Because April is National Poetry Month, I’ve decided to share with you some ekphrastic poems I’ve written this past year. Ekphrastic poems are written about works of art, most often visual art like paintings and sculpture, but they may be about a performance piece like dancing, acting, or film. This poem reflects on a lovely … Continue reading Rivers, inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s Chama River, Ghost Ranch 1937
The new year feels like a mistake waiting to happen, a haircut with bangs that are too short, the wrong lipstick, a red that’s too blue, when it should be orange. And I wonder: is this the face I want to present to the world/in a new year? January yawns open, a classroom with dark and heavy … Continue reading New Year
Every year on Pearl Harbor Day, I like to tell the story of my late mother, who was picking oranges with her best friend Louise on December 7th, 1941, when they got the news that the Japanese had bombed the US Naval Base in Hawaii. Every year after, she picked the first orange of the … Continue reading Juicy
To conclude National Poetry Month, I feel blessed to share with you this poem. I wrote it many years ago, a love letter to my home town, and I was elated when it was chosen for an anthology put out by our city's first official poet laureates, Dennis Schmitz and Viola Weinberg. It was 2001, … Continue reading Delta Breeze
Summer rerun time: enjoy!! Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts: bulgaricus, in an orange room, why is she crying, the farm, he palmed his meds, there is no one there, hey baby, they were new, Kansas, healing, big medicine, Hank 25 years ago, they were young, is it all a sham, poppies like … Continue reading An Orange Room On a Blue Planet
As the holidays approach, we may encounter way too many opportunities to indulge in a bit of unhealthy eating. And so I've decided to share again this cautionary tale of love and lard. Written four years ago with the prompts: when we first met, onions, high tide When we first met he was sitting … Continue reading Big Love
(with thanks to Paul Simon on Brigid’s midwinter feast day) The prompt was to write a poem inspired by a song, and so I did. Midway between the winter solstice and the shush of an espresso machine I stand hypnotized by the sound of water dripping, my feet shifting on sticky linoleum. The tule fog … Continue reading The Roots of Rhythm
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
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
Thirty-something years ago, I was hiking with friends in the Marin Headlands when we came across a cyclone fence enclosing a small yard. Inside the yard were two or three Doughboy-like pools with seals and sea lions in them. Some friendly signs explained that this was the yard of the Marine Mammal Center, a non-profit … Continue reading The Marine Mammal Center
