Roaming and Rambling

There is so much poetry that I would love to write lately but I find myself surrounded by scenes whose beauty refuses my words.  So I have been living in the words of others.  Rumi might be the reason that I am not simply still standing, but purely living at the end of this week.  " “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.”  I wish I could write like that.  Even after all this time, it is still difficult for me to first conjure words on the computer.  I don't know where to begin so I will begin anywhere.  Maybe some advice to myself.  There is a lot to be said for a good cup of coffee. Let no one tell you otherwise. But there is more to be said for a good night's sleep. A solid, stretch your worldly limbs across the space of dreams and free fall into their peace kind of sleep.  It will neve...

It feels good to write again.  Something familiar amid all the noise of this new uncertainty.  I am almost shamelessly addicted to coffee at this point in my life.  I could blame it on a number of things, but really I think I'll leave it to the ritual of a warm mug between my hands in the morning and the aroma of comfort in what I'm convinced is one of its most tangible forms.  People often don't believe me when I say that every moment of life is a bit of poetry to be discovered.  But it's true. The soft and small exchanges shared with others could fill volumes of the most beautiful lines, verse after verse, conversation after conversation.  A wise woman and an old friend of mine once told me that she believed that every conversation shared with another person should be one of intent and meaning, one that furthered each individual in its own way. No wasted words.  It's something I've adopted without even truly knowing how or why I ...

Oh, and so begins my month as a vegan.  Here's to trying new things, eating more vegetables, learning to live without, exploring my own ethics, staying healthy, vitamin supplements, and getting creative in the kitchen. 

It has been a long time.  A very long time.  Sitting here I wonder how many windows have been mine to look from in my quiet and favored hours of morning? The rain reminds me of Costa Rica, of places too far to touch, places that leave the hands of my heart reaching, yearning.  My writing is rusty and my fingers fumble through letters, strangers begging their pardon for the time that weighs them down.  I uprooted my life, and I find myself standing in a shower of its pieces, bits of earth shaken from the tendrils of roots once tangled so deeply in the past.  I live in Boone once again.  Beautiful, familiar, ever-teaching, fulfilling, renewing, hopeful, soul-sustaning Boone.  I gave up a job for an essentially unpaid internship.  I left a clear path toward home for my other home.  I interviewed, packed, and arrived in these mountains without a means of income, without a place to live.  With my life in my car, I drove strai...

The letters do not recognize me. They gather into words, whispering, wary of my approach. I am a stranger they struggle to recognize through eyes clouded with absence and neglect. They trace the lines of my fingertips, slowly settling into the lines of palms that promise to hold them more gently, more closely, to not let them slip like grains of sand through hands too young to appreciate them.  Time places heavy kisses on my knuckles, one by one by one and my elbows feel awkward against this new table. My knees should be crossed and propped perfectly into the familiar corners under my desk. A desk now covered by pictures of faces foreign to mine, mementos of memories I did not make, homework that is not mine to finish before the sun rises. But those used to be crooked smiles of my parents, bracelets that adorned my wrists through adventures, notes of Spanglish from dear friends, mugs of tea carefully steeped by a woman who made herself my mother. My forearms ache for the strength ...