Beginning

A new year

Sunshine after days of rain

Cold air and clear skies

Something washed away

Something beginning

And I take comfort in the fact

That the crows are still here

Now and Then

The smell of wet paint

On canvas

Greets me like an old friend

As I walk into my room

Remembering what I have forgotten

Forgetting what I no longer need

Letting go of expectations

Shedding the past

Hugging myself through sadness

Cradling my crazy brain

Like a warm, breathing jewel

That gives off bright sparks

Every now

And then

Side by side

 A crow

Is nesting in my chest

It is calling to me

Every morning

Rising with its mighty black wings

Spreading softly across my heart

At dusk

It gathers the remnants of my day

Strands of hair

Dry leaves

Dustballs and flakes of skin

Unfinished thoughts

And forgotten memories

To build its nest

A bed for my sorrow and my joy

To sleep side by side

Today

I need a blank canvas 

an empty page 

a song not yet written

I need nothingness and potential for everything

I need a rose and a cigarette and a new tattoo

I need crows and bourbon

Do not tell me anything

I do not want to listen

I need sun and flowers and dirt

I need new boots and 

I need to know you are ok

I need the world to stop and never end

Do not set yourself on fire

I need to be a pebble at rest at the bottom of a river

I need black paint and a broad brush 

Today I need

Another song

Another story

Another canvas

Chicago

While you were sleeping

I had coffee
In the warm rain

In the big city
That is now your home

I am just a stranger

At a coffee shop
Visiting from out of town

Walking your streets
In the warm rain

While you are sleeping

Grief Season (and what we can learn from fungi)

It’s grief season again.

In my family circle, the final days of the old year and the first days of the new year will forever be marked by profound loss. On January 1st, 2011, my best friend’s niece, Kate, was brutally attacked and mortally wounded, together with her fiance and several of his family members. She died on January 6th, 2 days after her fiance. She was 25. Five of her future family members died with her in that first week of the new year. 

Towards the end of that same year, 2011, my coworker and dear friend, Corey, resigned from his job as my administrative assistant for a mental health agency, left town for an extended cross-country road trip, and jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge (a beautiful and extraordinarily high structure known as a popular suicide spot) in West Virginia on December 29th. I will forever remember the call from his aunt coming into our office, and the photograph of the bridge where he died displayed at his memorial. He was 33.

Flanked by murder and suicide, the transition time between the old and the new year has become heavy and contemplative for me. It’s already a natural time for inward reflection - the darkest days, the longest nights, cold weather and bare trees, the end of the lunar calendar year - and also, winter solstice, daylight slowly beginning to linger again, holiday celebrations - on Dia de los Muertos we honor our dead - and the anticipation of a fresh start into a new revolution around the sun.

In recent years, grief season has extended a bit. This may just be a normal side effect of getting older. Loss has a way of finding you, over and over again. A life-long friend of my husband’s died from cancer on December 15th, 2013, the same day as a young girl from our neighborhood who used to babysit for my daughter, succumbed to the disease. In 2020, my former brother-in-law died by suicide on January 29th, and lung cancer took my mother-in-law on November 29th. 

The truth is, of course, that it’s grief season all year long. Death doesn’t keep a calendar or make appointments. We all experience many losses throughout our life. Sometimes it is a physical death, and sometimes it’s simply the end of something. It still hurts. Grief is not a competition - my loss isn’t bigger or smaller or more or less important than yours. All our losses add up, and they all matter. They continue to shape who we are, because it is true that love and loss are two sides of the same coin. 

So I light a candle in the dark. I remember; I cry; I tell stories; I laugh; I celebrate. I listen to music. A lot. I do this alone and with my fellow humans, because we are all connected, through this mycelium network of grief, love, and loss. Like the mycelium, the awe-inspiring underground web of fungi, with its soft tendrils growing in the dark places, it heals and sustains us, breaks us down and transforms us, nurtured by our tears. 

The word “mycelium” is derived from New Latin and Greek. It means “more than one”.

More than one. That’s us.

Sunday Morning

The sound of rain

Through an open window


And crows

Always crows

Shiny black feathers

Webbed with shimmering droplets

Like liquid diamonds


The hum of city streets

And freeways

Droning quietly

Like a giant amplifier


Shiny black tires

Hissing over wet asphalt


Where do crows go

When it rains?

Crow's Prayer

May we sleep

In the comfort

Of crows’ wings

To be held by soft blackness

To be touched by dark feathers

May we wake up

To the song of the crows

Some say it is not beautiful

But we know better.

