In grief there were slow afternoons and swampy mid-day mornings of discombobulation there was waking with a leaden, burning heart and wondering why nature invented whimpering I watched myself as griever, as walker, as the woman who put brie on crackers and re-boiled water in the kettle five times If there is a “she” …
Today Frans has been gone 10 months. This past weekend, as I was cleaning the house, this poem started to form in my mind. Feel free to use it with groups or share it with others who are bereaved. You can send them the link or copy and paste. Simple questions by Reinekke Lengelle First …
Poems to Frans and about death, June & July 2019 Cloudscapes Everything is more beautiful and painful now and that’s the deal no one escapes you showed me light and shadow enacted and reflected Enriched by love’s long apprenticeship I thought today about how you dove towards death I had never seen someone do it …
Ode to Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) By Reinekke Lengelle When a great poet dies the longest procession is in the rhizomes of her readers their minds joining at some cosmic point across hemispheres to whisper reverence sometimes even in unintentional unison, for instance while doing the dishes they might …
I received this gracious comment from author Kim Stafford about my poetry book Happy which is only available in syllabus form at the moment. “This book offers you three gifts: story-based considerations of our need for the strength of solace, poems that work like singing spells to advance that solace, and the whole project’s invitation …
Today I didn’t think I would have time to work on my poetry book “Happy”. I had surrendered to that fact. I had breakfast with colleagues and went home to teach the online academic writing course I’m responsible for this semester. A student had posted a reflective summary on Carol Dweck’s work on the growth …
Happy by Reinekke Lengelle I almost forgot I was happy today, while I was wiping the stove an old thought pulled at my sleeve it almost seemed convincing trying to protect me like the way remembered pain sticks and tries to make you right about something, While you know that ‘right’ is the block between …
No upgrades please I got a new stove one that looks run of the mill for 1970 the kids can bang their pots and pans on it try their cookies, crumble, and macaroni spills are nothing but a bit of a burned smell No glass top to polish or warn someone about no special chemicals …
The Little Blue-Green Fete Past the water reeds the shimmer of the pond the place where we had rowed across and drifted hand in hand and on the other side found rows of pussy willows Cattails at first obscured our view You sliced one clean and then another we feigned sword fights late afternoon and …
Wet leather shoes you have to walk for a while after passing a sunset without looking up after a year of unseen rainbows and no sunrises at all. you have to walk for a while with your impossible grief so that mercy can speak to you and give you something that still has to be …