I asked the artist to sketch the woodland lily
with three solitary petals for my new tattoo—
not loud and cartoon-like, but with reverence,
the way Margaret Roscoe elegantly painted
flowers early in the nineteenth century....
April 22, 2024
Just beyond the fringe of winter,
you sit alert and purely
content in your handsome coat.
You watch me pause
along the path in admiration.
...
February 12, 2024
When our town overflows with tourists
cavorting along snow-packed trails,
a neighbor playfully texts,
Are you hiding?
Not in the way she assumes.
Daydreaming of moist underground dens
where wild mothers burrow alone
to birth naked...
December 11, 2023
Mustang Sally pops something mysterious into her mouth
after pawing dirt by the log cabin near the Lake.
My fingers tap her tongue until I finally have
the oval pebble; a piece of midnight sky adorned
with luminous flecks, sister stars...
October 9, 2023
Muted sun through damp air will fuel thunderstorms.
Grand as they are, sunflowers are bowing
as bees feast in flowering centers.
So far, a minimal garden. Did the seeds know
my heart wasn’t present when I planted them?
Soaring through...
August 1, 2023
In her avid puppy mind,
Sally believes that she’s
the unbroken mustang,
galloping loopy figure-eights
in shabby backyard grass.
With eyes ablaze,
our burgeoning husky
kicks and stomps.
Her unforgivable leash—
its tip clenched
in the...
June 21, 2023
Aunt Rose places a scuffed maple box
the size of a matchbox in my hands.
She gives me its dull silver key and
whispers, Everything you need
is inside. Rose anoints my forehead
with herbs and asks me to sit. Then
she kneels to cover my feet with...
April 4, 2023
My first rosary in fifty years,
honey-colored amber,
fossilized sap said to bring
sweetness, peace.
Almost before time,
these wild old pines
thrived near Babusia’s
home on the rolling edge
of water and earth,
where she...
February 12, 2023
Unfinished woman,
you’ve been wandering
along so many pathways
in folktale lands. From garden
to junkyard, you listen
as voices lace around you
with their separate lives and
long shadows of strange lyrics.
Woman, the accidental...
December 30, 2022
In this autumn of matriarchs,
ancient women wait for me
in purple coneflower fields and
inside cedar and maple
during the most subtle changes
of light between pond edge and sky.
They wait because this is the way
it is done....
September 22, 2022