Water Hands

Yesterday an old woman tried to read the lines in my palm.

Whit my hands facing up, she said 

"Ahhh, you will live a long life!

you will meet the love of your life when you are 30,

you will have 3 children, 

two sons and a daughter! 

Well thanks palm reader, glad to know I've got that covered 

but I know you probably say the same things to everyone. 

She takes my hand all of a sudden and says 

"Ahhhh, YOU - are a water spirit. 

You are a healer, you make beautiful things with your hands, 

but you, you are more complicated than most people understand,

you cry very easily, and you feel a little too much." 

Yesterday a woman read my palms

but today I drove a hundred miles to a river, twisting through the Appalachians

staring at the backs of my knuckles on the steering wheel.

I've read quite a few books but I've been looking at my hands my whole life 

and I still can't quite make out what they've been saying. 

I guess I'm a water spirit?

Maybe she meant that I'm bad at fighting gravity,

and that sometimes I carve away stone at the bottom of cliffs I fall of off

because I didn't look far enough ahead when I was running.

Or maybe she meant that my heart seeps into the dirt, disappearing in the cracks in the earth,

and that I have a bad habit of letting people drink me dry.

Or that sometimes I spill over like a kitchen faucet left on for too long - 

I cant tell you how many times I've forgotten to turn off the water. 

I am walking to the river

And I am trying to trace the lines,

trying to see the signs, 

trying to read the palms of the tide-pools with the undersides of my feet, but,
I slip sometimes.

And I'm trying to feel the wooden knots of the forest's spine while mine grazes the back of this tree bark like braille, 

I've been using my eyes for a while so I can't always see with my skin. 

But I do see the pool's ripples, like fingerprints reaching in circles...

Maybe they look a little like mine, for a moment, before they disappear?

Is that why you said I have water-hands, palm reader? 

I don't know if can be a healer, 

even though I know that I will want to, cry to, try too hard most days.

I know there are only so many things that water can wash away,

and the rest will just have to decay beneath branches

when the forest sheds it's skin in the fall light.

I don't know if I will live a long life.  

I don't know if I will have 2 sons and a daughter,

I don't know how many fingerprints I'll leave behind.

But I am a water spirit:

I know that I will dry up, many times, I can evaporate in the blink of an eye but I will come back, over and over again, like condensation
falling as monsoon rain from a sky that cries a little too much.

I will travel a hundred miles to the river, a thousand miles to the ocean, 

and I'll probably keep tumbling when I get there, 

but when I do I'll just be following the moon,

the same one I saw over the mountains last night.

And maybe I'll meet the love of my life on this trail today,

maybe I'll meet someone I'll never see again but 

I'll tell them: 

I'm not sure I can heal your hiking boot blisters, 

I'm still taping up my own.

But if you show me your hands,

palms facing up, fingers open, I will trace them if you let me.

I will try to touch the tide-pool in the middle, just below your knuckles,

and then I have to go.

I've got a few more miles to walk, but please tell the palm reader

that I'm climbing the staircase of tree roots exposed in the mountainside,

falling asleep in the blanket of the Appalachians

with hands facing up, ready to catch the next drop of water

that falls from this sky.

Midas Touch

Can human touch fill what we long for as we fall asleep
Collide and pretend you are really reaching for eachother.
He searches for water, his well has run dry, leaving caverns behind, your skin tastes like water, liquor, lover, answer
Woman, he will try to fill the caverns of his mind with the contours of your body
You are searching for a mirror, what is this skin, you wonder, what am I made of, you think his hands can tell you
Woman, does he make you feel beautiful, stronger, like the gold King Midas touched
he is not an alchemist
And you are not made of cold, hard, metal mined from the middle of the earth.

You are not made of glass
No matter how much you curve yourself, trying to bend the light around his eyes, you cannot make him see you any clearer.
You were not made from his ribs.
You are made of the sweet grass God set down beside the river, holding the soil together in rain.

You are not the moon
No matter how fast he tries to spin you, do not orbit
Do not accept this motion sickness as your punishment
Woman, you are not the cry he feels calling in the dark.
You are not a message in a bottle, floating to a lost island, do not try to write the message.
Find your own poem in the sand, be the waves, breathing in the edges of the shore without worry of what floats across their open arms.

When he traces your skin like brail and does not find the answer he was looking for
When his chest recoils in the caverns he thought would turn to gold by now
When he holds you, and his hands show strained veins, punctured from too much reaching
You were not the needle with the poison
You are not the bottle with the cure
Do not treat yourself like an elixir, do not let him drink you like liquor
The only liquid inside you runs straight through your heart and lungs
Woman, your skin is the only life that it can water, you will be stronger
By keeping your four-chambered waterfall from beating outside its stream’s veins
These are your lungs
And they can only carry
your voice.

