figs are so good! (and so Song of all Songs-esque:) )
+Rent French film Love Me If You Dare
+Make my own chapstick.
+Practice coffee art.
+Create a homemade granola.
+Rockclimb, hike, longboard, bike, and skinny dip my way all across Washington, Canada, and Montana.

In the north, the summers seem almost unreal--hazy and mirage-like, where 50 degree latitudes give light well into steamy nights and the berries are pregnant and tender even in the cool of the morning. Here's to the next three months: to orchards and to the Solstice, to photography, baking, weddings, and friends.