As a girl I gathered the gooseberries
effortlessly and helped my mother bake the pies.
I knew just how much sugar was needed
for the berries—and I could sense
their taste by lightly squeezing them
and measure the tautness or softness
against the sugar. I was always right.
Women paid my mother to have me
make the pies for their festival
offerings or weddings or homecoming feasts. Continue reading
Tag Archives: poem
Cruelest Month Celebration: Treasure Hunting!
Poem clues, map, and treasures
The Cruelest Month Celebration scheduled for April 20, Saturday, at the museum is coming very soon. I am working on the poem treasure/cache hunt that will be the new activity for the day. Thirteen poem-clues will guide you around the property to a treasure that awaits you. Continue reading
Call Eney Time! (Craig’s List Poetry)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up with a compound bow. Continue reading
Aware of Birds Missing
What do you notice in winter stillness?
Does the stillness allow you to be still,
Also? Or does it make you want to move
In ways that keep you from noticing?
The honeysuckle vines are disappearing
From the fence rows, the wild rose bushes
Rooted out like kudzu by backhoes
Trained to pasture and emptiness. Continue reading
Abandon
I am looking at you through a window
I work to keep open, through the world
At 50, and I’m seeing a landscape
I had not anticipated, a life waving
In this still image from the abandoned garage Continue reading
A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.
“Son, do you know how love should be begun?”*
Moving backward was the name of the first collection
Of poetry I put together. I was fifteen, and I typed
The poems on half-sheets of paper and arranged them
Inside a full piece of typing paper. Thirty-five years Continue reading
Beasts of Burden, Part 218
Dolphins swim through the moon
Into the sky, sliding into stars
That want to be coral, at least
For a time. Mammals like humans
Dream of dolphins, shaping them
From paper clips and doodling them
Into a life beyond ocean and sky. Continue reading
Massey Set the Bird Free
Massey set the bird free.
He knew its blueness
Longed for the blueness
Of sky, its glass fragility
The delicacy of dogwood, Continue reading
In Dead Grass
In the field of dead Johnson grass,
The red-winged blackbird landed.
It swayed the desert-colored stalks
With its weight, then held its place.
Like a swollen tick plucked from a dog
Then dropped, it did not move.
From this distance, I could not see
What suspended it there, what attraction.
Eating the World, Part 2
The park forty years later is still green half the year,
and empty, though its emptiness courses
from indifference rather than vandalism, created
by children no longer running barefoot down a hill.
I had to pass the bully’s house on the way
to the park. The house was patched together
with plywood and the weeds hid snipers
with slingshots and rocks big as my kneecaps. Continue reading