King Midas only wanted the world to glow again
when he touched you and found rock in his hands.
Woman, you are not made of gold.
You are golden-sand, dandelion, sunflower-seed laughter and dance.

Hide and Seek

I don't know if I lose things or if they lose me. 

Keys always seem to slip themselves between bedsheets, phones behind couch cushions, thoughts behind tree branches. 

I retrace my steps, run in circles, I'm sure it's up there in those leaves somewhere, if I could only reach high enough, no, it's lost, it flew away, I run in more circles, I run in to you sideways.

You say, it's around here somewhere.  I am sure of it.  Are you sure you aren't tracing the wrong footprints? 

Soon I start to recognize yours.

And the things we searched for.  

Keys. Constellations. Holes in the bottoms of our shoes. 

Oceans. Answers. Misplaced term papers.  

Maps.  Pavement promises. 

That thing that holds tires down and keeps your keys from sliding off the earth as it spins
when you leave them behind.  

I think it's called gravity? 

And the things we found.  

Empty coffee mugs. Vocal chords.  Rain.  

Hands, eyes, hair left in the shower, broken body parts between our ribs.
Sparks lit in our hands at sundown.
A stomach full of laughter and a mouthful of "remember when-".

The bones within the arches of our feet

that absorb the shock from running.  

We watch each other stick things behind couch cushions, like children bringing in rocks from the garden, things we think we're not supposed to have.  We hit each other in the face when we tear apart the sofa searching.  We hold each other on bathroom floors.  We chase each other down interstates, saying, I know what you like to hide behind your tree branches, where you like to build nests between your shoulders, not knowing what songs your ribs can sing at sunrise.  And when I walk away empty handed, you notice what was missing.  You take me by the hand and tell me, 

Honey - did you know that it was here all along? 

And as I turn my key in the ignition, tires held to pavement a bit later than we planned,

as we scatter like cheatgrass across highways, 

you will still stick yourself to the inside of my shoe. 

You will be always in my rear view mirror
reminding me not to leave important things behind.

Welcome Home

When I first came to Davidson, there hung in the union a banner that said, "COLLEGE: where nothing is real and everything TASTES GOOD."

 HA...uhhh...I don't know if they've ever had the burgers in commons, but -
no matter, 3 years later the gates are open again, the target bags are packed, cars stacked back to back down the brick with eager young faces looking just a little bit sick, THIS-

is move-in day. And freshman never fear, just when you think you can't face the flights of stairs any longer the OTs somehow come to your rescue, and yes, they may be smiling but they really really hate you right now...
But anyhow,

I am your hall counselor.
The ins and outs of this place are mine to share with you
but right now you don't care, you are on top of the world, cream of the crop, bestowed with a slate of shiny A's and bright gold stars from high school and THIS is your moment. of. victory.

You've made it.

...Right?

Welllll let's just make it through move-in, why don't we

and by the way no, you can not switch roommates just by changing the names on your door

I'm not sure why you insist on lofting your bed up and down…and up and down…and up…and down…again…

But wait, I forgot to introduce myself to dear old mom and dad, hello!

No, you cannot bargain with the other parents so that your child gets the biggest room,
no you can't have my phone number or I'll meet hear the end of you...
What's that?
HA, nooooo, there are no parties at Davidson... :/

No you cannot go I all your child's meetings this week,
No you CANNOT take the RLO mattress to the landfill,
No, you cannot install a dorm security system during move in,
JUST...NO.

There is a reason the farewell picnic is known by all the hall counselors as: Operation GTFO.

Please leave your children in peace to start orientation, or as I like to call it, "disorientation" with endless streams of "Hey where are you from? What early decision did you do?"
And most of all,
"Oh my god. I'm premed too."

As you start your first week of school there is so much I want to say...
First of all, those lanyards? Instant giveaway
I watch you congregate on the patios of F, like in Ring Around the Rosie...a pocket full of posies...you allll fall down
You'll wake up on Sunday with pits of remorse in your stomach as you head to the library to just start your homework, and after working all day you'll eventually give up and tell yourself "I mean hey, it doesn't really matter, well all just sit in a circle under a tree tomorrow anyway, right?

When you leave the library at two in the morning look at the stars, maybe
this isn't just about earning gold stars, tell me

About all the crazy little beautiful things that keep you up at night.

About the universe you see in the pages you read, I want to tell you

about the river I grew up with.

