To finish off our National Poetry Month celebration, I offer a more recent creation of mine. Thanks for reading! I made that girl, but is she grateful? No. True, I drove her to the edge of consciousness dumped her on a shore peopled with past failures and traumas, to the lip of a river … Continue reading My Insomnia Gossips About Me Behind My Back
Another original poem for National Poetry Month! This week's offering is a tale of my California childhood, back when the rain was plentiful enough that we'd often watch the winter river rising against the side of the levee. Life on the Flood Plain Nestled in the south elbow of the levee we are sheltered … Continue reading Life on the Flood Plain
Another classic poem of mine for National Poetry Month. Flow She rises through silt and sand seeps through cracks in asphalt to suckle fox tails and dandelions sprouting wild on levee roads. Her power courses through me like moon pulling water to sea rushing by pear orchards carving jagged leaf veins in my belly … Continue reading Flow
April is National Poetry Month! I've dug down deep for this one, written for my Mom at least 30 years ago when she was the age that I am now. For My Mother and Other Collectors of Strays I want you to contradict me. When I shiver in my cavernous apartment complaining that autumn … Continue reading For My Mother and Other Collectors of Strays
i Blades not sharp or brutal but tender and yielding to the weight of my bare feet sprout on this thin layer of soil that hugs the Donegal coast. I grasp a clump of green shoots in my fist: does that make it mine or does it belong to a middle-aged man with a piece … Continue reading Immigrant
I wrote this with a prompt that urged me to speak with the Sun. That reminded me of Frank O'Hara's "Talking to the Sun on Fire Island." I think O'Hara's sun was a bit more cordial than mine was; I'll need to work on my relationship with our resident star. But for today, this is … Continue reading The Sun Speaks
St. Jude showed up at my door today with a little package tightly wrapped in pale blue paper, adorned with a large clump of curled white ribbon (he’d obviously had it wrapped at the store.) I was surprised to see him; I was unaware he made house calls. It seemed impolite not to invite … Continue reading Goose Girl
Anderson Cooper came by my house to repair the busted slats on my back fence and to tell me I use too many ellipses in my writing. I told him I use ellipses because I like them!— but I told him not in a “I’ll do what I want” kind of way. I told … Continue reading Dot Dot Dot
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
Greetings! If you’re a regular reader, you know the past two weeks I’ve suggested some prayers that I’ve found helpful, and I continue to encourage everyone to write prayers and affirmations too. It’s funny, because almost as soon as the first post went up, I began to feel kind of down. And so I felt … Continue reading Continued Sheltering, part three
