Immersed Outside
Storms I worry into my heart
recede with steps on a trail
away from the future, tense,
conditional, what-if,
onto wetland paths at the edge of town.
Easy foot-rolls, infinite grains of silt,
tawny dryness after back-to-back
downpours keep me watching for the heron.
Pewter spoon upright in shallow reeds,
absorbed by the hunt, no linear clock,
owner of time and patience. No ghost,
though hovers above water.
Bright sun spangles my view, blurs
edges of the finger bay that feeds in.
Shoulder-high yellow fennel
saturates the air with anise,
or, if you like, licorice and honey.
Foxtail-barley bristles brush
a seamless rustle in breezes,
pausing me to listen and watch,
as something small, quick,
scurries undercover, gray-brown
glimpse of motion but no body to see,
as it wishes should be.
I curl my fingers ‘round
the soft straps of a day pack,
immersed outside myself,
step slow, back to the trail head
passing the blue and grey
still bird across the pond.
Holding Ground
After rain bucketed down all night,
I kneel in sopping grass edging the dug-out ditch
along our road, to scoop out gumbos of muck, twigs,
ragged yellow poplar leaves blocking channel-flow.
This work, a kind of prayer.
My jeans wet and cold–almost too busy to notice–
as my knees mash tall quick-grass and small, white
shepherds-purse petals. Weedy backdrop
along interstates, in vacant lots, and sidewalk cracks––
here, they hold the banks.
Plants insist on their beauty,
without us and our notice.
Two crows above shoot out from the trees, flap hard,
caaw caaw at my messing around below them.
I want to tell them, because I’ve read they’re smart,
that this will stop their trees from toppling in high winds.
Soil above the banks will dry. The roots will hold.
But some things can’t be made clear.
Reasoning is a fragment
of connection.
At last, sprung from blockades, water pulses downslope
to Bill & Maya's uncorked share of the gutter, to the next
neighbors, and the next, on to the seasonal stream
feeding the bay. Sun cuts through dishwater clouds.
Water evaporates without our knowing
the science.
We all monitor the trough as leaves untether,
blow down and dam our would-be bog and fen again.
Winter storms’ grip holds us to our knees
for the crows, the trees, the bay.
We shoulder this natural role.
Not Footnote (Ars Poetica)
April wind, pollen spores,
yellow dust. Ready to fly,
male dove waits on a pine branch.
La paloma completes her meal,
lifts away, takes him with her forever.
And yet, cu-cu-ru-cu, sunburst swirls
in your tree bark signal sickness.
May moss in the north expands
in a humid south. Anna’s hummer
noses lupine, honeysuckles nectar,
sprinkles sticky life.
And yet, el colibrí, while you shimmer
and sip, thirsty petals drop to earth.
Dayshift drifts through a yard,
berry buds swell, bumblebees buzz.
And yet, el abejorro, so many days ablaze
confuse you in your warm coat.
Gray afternoon and evening
layer la oscuridad on us.
And yet, Primavera, even on nights
blank of moonlight and stars
we breathe your perfume,
interpret your troubled lives
in the verse, not footnote.
Medusa Dreams Of Recompense
Where we live, sky so bright, it’s hard
telling Sea from the sapphire dome and true
to call the sea savage.
Unbelted Poseidon again drew water from rock.
Wave after bitter wave rose, flooded Athena's temple,
pulled me beneath, split open, severed
from my sisters, muffled near-drowning.
I disappear in moonlight as clouds cross my heart,
but my jagged thoughts wear smooth as I survive
this labyrinth to reach a center sheltered like waiting seed.
I’ll leave this Aegean coast, wear a coral bracelet to remember.
When it turns on my wrist, nightingales will fly from shadows,
singing in prisms of precious opal. Each time they emerge,
my serpent hair will turn to copper curled with light
framing my olive-tinged face, amethyst eyes.
My lengthening fingers dark, then bright,
will grip stars, let them go on and off the sky.
I'll learn to fly past falcons, hold mirrors to the sun,
shoot fire-bolts that blind the Sea.
He’ll raise only his arms to row in
families of clam, oyster for long-legged foragers
on sands dowered like a bride.
Earthly Divine
Neume, from ancient Greek pneuma (breath) or neuma (sign)
Neume squiggles in gall-wasp ink
hover in flecks, shapes, strokes, puncta,
above and below words in service
to Yahweh, Brahma, Buddha,
Muhammed, Pope Gregory.
Cantillated melodies, plainchant.
Syllables of diverse, dispersed kin
scratched on sheep skin.
Praise and harmony,
to breathe as One,
resolve dissonance
between birth and decay.
Neumes, not modern note-stems
planted in counterpoised heads,
but flutters, hooks, trajectories
that rise, lower, rise again in stages,
the way a sparrow gains sky
in cross breezes or descends glissando.
Blue-brown ink ran down quills
brewed from rainwater (for purity),
red wine (for stability),
emptied cocoons of gall wasp larvae (color),
rusted nails (iron, everlasting).
vinegar (acid, to burn away residue),
Did scribes sing to themselves? perhaps
hummed a four-note syllable to get it right,
one hand raised near a shoulder
conducting air steps to match breath?
Did the metallic, blood odor evoke
sacrifice or atonement?
After all, only light is faultless.
Her chapbook, Night Arrangements, earned a Kirkus Reviews "Get it" verdict. Lotus Earth on Fire (Finishing Line Press, 2024) was praised by a poet-reviewer as “an unflinching witness to the hungry and the homeless, to floods, fires, and the untold injustices of man to man.”
She's worked as a weekly newspaper reporter, studio jewelry maker, environmental NGO staffer, and taught Lit. and Comp. on a two-year fellowship in a graduate English program.
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