December 31st, 2014

It really is glory to glory. I am abandoned to joy. In this year I have learned how small
miracles come at every moment, from the nuances of reconciliation to the nuances
of a love that is not a lover's love but is scintillating all the same, to toast falling on the
floor butter side up. I have watched beauty carve itself into my face and weave itself
into my hair, though this is a different beauty than I have met before. I have learned that
loss has two chapters: the absence of thing, an immediate shock, and then the slow receding
of memory from the thing. Eventually the edges of the space left by both wear down until
they form only a doorway, smooth and sanded, safe to walk through or lean against,
depending on the need of the moment. I have also learned that things take back their names.
Lies do not prevail when we are walking through losses and reveling in the miracle. I used
to say "love" and mean "destruction of ego". Now when my mouth forms the word what I
am really saying is "mystery". And something else: how easily magic is coaxed from the
corner when we are not afraid to open our hand! No seduction is sweeter than that between

this Magic and I - how it bids me follow further into my own chambers...  

December 30th, 2014

What is true of sunrise in winter over the ocean is that the sky is light long
before the sun is born.  As I watch it crowning slowly, and then quickly rising
between two clouds, it is no longer light that is emitted, but fire, and somehow,
in those moments, everything seems darker because the sun itself has appeared
and is so light  the sky, which seemed fully illuminated before, is the color
of a glass of milk into which pieces of ice have melted. Yesterday I sat for a long
time and collected many pieces of beauty and hung them around the living room
so when the low winter sun shone in they would become illuminated. The dust
in mid afternoon light when I was 8, the choreography of a fly, a bird, a plane, all
ticking in time to Sigur Ros in a golden field behind a tobacco barn when I was 20,
the warm summer rain falling into a gray ocean at low tide, all things silver, when
I was 23, and then yesterday, the way it seemed as if the sun itself made ripples
in the sea, every angled wave a precious metal, shimmer before me like standards. 
These are the moments that represent a life. Keep this poem if I leave first.

December 29th, 2014

I want to address this to you Steve, though you have long forgotten our talks and the way they felt both like the velveteen rabbit and a scarlet fever. Never mind, I am happy to have those conversations as references on this map. Over there, by Mt Revelation, on which you said "I don't know who has hurt you to such a degree that you no longer take yourself seriously, but you must stop treating your body and heart casually, and stop allowing men to bruise you" is where I last wore this dress that I am about to burn. It is tight and sheer and it has every vital vein of my body stitched onto it in silver, I guess so the vipers would know where to strike. I have always been very kind to my enemies. Steve, it will make the most glorious snapping sound when it burns, like pine sap crackling or birch bark curling back in flame. I will send you the ashes if you like in a little box. You see, your voice was a hand when I needed one, and a sword knighting me when I needed that. How easily I brandish my own sword now! If I thought it wouldn't terrify your small children or whatever woman you are in love with at the moment, I would send you, in hat boxes, the heads of men who wished to bruise me. And right now, right now, I am sitting by the Lake of Solace and looking into quiet waters which appear gray and then purple and then, suddenly, to spark with the cool fire of a waxing moon.

December 15th, 2014


They are bending over their exams and I should be grading their last papers
so they can fold that "feedback" into the rest of the feedback from me that
I'm sure is very insufficient but instead I am trying to keep my eyelids from
falling and dreaming about the title of a book I might someday write. And,
then, in the middle of it, a text. This text results in a necessary, but unpleasant
conversation. I feel my cheeks grow hot and wonder if the students notice. They
write on, occasionally pausing and resting their chins on their hands. They are
writing about their progress with writing, a meta-analysis, and this is hard and I
watch them strain and I wish I could guide them even now. What they don't know
is that this exam really is less of an assessment of their own knowledge and more
an assessment of my teaching. I have grown miles from this kind of exam. The
texts keep buzzing in. This conversation was dead before it started, but it continues
on, a stubborn ghost. It lasts much longer than their exams, and by the end I am
laughing the nervous laughter of one who narrowly avoided a car wreck.