Four years from now will you tell me
about the time you swam in the lake at midnight in the moonlight
or when your friends took you out to dance all night
or brought you food when you had the flu
or sang until you smiled again.
Cry, over papers and people and losses and gains
feel the growing pain, I can assure you
not everything tastes good,
but these are the things that are real.
I wish I could could tell you about the time you'll come back to campus after summer and all your friends will great each other with "Hey there. Welcome home."

But I can't.

Because you're gonna have to tell me yourself.

Love like Fireflies

“We are the stars which sing,

We sing with our light,

We are the birds of fire,

We fly over the sky.

Our light is a voice:

We make a road

For the spirit to pass over.”

- Algonquin Song of the Stars

Every night this June, around 8:45 pm, I would go outside to sit in the grass of my back yard and watch the fireflies.  As bursts of light rose from the green blades the air seemed alive with celebration, with one last sparkling embrace of life’s glory before the world fell asleep.  I would sing to myself the same words that I sang with close friends on my first summer night in Davidson:

“There was a sign on the door and it reads to me

Just like the sun and the moon and the stars at night.”

It’s been said that summer of the season of fire, and this summer I’ve found myself searching for it, fighting it, and asking it questions.  I think I think we all have a fire inside us that flares and fades, and we all reach a time – or many times – when we struggle with finding, feeding or taming it.   When it flares it consumes us with anxiety and anger, fixating our attention on control, power, accomplishment, and perfectionism, while dying flames bury us in shame, self-criticism, discouragment, apathy…the list goes on.  At Davidson, I sometimes see this fluctuation in myself and in my peers – being a rather intense and goal-driven bunch, many of us adopt the idea that in the midst of change, our goals, our power, our security and our sense of self will only remain safe within an iron fist of work, worry, and control (and with senior year ahead, I think it’s safe to say that change is certainly in our midst).  Yet this mindset that often leaves us without enough oxygen makes our formerly blazing flames collapse in on themselves, growing dim and and flickering in want of their lost power.  Last semester, I tried to fight the winds of uncertainty and find balance in an environment that sometimes seems to turn between feeding and smothering these inner flames day by day.  I would sing and pray for the light of things that glow – just like the sun and the moon and the stars… – and I would wonder where they find the peace and power to keep burning, never bursting, never fading.

And then, this summer, I learned my greatest lesson of the season from a little boy and his fireflies.

It was the night of the summer solstice, and my neighbors’ backyard came alive with lively families and little children.  As my roommate and I perused the potluck, I kept noticing a small 4-year-old boy with wide brown eyes quietly observing the scene while hiding behind the corner of the chicken coop.   I went over, bent down on my knees, and introduced myself – he said his name was Kai, shyly turned away, and proceeded to go pick up sticks by the toolshed.  Remembering my own shy moments as a small child, I left him to his happy nature-filled solitude while I went to chat and roast food at the campfire.  I followed the other kids into the woods to see their tree-forts and find long sticks suitable for the grand roasting of marshmallows, but Kai kept to himself.  Until around 8:45, that is, when the fireflies came out.

As soon as the air began to sparkle, the children ran wild.  Kai noticed what’s going on, and his deep eyes widened and twinkled as he ran out to join in the great firefly chase.  He pranced and excitedly caught fireflies in his hands as I watched.  Then suddenly, he comes up with cupped hands full of a dozen fireflies, opens them, looks up at me and says, 

"These are for you."

I start to take them, but for a moment he stops me, saying  “just remember, you have let them go.” 

He left, ran around as the other children yelled “Let’s get jars for the bugs,” and patiently reminded them that they needed to poke holes in the lids.  Once again, small children answer prayers.

So today I pray for the power to chase my fireflies and the peace to know when to set them free, because I've learned that we burn and glow when we know just how much to take in and let go.  Friends, as this summer ends, I hope you let your own fire glow with the joy that comes from remaining awake to the small sparks of love and life that appear around you with no warning.  Amidst fading and flaring flames, I hope that you and I will remind ourselves of the brilliance that lies in in the sunrise and try to treat our thoughts and dreams like fireflies: beautiful pieces of inspiration from beyond ourselves to be chased, cherished, shared, and then set free as we wait for the next spark of life-giving beauty.

Tonight I sang the same words once again with close friends, one who just returned and one who soon will leave, with our voices holding old love and new life.  In the midst of change, we are the stars which sing, we sing with our light...we are the birds of fire, we fly over the sky.

Always share your love like fireflies…

Just like the sun and the moon and the stars at night. 