Morning Reflections

Is it the light

That is flickering

Or is it

My perception of the light

Is it me

Who is moving

Or is it

My perception of movement

Is this my shadow

Or someone else’s

Where does the light come from

And the movement

And the shadow

Now the flickering has stopped

Instead, a solid beam of light

Where am I

In the absence of movement

In the absence of shadow

In the absence of light

Old loss.

How it is encased in your heart like an ancient seed. How your life grows around it, soft tissue and scars and delicate skin. How it still glows and burns silently in the dark. How it patiently waits for the right moment to resurface. Old loss never lets you down. It will always be there. It keeps your heart soft and pulsing and tender. It holds your hand quietly when you cry. It rocks you slowly to sleep in its heavy lap. Old loss knows you better than you know yourself. It fills you with a pain so deep and so sweet that you won't ever want to be without it. Old loss is the ocean that forms the shores of your soul. Old loss washes away the sharp edges of yourself as you slowly disintegrate into billions of tiny grains. Old loss is the kernel from which all true love sprouts, nourished by the salty water of your tears. True love is rooted in old loss.

In 2020 my world got bigger

 In 2020 my world got bigger. 

That seems counterintuitive, I know. 2020 was all about shrinkage: for many of us, our human connections shrunk down to little squares on computer screens. Our radius of operation got reduced to walks around the block and cautious trips to the grocery store. The old Alcoholics Anonymous mantra “one day at a time” took on a whole lot of significance, even for stone-cold sober folks, as we struggled to accept the reality of not having a clue whatsoever is coming next. We developed a new appreciation, or loathing, for those who share our quarters on a daily basis. We cultivated sourdough and paranoia. We engaged in Zoom yoga (my favorite! love!) and day-drinking.

And yet.

2020 was a year to be reckoned with. It knocked me on my ass. COVID was only part of it. On May 25, 2020, the police killing of George Floyd unleashed a tidal wave of outrage and resistance against long-standing racial injustices that is only (finally) beginning to erode the rotten pillars of our fucked up society. It is incredibly painful and scary, and for a privileged white woman like me, utterly humiliating. I realized that the only way I could honestly call for change was to change myself. A cliche, perhaps; true nonetheless. But how? I had no clue. I started by looking for ways to push myself out of my comfort zone. I began educating myself. I began reading articles and books by people of color who challenged my status quo. I took to the streets of my hometown and marched with our youth and our BIPOC community. I started attending city council and board of supervisors meetings where equity issues and police violence were being discussed. I phone-banked to pass a measure for increased civilian oversight of local policing. I ventured out (mostly virtual, and sometimes in the third dimension) into communities within our community that, embarrassingly, were barely even on my radar before. I collected backpacks for Latinx children in Roseland. I packed boxes for the Sonoma County Black Forum’s food distribution. I delivered warm coats to people on the street through Sonoma County Acts of Kindness. And, earlier in the year, I left the company that employed me for the past 25 years to start over at another organization—one that is coincidentally affording me the opportunity to challenge myself to stand up very publicly for racial justice.

I’m not talking about this to make myself look good. Or maybe I am. That’s another thing: I seem to always be looking over my own shoulder now, questioning my motives and the integrity of my actions. Humility is key. And service. How can I be of service?

I’m talking about this to illustrate how my world got bigger in 2020. This wretched year forced me out of my comfort zone. And I am grateful. I am connecting with people who I probably would never have connected with before. I am engaging in conversations I never even thought I would be a part of. I am using my voice to speak out for something other than my own self interest. I am reading, watching, listening, learning things that shatter my core assumptions about my daily reality and myself. I am learning that I don’t have to be right; I don't have to know it all; I don’t even have to agree with everything. I am challenging myself to shut up and listen. I am challenging myself to use my voice to amplify the voices of others who haven’t been afforded the same platforms as I have.

In the beginning of 2021, my social interactions are still mostly confined to little squares on a computer screen. But in some of those squares, and in conversations online through various channels previously unknown to me, I am talking to people who are blasting my doors of perception wide open. And when I go outside, still prepped with a mask and hand sanitizer, I meet fellow humans with vastly different experiences from mine. And I ask myself every day: how can I be of service?

My world has gotten bigger in 2020. Thank you. 

New Day

 

The sound of rain

Through an open window

A crow’s call

A new day has begun.

For All That Is Lost

For all that is lost

I weep

For those we miss

Today and every day

Like the scent of orange blossoms

Or rain

Carries a memory

Too sweet to be painful

Too sad to make you smile

Just a gentle breeze

Touching your cheek

Like someone you remember

Always.

