Writing

Writing: The Measure of a Breath

Two days ago, we learned that Hayden, our beloved chihuahua, has kidney damage. There are things we can do to help her retain enough kidney function to live out the rest of her life before her kidneys fail. This is very encouraging because it means we can do preventive care rather than simply engaging in palliative care. However, there is no guarantee our measures will work. Serious illnesses like this take their own course. Sometimes intervention can’t change that course.

Hayden has done so much for my husband and me since we adopted her just under two years ago. I tell people she saved my life. They think I’m being hyperbolic, but I’m not. We adopted Hayden in part because we knew dogs provide excellent therapy for people with depression, anxiety and other chronic health problems. Now that we have her, I never feel alone. By that I mean I never move into an emotional state in which I am completely inaccessible, one in which I don’t know how to reach out to anyone for support, even myself.

Hayden tethers me to this world—and to her heart, my husband’s heart and my own heart. Each day, she shows me how to be gentle, playful and kind. Because of her, I feel more open. I trust the world more and want to fight for it more passionately. In her eyes, I see the beauty of all living creatures, and I understand the need to protect the environment that supports us all.

I still have so much to learn from Hayden, but right now I need to turn my attention to supporting her to the best of my abilities. I need to remain in the moment so that I don’t impose my own suffering on her. I don’t want my knowledge of her illness to cloud our time together. I need to remember that if, at the end of the day, Hayden has had a good day, that’s all that matters. At the same time, I must think about the future so my husband and I can intervene now on Hayden’s behalf. I can’t just be in the moment or her future could be compromised.

I have a lot of learning and growing to do in order to meet this challenge and be the caretaker and companion Hayden needs me to be. I hope I can do for her a fraction of what she’s done for me. Right now, she’s taking a nap and looks perfectly content. It’s hard to believe there’s anything wrong with her. Earlier, she ran and barked in her sleep. I like to imagine what she might be dreaming about: perhaps a warm day in the park, chasing squirrels up trees; or maybe a scene from her life before we adopted her, a place she only returns to in her sleep.

A train moves through the city; its hollow notes ride the air. This is a dark day, a cold day. Rain pads the windows like fingertips. Even the birds seem to be complaining about the weather in curt and muffled tones.

I’m going to join Hayden now. I will lie by her side and breathe with her. Measured in breaths, even a short span of time feels nearly infinite. I will count every breath and remember that each is a miracle, one we all share.

Sound, Sense, Story, Song

I read poems four ways: as sound, as sense, as story, as song.

As a poet, you can either have a steadfast allegiance to your poetry or to your ego. Please choose wisely.

I need a larger mind today, and a larger heart.

I watch three deer run back and forth across the seam that separates trees from meadow. This is what the human heart and mind do at their best: move between states as if they were landscapes, tracing a crooked line for others to follow.

I am seeing more and more kindness and generosity in those around me. And more and more, that kindness and generosity make my heart and mind sing.

Metadata is my nemesis.

I am a typo.

I think we should stop eating meat and start eating vegans.

I keep reading “Three Days in Austin” as “Three Days in Autism” and thinking, “Actually, it’s been a lot longer than three days.”

Conversation I had today: Person I Was Talking With: “You’re in your late 20s, right?” Me: “Yes, that’s right.”

The Ability to See

Reading poetry is less about the ability to read than the ability to see.

You can’t burn a bridge that was never there to begin with.

Sometimes, going back is moving forward.

Tonight in Sandpoint, Idaho, I saw a little girl with cancer toss a penny into a fountain. She stood by the fountain for a long time, lacing and unlacing her fingers as she prayed.

There is fire between us and where we want to go.

In Spokane, I feel like depleted soil.

There are birds with pretty songs and birds with ugly songs. I may have an ugly song, but it’s mine, and I am going to sing it.

I’ve been walking the alleys of Walla Walla. I want to see what secrets this town is hiding, given what it puts in plain sight.

