The devil isn’t all that’s in
the details. Joy
lives there too. I
remember you
at two, clad in blue overalls,
taking my hand
and inviting me
to sit on the
stairs and bump our way up to the
waiting air vent
where you showed me
how to blow, with
all our might, into its wide slots.
I remember
my son saying
you showed signs of
becoming a great cult leader
because you had
already a
following of one.
JDG
It’s amazing how a single
line can change a
face, a mind, a
song. Even more
amazing still is the big change
a slight shift in
punctuation
makes as you’ll see
if you remove the colon and
comma from, ” A
woman: without
her, man is nothing.”
JDG
This past year I’ve come to live in
a place where the
very young and
poets reside –
a place where words are written first
upon the heart,
then later, on
a page – a place
that begins in wordless wonder,
penetrating
eyes, ears, soul, skin,
and finally, tongue.
JDG
Sometimes we have to walk a path
we didn’t choose
to places we
didn’t want to
go. Our hearts protest this change of
course. Our eyes look
back to what once
was and that is
all we see. With luck and love we
can lift our eyes
and find the path
ahead less bleak.
JDG
Against the cloud-streaked, light blue sky
a cardinal flies
while on the ground
turkey vultures
slowly gather to feast on what
no longer lives.
In this moment
infused with so
many hues, I’m caught and held
by life’s complex
entirety
of high and low.
JDG
It’s strange how one brief moment can
hold it all, as
Zorba the Greek
knew so well when
he chose to dance among the ruins
of his dreams. What
better response
is there than this
single, grace-filled act in the face
of life’s full
catastrophe
of dark and light?
JDG
Sometimes life gives us a cup of
sorrow, sometimes
a cup of joy.
Our choice is not
from which cup we’ll drink, but rather
how we’ll guide each
cup to our lips
and how we’ll drink.
May we find the grace to drink from
each while giving
thanks for the well
from which both come.
JDG
It’s because of my friend, Warren,
that I wish to
forever be
an amateur,
one who does what she does for the
love of it as
its root suggests.
Once he explained
the word’s origin, my heart leapt
past all other
motives to claim
love’s primacy.
JDG
Stories have always captured me
and they still do,
but lately I’m
more drawn to a
single image, unadorned. I
like to sit and
soak it in like
sunlight after
a long Spring rain or starlight in
a midnight sky.
Light itself has
become enough.
JDG
In my dream two elderly Black
women sat in
a balcony
where one addressed
us from above. I could not hear
until today
what she wanted
me to know – that
when we’re most discouraged and feel
like lying down,
that’s when it helps
to stand instead.
JDG
