Somewhere it's green
and  dandelions and soft grass
grow on hills
Somewhere it's blue
and the sky and stones meet
the river
Somewhere it's red
and squirrels and bridges
climb higher
Somewhere it's more
than white skies and white streets and
snow falling.
Somewhere you and
I walk in the sun and never
dream of spring.

I always think of you.
I think of the color green:
the tint of old photos,
the lively dancing of your eyes,
your turtleneck in your
official schoolteacher portrait--
of summer--
the grass under my feet
as I run around the yard
so big to little me
and your wrinkled hand keeping me from running too far--
your curtains hanging in your dining room
when the sunlight peeked through them--
the cushions of the dining room chair
where you sat and talked and ate and
made funny faces
sometimes with curlers still in your hair--
the stems and leaves of wildflowers
that Grandpa picked for you
sitting in a coffee tin on the microwave--
the clover planted in empty ice cream pails
in the living room
and you telling me I was lucky
because I'd found one with four leaves--
the grassy **** blanket on the fold-out
bed in the living room where you
sometimes napped--
the bitter tea you drank
for your weak heart--
and the markings on the cannula tube
snaking up
to the oxygen mask
covering your smiles---
your laughing green eyes
on your last day.

It was cold when I died--
The ground hard where I was lain
The garments wrapping
my head and body  
were meant to be my last--
the night silent
and there was nothing
and nothing else.

The dead do not have hope.
The dead have nothing
but a tomb.
And this tomb was meant
for me.

The living have stories.
The dead have endings.
But even endings have endings,
and the biggest trick I fell for
was that mine was done.

Because there was
not nothing.
The heavy air became light.
And the ground thudded with
heavy movement;
then it was still.
And there was nothing once more.

And then my eyes opened.
The wrappings were pulled
from my face,
and light hit my eyes.

And I rose again
on my 2 feet,
and walked toward
the open stone door
that You had
rolled open
for me.

He may praise me like

a breeze on a sunny day.

He may shriek as he

gets carried away.

He may slam the front door

and rattle the windows.

He may get swept up in a storm

of his own making,

but I've learned to stand in

the eye of the storm and

not be touched,

when to board the windows

and doors and wait in

the basement,

when to hop in my car and roll the windows down

and feel the wind in my fingers,

and when to look for that moment

when a child's kite cartwheels

through the air

and a proud father looks on

I am not tired,
I say as you turn on a film
and I fall asleep.

1. After last night's dinner you poured mint tea into a porcelain cup for your dad, and he laughed, saying, "Daughter, the last time we did this you were four." You replied seriously, "I'm living my dreams, Dad."

2. You go to counseling once a month and have been doing so intermittently for the last 10 years.

3. But when you were four years old, you had conversations with imagined dinner guests and poured water from a plastic tea *** like scripture from a pastor's mouth. You'd never had real tea, so you imagined it with lumps of sugar. From ear to ear your smile was real.

4. Five years ago if someone told you that your family would be sitting at your table eating your food on Easter, you would have laughed because you didn't have an oven or a table.

5. Five years ago was when you chose life, and everyday you keep choosing it--like painting over a crimson stain in white.

6. You like church because you feel like it's one of the few places you can cry, and everyone else seems to understand.

7. When you were little, you would say, "I want to go home" even if you were already there. You knew more then than you know now--that home is not a place, but a feeling.

8. Every Easter you wonder how the Son felt coming home to His Father. Sometimes you forget how heavy the stone was when it rolled away.

9. Your dad is the strongest man you know. He has bushy eyebrows; when he ruffles them he looks like a horned owl about to take flight. Your mom tuts and tells him he looks like he's going to fly away. And he has, several times around the world.

10.  Sometimes you want to fly away too, just to see what your hometown looks like to a bird, to fit your piece of prairie to the rest of the puzzle. To see what your dad saw when he flew through the sky. To see what keeps bringing him home.

Alexander, I can say things about you
but
they say nothing about you.
I can say you have green eyes
but
you have green eyes often cloaked in shadow and the dark dilation of your pupils.
I can say you have white fur  
but
you have white fur, gray at crown and chin, pale fur fuzz clinging to my fingers.
I can say you purr
but
you hum softly in your throat,
down your back to your tail.
I can say you like to be pet
but
you stiffen under my touch
and relax and roll like a wave
and paw my hand for more.
I can say you like to sleep
but
you sleep upright on the floor one eye open,
curled up in a ball on the bed, 
or 
walloped on me and wedged in my side.
I can say you sleep now
but
you wait--your green eyes
hidden behind your lids
and  your purr slipping into snores.

the cars on the road
and descends past naked trees
into the field still
dry despite snowmelt water
where she alights and
closes her wings, ruffles her
feathers, and dunks her
head. She drinks. The
wind stirs ripples on the pond.
Then she comes up, bobs,
floats, and dunks her head again
and again with wild
thirst that will not be sated.