In Hiroshima, not of Hiroshima. What I mean is, there weren’t victims of Hiroshima. There were victims in Hiroshima: victims of America in Hiroshima.

People appreciate a polite rejection more than a hesitant acceptance.

The love comes through the suffering, and neither belongs to us.

Jon is in the kitchen singing Zappa’s “The Dangerous Kitchen.”

Our atrocities live in the land, and the land speaks to us of those atrocities.

Sometimes consequence takes its own sweet time.

Living with awe is not the same thing as living in ignorance.

I love us in our frailty, in our confusion, in our stumbling, in our stupidity.

I love us when we try and fail, when we do something good despite our efforts to do otherwise, when I glimpse something inside each of us that is of worth.

I love the man who carries his nineteen-year-old German Shepherd into Lake Superior each night so the dog’s arthritic joints can be supported by the water.

I love the Army Reservist holding a sign roadside for hours that says “I support gays” because he felt compelled to speak out.

I love our calls to help one another and to support one another. I love our cries for solidarity, even if solidarity is impossible.

I love us. For a long time, I was lost from that truth. Now, that truth shapes and guides my life. I love us, despite what we can be, have been, and will be. I love us because of what we can be, have been, and will be.

The deep atrocities need to be ferreted out and addressed, no doubt. But that work must be couched in love, guided by love, and informed our deep love for one another, for all living beings, and for the world we share.

Without love, the tragedy is just a tragedy. Without love, we live in hate, are guided by hate and consumed by hate. Once we lose love and cultivate hate, we are made weak, not strong, and the wrongs we seek to right will never be righted.

When I stopped knowing how to love myself, I turned to us and learned from us. What we do—what we are capable of—breaks my heart every day. At the same time, our beauty and grace astound me.

I am learning to live in service to us, not in service to myself, just as I have learned to love us when I cannot love myself. I am here for us—as voice, as witness. I am bound to us—a slack, invisible rope all that tethers “me” to and separates “me” from “us.” And that is not just as it should be but as it is.

No Self in Other

A walk along Mill Creek this morning revealed chokeberries, elderberries, blackberries, cherries and apples.

Nothing like getting a free cremation offer in the mail.

I used to think the whole of my life was about writing. Now I know the whole of my writing is about life.

There is no self in other.

My advice to women: Worry about the size of your heart, not the size of your ass.

I was all exclamation points. He was all commas.

Having a state poet laureate is like having a politician in office who actually cares about her work and the constituents she represents.

I hate the fact that the erosion of our privacy is both embodied in and concealed by the innocuous and mildly aspirational term “sharing.” It isn’t sharing; it’s taking. We haven’t given; we’ve been taken. What we had we no longer have; we’ve been had.

Today I braid the garlic.

Desire, Need and Love

Gmail just suggested I change “bodhisattvas” to “bedsheets.” Really, Gmail? My sentence would have read: Bedsheets were placed on this earth, in throngs, for a reason—out of hope, desire, need and love.

I am the day.

This advice is from a wiki entry on how to take erotic photos of yourself, but it works for writing a poem as well: If you don’t like these results, try again in a different room or outfit.

I just had a phonological breakdown / emergency.

Me: I am married to you for a reason. My Husband: I don’t think that’s actually true.

These days, I always smell like sweet onions.

No matter what I wear, I always wind up looking like a soft turnip.

When a cherry fell into my bra on tonight’s glean, I probably shouldn’t have joked about having a third nipple.

I visited with eight alpaca this evening.

Let go and let good.

Liquor and Weapons

Today, I mistook a piece of sushi for an old philosopher.

Oh my God, I love the dirt. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I am crying because I love the dirt so much.

I frittered away the afternoon apologizing to the cows.

Here in Eastern Washington, we like our liquor and our weapons concealed.

I feel like the neighbor’s chickens are heckling me.

Hayden smells like one part puppy, one part pineapple chunk, one part grandma, and one part cheese cracker.

My dog wants a dog. This is just like the time my robot wanted a robot.

