Category Archives: Uncategorized

sun and morning dew built it—
brief and vast, this field
fallow but filled with diamonds

we have been
a chattering of happy squirrels
of dart and gather of
tucking scribbled words into
every pouch and corner storing up
for later
for sometime
words for where we live
numbers to reach us
Today, two cars—
one then another
became Traffic in my head and I knew.
Time. Time’s here.
to breathe quiet air, leave the
doors unlocked, unlatched
but time to sit alone, and crack open
black walnut, acorn, stone and notebook
Full of words I was sure we needed

i write early while robins browse the yard
all of us low to the ground
attentive
to vibrations
beneath our feet

Stuck behind a rattly old tractor
and too polite
to
honk
my
horn
I honk it
in my head
and hold on
tight
to
an
Irritated
Breath.
The tractor
turns in
at the cemetery
to mow between the rows of gravestones.
Oh, I breathe—I see it now
What I was following wasn’t a tractor,
or it wasn’t only a tractor, it was a tractor gently
steadily hauling its other self which turned out to be a poem

I might have made
the start of a poem
early yesterday
scribbling as I drove—
I know that should
Already be Edited to:
Scribbling at a Stop Light—
but anyone who knows me
knows there aren’t any—
stop lights, that is—
on my commute.
So
I scribbled as I drove.
I don’t remember
what I wrote but
I’ll bet it involved the view—
winding my way
through hills hugged close
by low, misty clouds
till the sun came up
and dried the sky, till those
clouds wisped away
and I arrived
to become
Practical
and Achieve things all day

outside, again.
how quickly I forgot
how smoothly winter erased it
how the air is soft and damp green
sprinkled all over with
pink geranium petals
and the conversations of birds

men with Nerf guns
chase through the yard
yelling and giggling—

small boys returned
for an afternoon or
till they run out of breath

instead of bread crumbs
tiny poems
mark the path home

Yesterday, driving
(home from a weekend
of too much food
and the right amount of
laughing crying talking
remembering hoping and then
Laughing more)
alone in the car
Springtime finally arrived
carrying tornadoes in her arms
trailed by hail the size of quarters
She’s just another one of the girls
You know how she is, we all say and
we roll our eyes—but fondly
Some seasons believe in
Making An Entrance

Because its language is foreign
damp and full of rhythmic tapping
but unintelligible to us
except for a vague recognition
that this language
is cousin to the current
of the creek in spring

Because its language is foreign
we don’t know what it says
Insistently. Relentlessly. Day after
day for three weeks, the rain
wants us to know—
Some mysterious thing

Maybe it is saying, with its whole self
—don’t be stingy
with what you have to give.
Give Insistently. Relentlessly,
day after day
Until you wash something
Away.