Which will blossom first,
clutch of daffodils in their brown pitcher
or you?
Together, whispers that voice
outside the windows
Lift your heads and blossom
to This World
Category Archives: Creativity
No Contest
Women Playing Dress-Up
Oh, we’ve been wild
hilarious
stylish
extravagant and
strange.
All weekend, we reveled
in who we usually are Not.
I played a woman who throws
dinner parties and plates,
handles with aplomb
recipes gone wrong,
a woman who lives on wine
and crepes, who doesn’t need
much sleep or any solitude,
a woman who loves to shop for
new clothes and containers,
all kinds—vases, baskets, teapots—
things to hold the things this kind of woman drops—
earrings, cash, homemade chocolates, tiny jars of eye cream.
Oh, it has been a funny whirlwind of zesty woman costumes.
Now, welcome home to my own quiet self,
writing through the long winter days,
drowsily recalling all the weekend women we were.
And you? How are things there, inside,
where you really live?
Gift, Wrapped
See today’s gifts
Tumbled out of time’s
Woven basket, spilled
On the blanket spread
At your feet
All their meanings
Are wrapped in
Traffic, incessant phones,
Sour blueberries in
Five dollar pints,
Lost pens,
Grumpy students,
Grumpier teachers,
Gray ice, dirty windows,
Sun shining through the
Everyday winter grime
Poem In The Forest
When no poem arrives,
It feels like waking in the night
and reaching for a sip of water—-
You know exactly where you left it,
the glass with a slice of lemon
and an etched decoration of trees
at the edge of a forest,
a forest you were dreaming of
just before you woke,
thirsty for a drink your hand can’t find
though you believe it’s there
just out of reach
breathing quietly in the dark.
About The Authors
The shy boy, who never speaks in class,
raises his hand now, when the subject matters.
How much violence, he wants to know, how
much gore can he include in his novel
of a science experiment gone horribly wrong?
Next to him, the girl doodling flowers
says she hasn’t started yet but
is thinking of a children’s story
about a pony, or possibly a unicorn.
Later, face shining, she stops me in the
crowded hallway to show me ten pages
of scribbled notebook paper.
She says, I’ve changed my mind.
Now, it’s a romance.
Grandmother Haiku
Four hundred years old,
Haiku spread its rules
in the shady spot at
the edge of the meadow
on a faded patchwork quilt
of sonnets and prose.
Here a square of roses,
next to Shakespeare’s dark lady
in gold, stitched to
paragraphs of pattern,
then a square of green.
Haiku stretches its cramped muscles
tied seventeen ways for so many years,
sighs with contentment
and here, amid the crumbs
of the feast
watches its many grandchildren
play in the meadow.
Authority
Each author, an authority
on their own world—
Me, I am an authority on
sipping coffee by candlelight
while the cat purrs,
And I stretch out time like taffy—
Slow, slow hour—
The day pulls the blankets closer,
bunches up its pillow and
dozes for a few more minutes
while I sit with the last of the cosmos
blooming in their vase,
pollen and words drifting into my lap.
Come See Me Before Class
School at five a.m.
Long halls where nothing echoes
Lockers closed as clam shells
Waiting for the ocean
