05 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Poetry
The virtue of aspen:
quake of leaves
in soft wind;
you see one tree,
friend,
look beneath,
it’s a family,
a colony
of roots and starts,
a community of rattling souls.
I imagine, if one is cut,
all else will shudder.
04 Friday Jun 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Courage, Crows, Forgiveness, Hope, Horse poetry, Love, Love Poems, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, Truth, Unity
We don’t understand what the birds say,
Or, the horses, who nicker and neigh.
The raven sounds far away, a message,
We think, a harbinger of what will come,
On this path today. A fellow traveler?
A moose, a deer, we can’t know,
But we try to know.
Yet, people cry out to us in real words,
We thought we knew: Black Lives Matter,
Isn’t that true? Isn’t it a simple thing
to say, but you insist it’s wrong:
All lives matter. They do.
But which of us is hurting now, friend?
Which of us feels our lives might end,
Or, be judged for the color of our skin?
Why can’t our words be simple again,
and our hearts open, to a better beginning?
24 Saturday Apr 2021
Tags
Children, Courage, Death, Family, Forgiveness, Generations, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Mothers, New Collection, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Strength, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning
It’s a wonder I’m here, progeny of lost souls,
orphans, abandoned wives, poverty & places
so uninhabitable, unsustainable—
Yet, I’m here, and the generations beyond me
refuse to wither, too.
When the earth begins to close,
there’s always just enough left
to sustain us. One small patch of grass,
free of weeds, or drought,
and just enough blue sky and sun.
We find that place, and stay long enough
to drag another survivor on.
26 Tuesday Jan 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Anger, Blood, Civil War, Death Poems, Divorce, Forgiveness, Hate, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Violence, War
If air could bleed,
the space between us
would, indeed, pour out.
Hate is a balm
for our hurt,
and the danger
we fear,
becomes anger.
My dear,
Are we beyond healing?
Or, is there yet
a latent spark
of forgiveness?
Remember when
we so easily embraced:
bone against bone,
a crushing lust,
our mutual love.
But now there’s dust,
and if the space between
could bleed,
it would drown us.
23 Saturday Jan 2021
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Ash, Beauty, Bird Poems, Bowl and Pitcher, Courage, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear of Death, Healing, Hope, Life, Moss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ponderosa, River, Soul, Souls, Spokane, Spokane River, Strength, Suicide, Survival, Winter, Winter poem, Yearning
I wonder how many have plunged,
broken bodies against the steep,
unforgiving basalt, to flow far away
from the tether of this rocky outcrop.
There are worse places to die
than underneath a basking ponderosa,
on a glorious day in deep winter,
high, above the earth’s mucosa.
Here is heaven, its gods, the osprey and eagle;
they preside from piney thrones, regal,
and survey with indifferent contemplation;
from their perch, suffering is also celebration.
There are less noble ways to die,
than beneath the wings of geese.
See them glide peacefully
over the rapids of the Spokane,
rage of water in the ears,
shiver of blue sky, full sun.
Yet, if hopeless traveler made the steep climb
to this one, celestial throne:
its blood, a brilliant green moss,
its body, the bare, leafless skeleton of alumroot,
entreating with outstretched arms:
See, the promise of spring.
If they were to navigate loose rock,
on the treacherous path that leads here,
would it be enough to make them cling
to the rock wall in front of me,
this low, precarious barrier between?
13 Sunday Dec 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Chaos, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Healing, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, pandemic, Poem, Poems, Poetry, spike protein, Survival, vaccine
I lost my desire to rhyme
about the same time
plexiglass invaded our stores
and pimply clerks ordered
me to click the bleached pads
of dollars, exchanged for goods–
shoppers, too long locked up
and lonely, a kind of death usurped
a joy, usually reserved for spring,
and retuning things,
but the unknown lacks name,
and there’s no map through,
our hearts were confused
and there were no rhymes,
and no rhythm, because time
ceased to be the count count
of seconds, minutes, hours–
Remember, I said it,
it’s unknown, the future bits,
wrinkled, in those deep wrinkles
a hot iron can’t unwrinkle–
so we resigned ourselves
to the sloppiness of prose,
in uneven meter,
I mean, me,
I resigned myself to getting by,
and now I’m on the other side,
of a vaccine,
MRNA with a spike protein,
and I say inject it in these veins,
so I may return to living again,
a life, with enjambed rhymes,
with slant rhymes, NO, a life
with hard rhymes,
like strife,
and knife,
and happiness.
