Grandma/Dream-Pieces

Grandma

You are the comfort of twilight

and the brightness of dawn

the laughter of children

and the loyalty of mothers

You are the colors of a painting

and the strength of a mountain

the wisdom of a sage

and the playfulness of the wind

You are a lady, mother, grandmother

You are the fullness of eighty years,

a life rich and bursting,

a summer garden

year upon blessed year

Dream-Pieces

I wake

shaking off the dust

of dream-pieces

Sliding quietly

into reality

07.19.09/07.21.09

07.19.09

Our faces smile up at us
from the porch floor
bits of our lives
lying soggy, rearranged, out of place
amid the pigeon shit

What didn't we lose?

Unfair
life is unfair
don't you know I was already
dangling, precarious?

07.21.09

It's hot. Hot and heavy. I'm sweating copiously. There are fruit flies on my mangos, weevils in my flour, cockroaches in my cupboard, and burglars on my mind.

Why does it all pile up at once? Everything working together, building up force to knock me down flat. Deflate me.

Suddenly I'm off-kilter, disorganized, sad, nervous, unable to do the simplest things, my mind in some far away land. Isn't Nepal far enough? I want to go farther.

Post Office/Dirt

Post Office

I find love today
In unexpected places, in
Mailing envelopes,
Homemade aprons

I find love today
Tailor-fit to my lovesick soul
I have ached
And today I have found bright joy
Unexpectedly

Dirt (06.12.09)

Ten months of you, Nepal
In the cracks of my swollen feet
That scrubbing will not clean
Kathmandu, you will always be here,
Under my skin.

Garden

Garden

The song of earth
We recognize
It courses through us
Makes us dance, moving
To its rhythms

The texture of earth
We learn
It flows through
Our fingers, our toes
Rich with life
Wet with monsoon rains

The color of earth
We wear
The depth of its browns
The aura of its iridescent golds

In earth we see, feel, become
Alive with what gives us life
Giving and taking
Sowing and reaping
Our coexistence

04.24.09

It's cruel, the way loneliness deadens you, makes you forget how to be a friend, makes you feel forgotten, makes you feel like just a memory.

I always prided myself on my ability to thrive on solitude, leading no social-butterfly life. But aloneness is not loneliness...and loneliness is not aloneness. It seems that I've been given too much of both.

04.28.09 (Margaret)

Just when I am hearing the echo of loneliness, my own voice bouncing off these vast canyon walls...I hear another, very familiar voice: the voice of a friend. From a distance, yes, but oh how far the voice of love can travel. I am revived, a plant watered once again.

05.17.09/Soul

05.17.09

It's been 9 months since we landed in Nepal. It's been almost 1 week since my parents returned home after their 2-week stay with us. And only 2 days until I turn 25 years old.

It's amazing, or enslaving, how time and numbers order my life, especially these days. Here, where time is slow, I seem to trudge through hours until a day, a week is over. I find it hard to exist. And perhaps Nepal is teaching me (whether I want it to or not) to simply do that. Just exist.

It is another gentle, breezy evening in Kathmandu, and for the moment, I'm surprisingly in the moment. We sit on the balcony in silence that could never be awkward. We sit and exist together, because it seems that all we have is each other, for the moment.

Soul

soul loneliness
dry, dusty, wilting
faithless, insecure, thirsty
with a depth I cannot fathom

like the floor is falling away
from beneath my dirty feet
the sky caving in, ironing me flat
a hopelessness I cannot contain

a craving for what, I do not know
a hole I am forever falling into
Alice in Wonderland
a land full of wonders, yes
but somehow un-wonderful

04.21.09/04.23.09

04.21.09

Tuesday, 5:00PM.
Back porch breezes dry my just-washed hair
Abigail Washburn whispering songs into my ear
Drink in hand
Reflecting upon a most ordinary day
Willing it to come alive, or
Willing myself to see its life:

The silent growing of plants in clay pots
The blooming bougainvilla
The winds changing, hinting
At the rains to come
The dance of sun and shadow

Counting out the beat of hours
The rhythm of a day
Of time that feels endless, empty
Of time that will add up
Will equal the sum that is
My life

I worry that I cannot always find
The beauty in my ordinary moments
In the passing of a quiet afternoon
In the lazy way the earth turns, slow
Waiting for me to notice
To turn with it, gracefully
To join the ancient dance of time

04.23.09

Overcrowdedbustrafficjammedimpossibly
in the mid-afternoon sun
scrunching, s h r i n k...i n g into
the seatbelt holder (broken, unused)
sequin-clad stranger sweating into me
exfoliating my shoulder
another stranger laughs
a shrillbushorn kind of laugh
patting my knees subconsciously
in her conversational enthusiasm
I sigh, try to breathe air
but find exhaust(exhausting) instead
stalecigarettebreathdirtunwashedhairgrime
I try to move
but sequins and sweat and seatbelts
surround me on all sides