Below are the poems I wrote that I used as a pattern for fabric that I then sewed into a series of kitchen towels.

click image to view larger.

Hot, salty, flowing, swollen tears,
Tears that make the heart flutter,
Drag us down to earth’s core,
Take our breath away –  the kind that make stomach muscles spasm and heave, Leave us nauseous
and collapse us to the floor, hanging onto the pillow for our lives,
Tears that mix with laughter until we can no longer see,
Tears that force a body to breathe in the rhythm of sadness,
dripping down our temples in unison with gravity

To feel –
The swooping connectedness of awe and beauty,
Loneliness,
The overwhelm of birth and death,
To be unwanted, to be loved,
The unforgiving relentlessness of chronic joint pain,
The bloody child crying on a tiny screen,
Our limits. 

The burst of a peony after a day of rain,
Infinite crashing of waves on a beach,
Luna moth wings unfurling,
the magical abilities of a free solo climber or a virtuosic pianist
– Nature’s Passion. 

Where’s the logic in that?
True virtue is to embrace
Not avoid 

Cry for awhile,
And then write another list of hope,
The wind is the universe feeling –
It will carry you. 

#nitaswords