(…for Election Day here in the USA.)
Somewhere in the spacious skies
sings a choir of our better angels.
Up above the grains and plains and
out over the purple mountains,
their voices carry our hopes and dreams
and proclaim our ringing freedom
to all this united land made for you and me,
for our one nation and its free people
on this day of sacred democracy.
I sure hope we’re listening.
I write a “Ghost Girl” poem every year, and this year, it’s a little different. See, one of Lucy’s favorite things to do right now (spooky season or not) is to throw a sheet or blanket or towel over her head – probably one that she stole from the laundry basket or out of the cabinet while I wasn’t looking – and pretend to be a ghost. She walks around going “Boo!” and “OOOoooOOO,” and says, “I’m a ghost!” So, here you go, my sweet girl. This year’s poem is all yours. I hope you like it, you know, one day when you can read.
Blink and you’ll miss me.
I’m fast and I’m sneaky,
and I know what I want you to see.
Some call me the Goddess of Thieves.
I sometimes call myself a ghost.
Mostly, I’m whatever I want to be,
and you better believe it –
I can get away with anything!
It’s easy to learn to let things go.
I just look to
the trees in the fall.
They drop their leaves not as tears
but triumphs,
a thousand little victories scattered
across the seasons,
a final satisfied sigh before a well-earned rest.
It scares you, doesn’t it?
Here in the dark,
hemmed in by the damp, whole smell of earth and air
and the endless lapping of the water,
the spindly fingers of the trees crawling their way up into the night,
you feel it, I know,
that you’re not alone.
Yes, I’m here, and I’ll talk,
if only because you want to,
though you won’t like what I say.
You’d do well to remember, my curious friend,
to look beyond your lens and listen past your recordings
and truly see –
there are worse things haunting this place,
terrors more frightening and damned creeping in
the shadows of this world,
than me.
One day when we’re old and gray(er),
I know we’ll look back and say to each other:
“Remember 13? We were younger and taller
and Lucy was smaller. Here we are now, and
I wouldn’t change a thing.”
And anyway,
as old and as weathered and tired
as I ever get,
I hope I never stop looking up
at the moon and the stars and the clouds.
If I live to 100 or more,
I hope I wear every year and line,
every scar and gray hair and crow’s foot
with all the wonder and whimsy and
goddamn I told you so that I earned.
Because I wasn’t put on this planet to be quiet as a mouse
or pretty as a picture frozen in time.
I am a woman and I contain a whole world in me.
As much as I was made to nurture and to create and mend,
I wasn’t made to bend.
I was made to roar.
Cover your ears if you think it’s too loud.
I’ve had enough of grief,
so today I’ll focus on love.
I won’t give time to that moment when you lose someone,
when you feel your chest collapse,
you go concave and hollow and you know that you’re alone.
Because I know love never turns to loved.
Gone isn’t lost.
That place in your heart isn’t empty.
It couldn’t be.
It’s just gone fallow, and only for now.
Soon, again,
it will grow.
It will grow new and alive and long, like bright yellow flowers
turned royal blue.
We become legacies
forever and forever and forever
and that love will always go on.
Graham’s sweet dad, Bill, my wonderful father-in-law and Lucy’s most beloved Papa, passed away on Saturday at 6:04 p.m., surrounded by his wife of 58 years and his two sons. It happened quickly, though he’d been dealing with some health challenged for a long time. Meg, Graham, and T sat with him until the end, and I’m glad of it. He loved them, he loved all of us, and he would have done the same. He carried kindness, joy, curiosity, creativity, warmth, and a friendly smile everywhere he went. He painted, and puzzled, and loved wine and travel, and swam in the ocean, and never stopped doing the things that mattered to him
He lived. And in his memory, we will, too. Every day. I’ll miss him. I’m grateful that I got to know him, and I’m grateful that Lucy will carry his beautiful legacy.
He was a good man.
It’s the waiting that’s the worst –
Sleepless nights watching the phone,
willing it to ring,
or better not to.
Those nights aren’t quiet.
They’re sitting alone in the silent dark and
wondering
wondering
wondering
what comes next.
And then the most wrenching thought:
When?
When? When?
No good time.
No right moment.
Just this: The waiting
waiting
waiting
for the one thing you never wanted.
I saw your wings once
in a church
surrounding us in prayer –
dust in the air and soft golden light,
delicate and quiet,
shining through leaded glass and glinted panes
that we created.
But you did it first.
The words just say no
We’re not into it today
So go away please
No wisdom bursts forth
From my aching, thinking head
It’s empty up there
I’m calling it now
I’ll just go outside instead
And take a nice walk