In memory of Kate Donahue

5/20/85 - 1/6/11

Raincoat Prayer

 

Let me be

A white wall

You could hang a picture if you want

Or a sidewalk

Echoing with someone else’s footsteps

Can I please be

A window

For someone else to look through

To see the world outside

A street dotted with candy wrappers and cigarette butts

The sunshine reflected in a puddle

Slowly disappearing after last night’s downpour

If I could be

A coat for you to wear

The lining torn but silky still

You wouldn’t mind the holes

Would you?

Or maybe

I could be a sky

So wide and open and empty

That I can hold everything at once

And then let it all go

A cool softness dropping on this world

Like gentle rain

Most of all

Can I be still?

So still that I forget I’m even here?

And all that’s left is 

The white wall

The sidewalk

The window

The candy wrappers

The cigarette butts

The puddle

The sunlight

And a coat that smells of rain

Thanksgiving 2020

From the top of Taylor Mountain

I can see new scars on the Eastern hills

Burn marks on the landscape

The charred remains of conifers and oaks

A fire swept through

Again.

It won't be the last.

I can also see 

One single California poppy.

Battered by the wind

Holding on strong

A tiny, tender sun

Shining brightly

Against the grey rock

And the faded grass

There will always be 

More fires

New scars

And every year

New poppies

Empty Room

Picture yourself

In an empty room

Then just the room

Empty

The absence of you

Lingering

Where you used to be

Like a three-dimensional shadow

In space

Like the negative image of the sun

Beneath your eyelids

When you close your eyes

After staring at the sun

Too much.

Linguistic Challenges

 I thought

I was well-versed

In the language of grief.

But it keeps evolving

Beyond any dictionary

I find myself

Incapable of pronouncing the words

Unable to even decipher the characters

All I can do is listen.

Always The Crows

Always The Crows

And then

There’s always the crows.

A black and shiny sadness that descends upon this world

Every morning.

A comforting darkness.

I can hear them when I open my windows.

Somehow their calls seem louder when the skies are grey.

They greet me when I go on my morning run,

Tossing walnuts into the street so cars can crack them open.

Resourceful birds.

Their voices are not beautiful, but honest.

Crows don’t sugarcoat.

Harbingers of mortality

Travelers between worlds

Crossing from this realm into the next

Deep down and high above

When everything else is gone

There will always be the crows

The mighty silent hush of their wings

Their snarky commentary on this world

Their utter blackness

And a few scattered walnuts

For them to feast on

After we are gone.

Election Day 2020

 No matter what happens today, or tomorrow, or any day after, I will keep fighting. 

Because during these past months, I have found my tribe on the streets of Santa Rosa. I don’t know most of their names, but I feel connected. Most of them don’t know me at all, but I feel respected and cared for. When I am with them, I feel safe, even in the face of danger. Most of them are half my age or younger. They are young. They are angry. They are fed up with the mess we made of this world. They are determined. They are kind. They give a fuck. They keep us safe. WE KEEP US SAFE. They are out on the streets standing up against injustice, and caring for each other. They fight for those who are most vulnerable. They build pop-up food pantries, over and over again, even if they get torn down. They make street art. They play the drums. They are ready with a smile and a hug. They get tear gassed and they wash tear gas out of children's eyes. They put bandages on wounds caused by rubber bullets. They go to jail for social and racial justice. They wear masks and protect each other against COVID-19. They hand out masks and water and energy bars to anyone in need. They use their cars and their bodies to prevent yahoos from plowing into protesters. They secure busy intersections so we can take a knee for Breonna Taylor. SAY HER NAME. They wait for those who walk more slowly. They ride alongside me on their bike to make sure I get home safely at night. They sing happy birthday to Andy Lopez. They build altars and tie bright ribbons to their car antennas. They spend hours making phone calls and send texts to pass Measure P for better civilian oversight of local law enforcement. They speak eloquently at City Council and Board of Supervisor meetings. They march, they shout, they fight, they dance, they sing, they paint, they hug, they laugh, they cry, they write, they vote.

No matter what happens today, tomorrow, or any day after, our fight is far from over. But I can go on because of my tribe. They are the youth of Santa Rosa. They are our future. They give me hope.

WE KEEP US SAFE. NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.

On the Laguna Trail

Fall used to be my favorite season. It still is, but now it terrifies me. The rustling of the leaves means that the wind is picking up. The sudden heat of Indian Summer means that something is about to catch on fire.  The rust and brown colors of the hills look like burn scars. The sweet heavy smoke from my neighbor's fireplace sends me into a panic attack. And yet I will not let fear and trauma steal away my love for this season. You can love what you fear, and fear what you love. Love and fear are dark twin goddesses of the heart.