Press Play

Press play

In pine trees, playing with the wind like the butterflies’ wings

Press pause

With water, splashing through limestone like a chisel through wood

Press stop

On moss licking forests' branches, billowing from years of silence

Rewind

To the girl taking videos of the butterflies beneath the pines

Your camera’s resolution can’t hold the hope in her wings, child

Pixels can’t pause the river on the mountainside

To the wide-eyed boy trying to capture the waterfall’s splash before it dies

Can you bear to sit long enough to hear the river’s story

To the girl uploading photos of new hair and flawless skin

No album can immortalize your youthful beauty, darling, are we numbing
Fear of the fleeting world frame by frame

posting pictures of ourselves so we don’t forget who we are today

or maybe we know the self who woke up this morning

is already lost in endless videos, streaming

Press pause

did you see that splash of water on the limestone, it’s running  –

Press stop

Did you see the way the sunset grasped the treetops, it’s fading –

Rewind

What if the light runs out before I’m done dreaming –

Fast forward

Will I forget the way your face shines when you’re laughing –

Press play -

What if you upload your wishes to the wind with me

Stream all your memories in the riverbed with me

Sit long enough above this crashing water with me

Until the sound can carve a canyon in your mind and soul

Will you listen to the river long enough to know

That your chisel is your flowing, shapeless heart

drop by drop, give up your limestone battles

Frame by frame trust the light of the past to our stars

drop by drop let my stories seep
Into your caverns, and yours in mine

Until we’re fluid and broken enough to carve canyons

Trusting our dreams will take their shape

When we loose our own.

To the man whose mind rewinds through years of regret,

The moss-covered forest holds forgiveness in its branches

To the child with fleeting eyes like butterflies, wishing to fast forward

The young pines that wait for roots until the day their needles glimpse the
mountaintops.

To the young woman, worried her map was lost along the trail

Your inner compass has in mind a better view

Press play.

The mountains care little of your mistakes, my friend,

and if the river can keep running

so can you.

Hope Together

"The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke



Ever since I was a small child I've had an undying love for airports. This is fortunate because I spend an aweful lot of time in them during my bi-annual treks across the country to and from college, but most people think I'm crazy when I tell them this.  Maybe you are one of those people. "Airports, are crowded, stuffy, germ-infested places," you say.  Stressful, hectic, isolated...yes, yes, I get it, but here me out.

Perhaps it's the growing anticipation if landing in a new exciting place. Or the endless people watching, sleek, shiny architecture and bright, glowy signs everywhere you look. (I grew up in hyper-rural Oregon - most large groups of people, new places and sleek bright glowy things are abnormally exciting to me.)  Maybe it's the fact that there are Starbucks (my second-most undying love) scattered less than 5 feet from almost every gate, having been 75 miles away from one most my life.  Maybe it's the fact that it's possible to get almost anywhere in the world when standing in front of the departure screen.

Let's be honest. It's probably Starbucks.

Inside an airport, you have a relatively simple task. Get through security. Get to your gate on time. Don't loose stuff, and if you do, try to keep it to minimum. Keep moving forward.  You have one destination, and even if you have no goals in life, no idea what they are going to turn out to be or ou just plain can't decide (as is often the case for me) you still have a goal in an airport.

So you finally reach your plane, it's an ungodly hour of the morning, you wish the flight attendant would shut up about the oxygen masks and just bring you coffee, and the lights go dark as the plane prepares to ascend.  You look around you at the motley crew of people all as bleary-eyed as you. You all have to turn off your pesky electronic devices and share a brief moment of togetherness as the pilot steers to the runway.  And right then, you all want the same thing: you want to land in one place, you want to land in one piece, you hope you will be lifted off the ground, hoping people will be at least mildly pleasant along the way.  We can have the same goal for once, we can believe that the woman who know knocked us over as she was running to her next flight has dreams and memories deeper than you will ever know, that what your name is and what you have makes little difference in whether or not you land.  All searching for the same deep joy you hope to find in landing, you trust and hope in your arrival, in letting go, and that in flying, aiming, hoping, and living our way to the answers we will find the shiny signs that lead us to our next gate.

  Forego all competitive nature and hope together.  Then go from there.

And no matter how much you try to avoid it, you usually end up in front of the departure gate once again.    Smile, keep walking, and and share your Starbucks muffin with the man next to you while praying you don't get the flu.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen - It is currently 6:04 am in Pasco, Washington and we we are scheduled to arrive in Denver, Colorado at 9:13 mountain time. Here in Pasco we have mostly clear skies but we may encounter fog turbulence as we head east.  We won't be sure until we're on our way."

Board the plane. Admire the sunrise out your window. Drink too much coffee. Hope together. Always share your muffins.

Enjoy your flight.