Years ago I had a student named Joseph who was deaf and mute and on the autism spectrum. He was 9 years-old, with big brown eyes, and sandy hair. I loved him and I knew he trusted me. When it was time to come in from the playground, he could not hear the bell, so … Continue reading Wagons
Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts: 47 shades of lipsticks, kaleidoscope of emotion, near the edge, she explained it to her mother, picking peaches, with your feet in the ocean, where to? taciturn moon, this was the sensitive man she was waiting for, chocolate chip cookies Miranda painted her face with … Continue reading The Sensitive Man and The Chocolate Chip Cookies
Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts: in a clearing by a river, driving to San Francisco in the rain, under the bleachers, out of touch with the child I was, she is the only one who knew me, chased by a large creature The first thing I remember is being chased by … Continue reading Malleable Memory
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was dipping into Sleeping on the Wing by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, an anthology of poetry and writing prompts written for children and teens. In a chapter on D.H. Lawrence, the authors note that Lawrence called his poems “acts of attention.” They prompt readers to give … Continue reading The Story of My Hydrangea Bush
April is National Poetry Month, so I'll be posting a few poems this season. Currently I spend more time writing prose stories instead of poems, so it's been fun for me to look back at poems I wrote in past decades. This poem is from a period when I was experimenting with classic forms. … Continue reading The Bear, a sestina
Hey, it's National Poetry Month, so I've decided to post a few poems this April. It's been fun for me to look back over my decades-long collection of poems to find a few that will be just right for this moment in time. None of those wild, whiny, passionate unrequited love poems I seemed prone … Continue reading How to Find the Muse
When I was 21 I went to Europe on a five-week student tour with my best friends. On our last day we were in England, and we went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. I have several memories of that day, a few funny stories, conversations, photos, but there was one image … Continue reading Sheltering-in-Place
When I feel sad disconnected unsure of where I belong I invite the poet in. She will remember the soft yellow-gray belly of the mocking bird vibrating as he trills high above me on the outer branch of a tree at the edge of the bridge. Darn, I can’t remember what kind of tree … Continue reading Poetic License
Alice Hoffman’s “The World That We Knew” is an achingly beautiful fairy tale about the Holocaust. Her novel emphasizes the plight of children separated from their parents: Jewish children and the offspring of Resistance Fighters hiding with false ID’s in convent schools; others roaming by themselves or in small groups in the forest, foraging for … Continue reading The World That We Knew, a review
Written with the prompts: take a cat nap, some of the rocks, anger, majestic benevolence, grand rising, I got the real story a few days later I like to take a cat nap mid-afternoon and I won’t apologize for that. When I took up with Harold, he used to tease me about it, told me … Continue reading Cat Naps and Rock Candy