15 Thursday Oct 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Forgiveness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Spring, Survival
“There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” Robert Frost
Yet, they do fall, and silent, rot
beneath the changing bow.
Birds gather to peck the flesh
making less of loss,
Or perhaps, no loss at all.
You see,
the Universe claims everything
we leave behind.
Our regrets, too,
like spoiled fruit,
eventually fall away
scavenged by the sun.
Seeds are revealed
inside what we took as dead.
Trust me, next spring
there will be a new start.
12 Monday Oct 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Alone, Chaos, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Hope, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spokane, Survival, Yearning
“The hope is that if you live through it, there will be art on the other side.” (Louise Glück)
Two hundred and twenty days,
the sun and sky, still uncaged,
yet, our lives, like flotsam,
float further and further away
from what we knew:
The Fox Theatre sits empty.
And my friend,
how we’ve drifted apart,
you, on your wreckage,
me, on mine, further and further
from the place. Our lives hit
that large rock. The ship
is lost, lost, lost.
Will someone find us,
and salvage what is left?
What is left?
10 Saturday Oct 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Canada Geese, Canadian Geese, Love, Love Poems, Lovers, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spokane River
The final chapter is full of thank yous,
breathing in the mystery of Canada Geese,
whose wings pierce the ravine, the V of it,
gliding inches above the Spokane River–
remind me, I say, remind me; I never want to forget,
and inhale deeply, as if I could take that feeling
into my soul-bones, my image keeper–
a fragile place, for sure, always in need
of being reminded by those who felt it, too.
He told me, you will remember the old things best,
the very old memories, you want to forget.
I say:
We appreciate too late,
the most beautiful things.
It’s sad to think I’ll remember
the one who didn’t love me,
rather than the one holding me now,
holding this memory of the geese.
I think I will write a poem to keep it,
to remind me of what it is to fly,
to love, to pause for a moment
and try to inhale this feeling.
09 Friday Oct 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Anger, Chaos, Civil War, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Death Poems, Division, Fear, Fighting, Hate, Hope, hopelessness, Life, Longing, Loss, Memory, Napa, normal, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Smoke Taint, Sonoma, Survival, Wine, Yearning
What does fire taste like in the glass,
Our fear, red with hate, the flames
of civil war? The skin, and the smoke,
cannot be divided; they say
it tastes like ash, what is left
when the smoke clears.
We can see the devastation.
Remnants of a vineyard;
what was there, before tragedy
made our eyes cry with anger.
The tree and native grasses
are poured out, consumed together,
while the vine exists in water it stored,
but cannot save its fruit.
Its creation, aging in the hot fog
of dreams. Life was supposed to be
the taste of flowers, plums, currants,
and only hints of tobacco,
swirled in our glass.
02 Sunday Aug 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Alone, Chaos, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Divorce, Dying, Fear, Forgiveness, Hate, Healing, Hope, Horses, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spokane, Women's Poems, Yearning
In this season, of triple digit days,
Anger gives way. It withers.
I said, I’m argued out about living,
What it means to be free, and human.
She is right, after all, I’m not an expert.
What do I know about a virus,
Which isn’t informed by the trees,
or clouds, or the way a horse sounds
when it calls to me in the dark?
I can only speak of the heart,
and even that, with authority of one,
my own heart, and how it breaks
To see the growing cries for help. Hate,
A distant thrum, beating, what it means
To be hurt, and hurt back harder.
Is any of this new? Or unique?
But we sought each other anyway,
To stake claim on our opinions;
The lost way, of friendship and loving,
Something which came easy to us, once,
When we valued living over living,
A life we could touch with our hands,
sending our fingers deep into the dark soil;
To be truly clean meant dirt under our nails,
For weeks, for months, dirt under our nails.
