fireflies {a poem}

Watching My One-Year-Old Daughter

Her upturned face takes in each flake of snow.
Giggling, she looks at me as though saying,
“Can you believe this is falling from the sky?” 

One-year-old joy is like a jar of lightning bugs.

*

When will it begin to fade?

At three when she loses her favorite stuffed baby panda.
At ten when her best friend refuses to talk to her.
At thirteen when words I don’t ever want to say hang in the air.
At seventeen when she watches the one she loves with someone else.
At twenty-two when unexpected grief becomes her companion. 

In a moment I cannot prevent,
her heart will crack;
the light will flicker.
And today, I ask all that I reach to believe in
to be there to catch her. 

*

Her feet crunch the white with each step.
She stumbles but reaches toward the sky,
catching wonder in her palm. 

Her one-year-old wisdom teaches me 
to resuscitate each firefly buried within.

*****

This week is all about poetry here on my blog. I wrote this poem a few years ago and haven't yet shared it here. Finding it again has me building a bridge between what I felt in that moment to what pushes and pulls on me in this one. I'm reaching out my hand to her and saying, "Thank you for reminding me of what's true."

You can read more of my poetry in Five Days in April.

It's a collection of poetry for the times when your own words fail you. For the moments that leave you wondering if you're alone, in the missing and the hoping, in the falling apart and putting the pieces back together. It will invite you back home to yourself.

Available here in my shop.

keeping our hearts open

Variations on these words, "keeping our hearts open will heal us," have tapping on me this week. I can't stop thinking about how our hearts crack and mend, and how the mending comes when we let ourselves really live.

I've been thinking about this idea so much that I felt moved to make a little video and tell you a story about a poem I wrote about this idea and to share more about why I believe this is true.

The poem is from my poetry collection Five Days in April, which you can find in my shop.

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