Don’t give up.
Planting the seed
is always the hardest.
Without beginnings,
there would be no harvest.

and you’re lucky

because God knows already

someday you’ll learn.

I love you like a North Dakota sky--

long, blue, and everywhere

pale knuckles thumping the table,

and purple bruises on your thighs.

Write with smiling eyes and dimpled cheeks,

hands raised high in hallelujah,

and waxy newly healed scars.

Write so hard it hurts.

Write so hard it heals.

Whatever you do,

write it at once.

Try to write when you are happy.

Ask yourself, How do you write

windshields with blues skies on

long car rides, window rolled down, wind in hands;

your bedroom ceiling at golden hour,

light from your window bent into a striped

rainbow of sea-green, yellow and coral;

your niece cackling, lobbing a blue balloon

to your sister, who holds baby Sawyer;

your white cat purring, folding into your side

a thousand times like an origami crane;

the trees bursting with red-pink and white blooms

that quickly appeared in the last few weeks.

What if

(like the peace you have now)

you didn’t notice these things

til the car was parked,

the sun had set,

your niece and nephew had grown,

you had found yourself alone,

and the petals

had left the branches

piece by piece?

When you have candles on your cake, light them.
When you have confetti in your pockets, throw them.
When the clouds in your painted blue skies turn to storms,
reframe the canvas.
When you can't take another step, take one more
because soon you'll be able to rest.
And don't forget--to breathe.
Your hands will ache, and your bones will tire.
You will walk away, but you must always
turn back and try again.
This is how you see another sunrise.
This is how your steps become dancing
and your silence humming.
This is how you keep going.

You forget how light your steps fall
and how quickly the tide
and wind weather your footprints.
So what if you’re not standing on sandy beaches,
go stand on the frozen lake and
leap over the snowy mounded waves.
Take this moment for what it brings.
You’ve been ill—but you’re standing here
better out in the open, your feet cold and wet.
So you don’t enough money to
fly to wherever you want whenever you want.
Your eyes fly upward now,
over where blue meets white endlessness.
You breathe in cold air and blink.  
You’re where you’re at
in life because
you chose
to    be   here.
Every day your choices accumulate
like snow that refuses to stop falling
even on the first day of spring,
and they bear you
over a mound of frozen opportunity.
Sure, 90% of what happens in life is beyond human control,
but 10% is how we react to it.
As time passes, choices can’t always be undone,
but
May always comes.
And in March
we always have the option to continue.

They say, Poets always take the weather personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

I say, We’re all poets here, the coldest spring on record since Laura lived in her Little House on the Prairie. The long winter, she called it then.

Yes, winter, you’ve been here long. The door was opened for you long ago, but you never got up from your seat–even after the plates were washed and put away and everyone else had left.

And I kissed a man who told me, Heaven is fresh snow powdered like sugar and me on my board sliding down the *****, the wind in my hair, so cold my teeth ache. But it doesn’t matter because I’m smiling ear to ear.

And I want to agree, but I can’t.

With a lump in my throat I say, Isolation is a snowstorm: a white horizon, a scene of a single color, and the wail of the wind.
But it’s the set-up. The blank page for what is to come after.

it’s the color of the canyon walls that she was taking her grandma to see. It’s the color of her grandma’s flannel in her almost packed suitcase. It’s the Valentines hanging on the hospital walls a couple days too late. When her one-year-old son sits on her lap at Great Grandma’s bedside, it’s the color of her face when she can’t help smiling. When her son places a bracelet in Great Grandma’s palm, it’s the color of the beads with the most sparkle. When she cries at her grandma’s funeral, it’s the color of her eyes. When she doesn’t have time to buy another dress, it is the color of the one that fits. When her hand falls on her belly, it’s the pulse of her unborn child’s heart. It’s the color that demands she halt and pay attention, like the power she holds over people when she speaks. It’s not the color that lets you go easy.

The hardest part of letting go
is finding something else to hang onto.
Your hands are empty,
And they fight you,
wanting to curl back onto themselves.
So you open them wider
Here, you can see the sky
in the spaces between each finger
and the cold air lingers on your skin
like an invitation

All of your life, you told them,
you had to learn softness;
how do you make scars smooth again?
Some wounds won’t heal,
because you can’t stop touching them.
The blood on your hands is your own.  
But you wash them now
and let the wounds close like a book
that should have ended long ago.
Look
see?  you tell them,
Palms open and flat like paper.
So, here  
the story starts once more.