Dogs: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning. Me: Lots of energy in the morning, lazy most of the day, excitable in the evening, lazy again until bedtime, wild burst of energy right at bedtime, sound asleep until morning.

It makes me sad to think that when I die, there will be nobody left on this earth who remembers, loves and misses my father. I want to live a long life so my love for him will remain in my heart as long as possible.

Digging in the dirt turns me into an emotional, fragile weirdo.

The people in the weekend rental next door are being loud, so I am playing theremin music to drown them out.

Sometimes I am not somewhere until I am no longer there.

I can tell this day is going to be bigger than me, and that’s a good feeling.

I wake today with an awareness that we are not one country. We are many, with many hearts and minds. And some of those minds are closed, some of those hearts shut down.

We talk a lot about keeping our minds busy, but we also need to work at keeping our hearts busy.

When someone starts threatening you, you know you’re onto something that matters. Nobody makes threats unless there’s something to be lost, exposed or both.

What my new and old neighborhoods have in common: children’s laughter, kindness and love.

I found my hair twin at Walmart, which tells you a lot about my hair.

The next time I want to cast aspersions, I will cast a handful of wildflower seeds instead.

A Delicate Balance

Today I am grateful for the kindness of our neighbors, the beauty of the earth and sky, and for sharing a home with a man and a dog I deeply love.

We rarely find happiness in the pursuit of what we think will make us happy.

My heart lives in the past. My mind lives in the future. It is only my soul that lives in the present.

Be the change you want to see in yourself.

You can’t replace yesterday’s lost nutrients today.

I am a delicate balance of Benadryl and caffeine.

I don’t like Walla Walla because I fit in; I like it precisely because I don’t fit in.

The challenge is to think with our hearts and feel with our minds.

If I can love one being as much as I do, imagine my capacity for loving the entire world of beings.

My first language is silence.

Gestures and Nods

The greatest disappointment of my life thus far is learning that we are as isolated in our joy as we are in our sorrow.

Sometimes the kindness thing we can do for one another is remain silent.

I write poems so people I love can come with me into places and experiences I love.

There is a difference between bringing people you love along with you in a poem and trying to do so in real life. The former is improbable; the latter impossible.

Everything said publicly is now said through indirection, secretly—through gestures and nods.

Eternity isn’t something we are deluded into believing. It’s something that, over the course of our lives, we are disciplined out of believing.

The End of Times is perhaps the only way we can justify leaving something as beautiful as the earth behind. Why not shift the responsibility for that misfortune to God? We need a great story to justify such a great loss.

The truth is, without knowing it, I used to admit only the concept of a God who wanted us all to be rich. And because so many of us are poor, I didn’t think there could be a God. That’s how deeply rooted capitalism is within me. That’s how—even though I am the ninety-nine percent, I do the work of the one percent—the work of striving, of failing, of blaming the failures of a system on myself and others who don’t control that system or even understand its inner workings, of blaming God for not being a capitalist who works by way of greed and exclusion.

I had no life before poetry. I had nothing. I was lost.

In my case, it doesn’t matter how gifted the life is. Without poetry, it’s impossible to see the gifts—the way a frog will die even if surrounded by flies, if those flies are not moving. The frog is simply not programmed to “see” flies that don’t move. Poetry, for me, makes things move, sets the gifts of the world, the gift of the world itself, in motion.

Things to do in Walla Walla: 1. Write a book of poems, 2. Grow out your hair.

I think the best marriage in a poem would be Charles Wright and Steven Wright.

Thinking for yourself is always a good thing. Thinking for someone else is never a good thing.

I like the letters to the editor in the local paper. They help me figure out who to avoid.

Tonight as I left the Farm Labor Home, one of the kids I teach ran behind my car, waving goodbye to me under the waxing gibbous moon.

Before we talk about sharing wealth, we need to ask ourselves where that wealth came from—who suffered or died, what lands and habitats were stolen, destroyed or altered beyond recognition—for that wealth to have been amassed in the first place. I don’t know about you, but there is wealth in this country, in this world, that I don’t want any part of.

