What is it anyway? The faith that whatever occurs is as reasonable a thought as what does not. The looping lilt the loopy smile, a heavy lift on less inspired days. This, get-out-of-the-way but- stay- nearby- push and pull of lines that so want to be included but don’t quite belong. This tendency to storify … Continue reading Oh Dear, Poetry
Albeit
It was years ago, albeit (yucky frog word!) could have been yesterday your peer edit in the margins of his Joseph Conrad paper made me laugh out loud but I don’t think I’ve used the word ever in anything til now. And frankly, nobody uses it much these days. Or then. Come to think of … Continue reading Albeit
Road Trip Shanty
We rose with the sun, ate a honey bun for the fair morning was a beckoning one and the purple fields and greening leaves ‘gainst a great blue sky above Yo Ho the open road Cups a-brim with our cups-a Joe Hi Ho press the pedal low Where the center line don’t show Road up … Continue reading Road Trip Shanty
Sonnet Seeking Sun
When I consider darker days I’m tempted sore against the light My Quaker forebearers clear of sight Might shake their heads, avert their gaze There is such sin as slothful laze Of inner gifts that languish while Powers that be ingest their bile a sad refrain, our wretched ways are amplified against the dark and … Continue reading Sonnet Seeking Sun
Saturday Poem
Saturdays are promises to myself I cannot keep. The barge in my backyard carries coal and candy. Spring violet sweetflower scents the air as your tears, audible over the airwaves, show a dreadful face of grief. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle of the week, Kate, and I’ll hoist Cleveland and all your homeless children … Continue reading Saturday Poem
Make Of It
Life, word-glazed, what-knot, and blind-note, we cry in our houses, eat bread, and go on. With arms outstretched we sleepwalk, stealing light in our white night shirts. In the middle of forgetting we remember oddly, small dream snips, other selves abandoned. Between wake and sleep we are sailing with limbs and lips wide open, braced … Continue reading Make Of It
O Holy Night
We mustn’t laugh. O Holy Night, when year after year the unholy octave looms, then tanks as a warbling soloist, who has only just rushed to the church after setting out soup and Christmas Eve charcuterie, with a long night of wrapping still ahead, straightens her robe smooths her hair, steps forward with the organist … Continue reading O Holy Night
Triolet For Clearing
These heaps of trinket memories Your bracelets, blushers, long delayed Tossed away in waves and flurries Rooms of trinket memories I move around in waves and flurries These lettings go so long delayed No end of trinket memories Your girl life earrings well arrayed
after lucille
i am fleeing an old year and the new year hovers like a gathering storm that puts fire to my feet like lightening like all my wild dreams make easier to imagine myself not-yet-self at sixtyfive and seventyfive and seventysix even eightyplus so i am fleeing an old year and i hope what i love … Continue reading after lucille
Underground
morning gauze hides what wants to stay hidden debris of a mother’s memory footsteps of dead fathers a seed in the forest fragrance of love astonishing blend of our killing stockpiles essential flavors travel the underground keep us alive
Early Morning Poems 