I came to your garden one moonlit night spade in hand, and a rake and a hoe, we planted potatoes until the sun rose, pink sky, bleached horizon, you made me promise to return in the autumn with a fork and a bowl, you said there would be butter enough for the two of usContinue reading “Spring Planting”
Category Archives: poems
It’s Been a Minute
Things have occurred: wildfires and uprisings and super-spreader events, a few holidays, an election in the U.S. and a coup in Myanmar. A month and change into the new year and the COVID-19 pandemic has not gone away, though there are vaccines now, which is good. I’m looking to update my collection of facemasks forContinue reading “It’s Been a Minute”
Locomotive Breath
There’s no solace in knowing it has always been so — the angry mob, the fist and the fury — knowing doesn’t help at all. Today I took an online test to see what mathematics I might recall from decades of long ago learning, word problems concerning trains and speed and distance, angles of intersectingContinue reading “Locomotive Breath”
Package Deal
If my imagination were not so much a part of me I could write about places less frigid. But I am a package deal. Body cold. Mind cold.
No Time at All
Bodhichitta practice. Slow. No striving. No reaching. We breathe into the heart center and find it armored. Of course it’s armored. We breathe anyway. To make friends with a feral cat we sit nearby. For a day, a week, a month, a year. As long as it takes. One day we may find ourselves sittingContinue reading “No Time at All”
Preppers
It took longer than any of us expected, our children were older than we were and theirs were older still. I remember the fortune in your cookie urging you to be like water and you said who has that kind of time? The soles of your boots are worn right through at the place whereContinue reading “Preppers”
February 2.0
Snow crusted garden, last year’s coneflower grey as old bones, q-tipped and stiff in the wind, the neighborhood scoundrel cat passes through the damp and molder in search of a wren to kill, cowl mane the color of gravel and thaw, the color of February, the color of the shadow that followed me home, the oneContinue reading “February 2.0”
In the News
In the news about deportations to countries less worthy I heard a chance remark keywords: poverty, extreme a rhetorical question of how one might fare if given the boot after living so long in the Promised Land to go from so much to so very little Yes, yes, it’s true: newsroom pencils break along fault linesContinue reading “In the News”
Winter
The snow started falling yesterday morning. It came down in fat motes, curtains blowing sideways. Sleet at midday, popcorn against the windows. The cats slept. Drifts accrued in doorways, domes of white arose on backyard patio tables, wedding cakes for winter brides, Birds tracked in a day drained of color, crossing rabbit divots. Midway throughContinue reading “Winter”
Love Sleeps
I closed the door on you. This is not a metaphor. You were snoring. I couldn’t abide. I need a quiet house. That’s not your fault. You disorder me. You are a distraction, a leaking faucet: dripping, dripping. Reminding me (I do not need your reminder) of all I’ve left undone. Maintenance foregone. Weatherstripping. YardContinue reading “Love Sleeps”
