Posted on December 3, 2025 by Jenn Zatopek

WHAT I LOVE
– After Raymond Carver

To lace up my sneakers
is to escape to my only lover,
the earth and waters and sky,
who welcome me just as I am.

A flying jewel, butter yellow,
just landed on the phlox
whose lavender blooms
sing of afternoon mists
at Ruby Beach.

Today I picked thirty golden and
scarlet tomatoes while rough green stems
caught my hair, and now I smell of basil,
and sunshine, and my own heart firing up
in the heat and freezing.

A few months past forty-seven,
I ache with longing–

Foot pain has vanished but neck pain
fires up while I play guitar, write,
meditate, breathe, give, and I think–

What is this body but
a receiver of song and light,
the slow blood letting of loss,
this stony heart ready to open
like a rose, fragrant petals
unfurling into praise,
no matter what comes?

Image / Copper Canyon daisies and phlox in the garden