love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Flower child feels
with dirt-smeared knees,
their soles stained green
from running through weeds.
Dig, baby, dig!
Seek deeper, know further:
tell the soil’s secrets
with your toil.
Star child blazes
with wide-eyed gaze,
their heart set aflame
by each new day.
Glow, baby, glow!
Shine brighter, go farther:
share the sun’s warmth
with your fun.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
The cool midwinter sun
unwraps a crystalline
morning, the third running.
The only clouds above
puff and whisp from
bundled repairfolks in
buckets, working on wires,
uncrossing them, as it were.
After a waterlogged January
when we could never quite
crawl all the way out
from under our covers
and feel our feet solid
beneath us, February
raised its baton and
called for a crisp, clear C:
tuning us for something
momentous and beautiful,
something practiced yet
fleeting and new.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Dare we dance? Dare we balance?
Dare we whirl? Dare we unfurl?
Dare we spin? Dare we open?
Dare we meet? Dare we complete?
love notes
a ritual to start the week
let go / begin
known / lived
brew / produce
erode / hold in
hum / speck
owe / endure
create / connect
love notes
a ritual to start the week
walls fall all around us
barriers built to withstand
the onslaught protect
our soft parts from the
necessary harms of being
alive awake and alert
but it’s the unnecessary
hatred the fear-stoked
barrage that breaks us
blows our bricks to bits
what if we could refashion
this inglorious mix of worn
stones and blasted shards
if the key to compassion
is not buried among the
rubble but the rubble
itself if these fragments
wait to be made into walls
wide enough to hold us all
love notes
a ritual to start the week
You don’t need to show us your scars
for us to know them
for us to know you
we feel your rough spots
in the brief hesitation
before you return our gaze
in the time between your text messages
in your quiet resolve to ask for help
just maybe not yet
in the earnestness with which
you share your work
our love for you grows into those gaps
warms against your coolness
so you need not hide your sharp edges
for we do not fear them
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Do you remember how to make change?
How to take a twenty and return
a ten, two fives and five ones? Maybe
trade some of it for another good
or service, render yourselves even
and square? Do you remember how to
be tender? To find equal worth in
different goods? To serve another’s needs
as well as your own? See how value
appreciates, know how to break it
down and count it all back up again?
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Morning fog makes a mystery
of the yard, transforms trees,
blurs the property line and turns
a commute into an adventure.
Knowns hold so many unknowns.
Wednesdays can be Mondays and
Thursdays all at once and seconds
can slip through our fingers like
sandcastles built too close to the
surf, like the sudden swerve
that so quickly crashes and spins,
then stalls, stretching a short trip
into endlessness. Things die when
we say they do. Years don’t need
to end to begin something new.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
sit crawl stand and walk
repeat again now faster
run play hide and seek
repeat repeat repeat
a b c and d
repeat again now faster
more less among and by
repeat repeat repeat
bend stretch rise and lower
repeat again now faster
stitch knot knit and purl
repeat repeat repeat
hours days months and years
repeat again now faster
step learn practice and breathe
repeat repeat repeat
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
