Land of Oz
first place that understood me was Oz
land of misfits, land of ne’er do wells
away from a grey and white life
Oz knew how to fix my heart me
Category / Poetry
The Young Widow
I will put on widows’ weeds.
Everyone will see my sorrow.
In shops, women
will purse up their smiles,
avert their eyes
from the cross-hatch
Silver Falls State Park, Oregon
Silver Falls
State Park, Oregon
We hear it first, the roar of it,
then a glimpse through stands
of cedar fronds and maple limbs
until we see in a clearing the surge
of water pounding down.
The trail winds behind the charge,
droplets of power plunge
Clouds 1 and 2
He asked me once if I had touched a cloud and what it felt like
and I said soft and his father said cold. And he asked if it was like bed,
like lying down, and we tried to explain that a cloud is only a collection of
tiny particles, water held together by air, a thing that you can be in and pass through
and even touch, but that you cannot hold.
Revolution in Croquet
Let’s knit a shawl so the women can spend a warm winter
let’s make it of basil and thyme for the pregnant mother
and of dried corn leaves for the country girl
let’s knit a shawl to cover her shoulders
let’s do it for all the women of this storm-colored sky
Lapis Lazuli
Sometimes the streets turn to memory
the cities imagine others
in that distance between words
between dream and reality
stories seeking refuge
The Misnomer Renaissance Faire
The Airedale woke us, crashing and howling
against the door. John and I watched a coyote leap the fence,
its gold melting into the dark wood
and our hen a limp ribbon in its teeth.
The dog tracked scattered chicks
Continue reading… "The Misnomer Renaissance Faire"Joe and Marilyn
“I’ll finally get to see Marilyn” were your final
perfect words. The last of the rose petals
faded decades ago, but your torch was so primal,
never flickered. What’s it take, then? What kind of metal
turns the dregs of life into a love like that?
Snake
Three months gone in the wedding season
and I’d mostly been sticky. I went swimming
in the Snake River in Idaho. Got in it in Oregon
and kept still. The current pushed me back to Idaho. So
I did it again. It was good to be a strange head floating
Up Near Alta Peak, January 20, 2017
It’s still mosquito summer in the High Sierra
when we push up above 10,000 feet,
only Annie and me and a dryad
we come across tied forever to her foxtail pine.
She’s been sitting up here
Continue reading… "Up Near Alta Peak, January 20, 2017"