Removing producers from this country—largely situating workers overseas, over there, beyond our boundaries—also removes the very body that could make a difference, that could rise up and make a difference.

The Chosen Life

I knew before moving to Eastern Washington that the land—by which I mean the soil, the air, the water, the flora and the fauna—as well as many of the people here, including native people, had suffered and were still suffering deeply.

The poems have to come from life, a life fully and deeply lived. Even then, they are still only clues.

I knew this side of the state had taken in or had foisted on it some of the worst industries imaginable, from personal and industrial waste to toxic waste.

I knew unthinkable things were being done to animals in one of the country’s largest meat processing plants, that its walls housed extreme suffering.

The river was being poisoned. I knew that. I knew the ground was contaminated by the radioactive slurry left behind and improperly stored at the Hanford Site and that the ground water was also contaminated.

I knew all this and I came here not in spite of these realities but because of them. I’d been living in the Seattle Bubble for too long, going about my daily business without issues such as these entering my consciousness, let alone being at the forefront of my consciousness. I led a relatively easy life, one in which I believed that if I earned a certain salary every year, if I had a certain type of living situation, if I had this or that material object, then I could extend my sense of happiness indefinitely.

But I always knew that was no life, and that the “happiness” I sought out, relied on and through which I defined myself was as flimsy as the plastic cover that stretches over a swimming pool in the winter months. It was easy to break through that “happiness” and fall into the depths, into frigid water that could kill.

I lived for something more. I craved something more. I wanted to connect in a deeper way with the world. I tried to bring that about—to create some kind of transformation—in my writing. I attempted to write myself and those I loved into spaces of myth and healing. Writing poems also altered my consciousness temporarily by giving me the feeling, the fleeting feeling, of transcendence.

The poems were only clues, though. I realize that now. They were clues and little addictions. You can’t live from the high of one poem to the next any more than you can say you are living on a higher plane because you chain smoke cigarettes all day. The poems have to come from life, a life fully and deeply lived. Even then, they are still only clues. Yet they might become enough of a trail to keep you headed in the right direction, which is toward a life in which you place your faith in something and then act from that position—in the interest of other, of community, of the infinite within and without.

Moving to Eastern Washington was the best decision my husband and I have made in our adults lives, other than finding our way to one another in 1995. Coming here set me on a path whose end I cannot see, but I do know it’s a long journey—a life’s journey and one worth taking. It is here that I have learned true love in all senses of the word, including a true love of place. Though this place is not my home, the land has welcomed me and taken me in. It has led me down its paths and back roads, so I could see its scars and wounds. I have seen those wounds up close, and I worry that they are fatal. I worry that the land I have come to know and cherish is dying, and that is a grief I cannot tolerate.

I have no choice but to act. I must act in any and every way possible on behalf of both the land and the people. I must commit my life to this. And the poems will never tell the whole story. They will only be clues to the life I have chosen, the one I am leading.

Safe Return

I just misread While people often post photos of daily minutiae such as food as White people often post photos of daily minutiae such as food.

Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani says his compositions exist in “ma time.” Maybe I am living in ma time now.

All my poems are love poems for the poets whose poems I love.

I’ve woken again to a great love.

Language is always going to be taken hostage by those who choose to do the worst with it. If we give up on it, on language, on its safe return, we might as well give up on ourselves—because that’s what the surrender amounts to.

If dogs are a reflection of their owners, then I must be awesome.

We talk a lot about audience, but what about anti-audience—the readers we want to dislike our work? The ones we write not for, but against?

I used to think Richard Hugo was hardcore for driving to his “triggering towns” to find his writing. But I am way more hardcore: I moved to my triggering town. But I didn’t just find my writing here. I found myself. I found faith. I found love and its vastness. And I found my way back to land.

I am not obsessive-compulsive. I am expressive-compulsive.

As soon as you fill someone else’s heart with the love that you feel, you have been reincarnated in that person.