Dear Fall, I miss you.

Where have you gone? Just a few weeks ago I was running through Interlaken park absorbed in a rhythmic swirl of gold, umber, and wine red leaves. My whole body could feel the changing and turning and knew that there was beauty hidden in the core of the leaf-less tree. I could feel my own branches extending upward, barren into the crisp blue sky. If I paused and breathed deeply, my insides could tell that this stripping away was essential for whatever is to come next.

But now all I can feel is my nakedness.
It's winter. The snow blankets the streets, and ice has hardened on the sidewalks like thick shields over the earth. I want to brush it all away, to smell and feel some dirt under my fingernails. I want to break through the winter crust of snow and dig up evidence of something growing underground- but it is not time for such things.
It is a time for laying fallow. For things to be dormant. To wait patiently.

Oh, advent. The waiting might kill me this year.

"I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new that is ultimately good for the soul."
-billy joel

I don't feel this way at all-
but I want to.

Transition Time

How I hate transitions.

I know in my head
things have to change.
Work. Home. Relationships.
Everything evolves, cracks open,
grows in different directions.
Everything keeps cycling, circling, spiraling.
If it stopped---

I'm not sure we could call it life.

But let's be real-
This part of life

Sucks.

Thanks, bell hooks, for inspiring me to quilt

This is my first quilt!
I just finished sewing it today.

All of the colorful fabric was brought back from Uganda by a dear friend who studied there a few years ago.
The beautiful fabric were scraps from traditional dress making.
I stitched together my quilt top, batting (a flannel sheet), and backing in a style called free motion.
A pretty fun process, all in all.

The Color Purple

" I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
-Alice Walker

Taylor Mali

Look up Taylor Mali on Youtube for amazing spoken word poetry: what teachers make, the the impotence of proofreading, like lily like wilson etc.
very good stuff.

Lynda Hogan

Workday

I go to work
though there are those who were missing today
from their homes.
I ride the bus
and I do not think of children without food
or how my sisters are chained to prison beds.

I go to the university
and out for lunch
and listen to the higher-ups
tell me all they have read
about Indians
and how to analyze this poem.
They know us
better than we know ourselves.

I ride the bus home
and sit behind the driver.
We talk about the weather
and not enough exercise.
I don’t mention Victor Jara’s mutilated hands
or men next door
in exile
or my own family’s grief over the lost child.

When I get off the bus
I look back at the light in the windows
and the heads bent
and how the women are all alone
in each seat
framed in the windows
and the men are coming home,
then I see them walking on the Avenue,
the beautiful feet,
the perfect legs
even with their spider veins,
the broken knees
with pins in them,
the thighs with their cravings,
the pelvis
and small back
with its soft down,
the shoulders which bend forward
and forward and forwardto protect the heart from pain.