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.