30 Tuesday Jun 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Chaos, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Emptiness, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Masks, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning
The Clerk
Imagine being nineteen again,
still pimply and awkward,
parroting a script
from behind a plexiglass wall:
Phone number, please, you say,
and imagine her fingers,
typing one in. You hear the click,
clicking of keys on the keypad,
sickening,
music of the dead,
you think, you’re dying.
The Enforcer
You’re maybe a hundred pounds,
just a little thing, whose mask
covers two thirds your fragile face,
and they buried you at the door,
the enforcer, instructed to say—
This door, not that, and arrows,
follow them, follow them,
do like I do, with this cover,
my voice smothered, my soul—
Wrong Way
I’m sure I was just standing there,
leaning over my cart, watching
my daughter shop for cards,
when I heard her voice—
not the enforcer,
but a fellow peruser, like me,
another blank face, masked,
breathless, breathlessly,
you’re going the wrong way,
she said, you’re not following
the arrows, she said,
and her bony, dead finger
pointed down along the ground.
I followed it, and sure enough,
she was right about me:
Rule breaker, careless
spreader of germs.
The shame, the shame,
she would have me feel,
for facing the wrong way,
disobeying.
New Normal
Fuck that. My latest mantra. Fuck that
and fuck that, too.
Even as I do it.
Where’s the humanity in this?
I want to scream.
But who would hear me?
We’re too busy saving lives
by not living, buttressed
as we are behind masks,
She doesn’t even realize I’m not smiling,
Or, does she? Maybe there’s something
of, fuck this shit, in my eyes,
the only part of me she can see,
if she tries to see, but she doesn’t.
The mask isn’t merely the covering
for a mouth, a nose, —
it’s blanket, too, as in a morgue.
Covering the dead. And I know,
my time is coming soon enough,
but I’m not dead yet, covered as I am,
prepared for burial.
Yet, still pounding on coffins,
trying to pull back the heavy veil,
cursing my heart away,
fuck! Someone help us!
–into the emptiness.
29 Monday Jun 2020
Tags
Alone, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Division, Grace, Gratitude, Healing, Hope, Huckleberries, Life, Loneliness, Love, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Souls, Strength, Survival, Wilderness
And then the world said,
I will heal you
In ferns, unfurling again,
berries, growing ripe
On the bows of yesterday,
the ones your hands touched,
As you harvested the wild fruit.
This is my great forest of chatter,
it says, in a smattering of late flowers,
a fragrant, maskless breeze,
and trees you can touch with bare hands.
Speak to the sky, it cajoles,
And the sky will answer you back,
With its bold booms, and its wet clouds,
none of this needs viewed
from behind the doom of plexiglass.
The young clerk, who looked down,
and down, and down, faceless,
behind the many layers of protection.
He was humankind, afraid to look up,
afraid to touch, or speak,
or even see one another.
But the world said,
I remain the same, fully open to you.
See me, and I will heal you.
16 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Hope, Horse Poems, Horses, Life, Memory, Morning, Mt Spokane, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Spring, Sun, Survival
The sun wakes through a morning window,
stretches itself over the horizon, smiles,
says, it will be a good day,
for horses to lay down and dream,
and I walk into its warmth,
almost able to hope, almost.
The sun persists to midday,
wakes the mountain, still white with snow,
and transforms its peak into a picture,
and if I could paint–
but I will, instead, think it,
in memory of last summer’s huckleberries,
picked there, there, half way up–
the sun smiles again
imagining the sweet boughs,
dark blue berries.
That’s what hope is, it says,
all the things you can see,
like memory,
made bright again.
09 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, The Universe, This Pendant World
Wasn’t everyone born
thinking
they belong
here forever,
even death,
we hide
behind closed doors
praying it will passover
us,
the ones we love,
cling to,
this earth,
how it swings
on its chain,
from cold days,
to warm—our lives,
like seasons,
which go on and on;
how can it go on
without us?
07 Tuesday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Confusion, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Moon, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Stars, Super Moon, Survival, This Pendant World, Yearning
3
Some nights
wearing your shoes
on the wrong feet
feels right
The stars
haven’t changed
the moon is bright
Maybe tomorrow
it’ll be full again
big enough
to swing this chain
rock us back and forth
along this painful tether
to which we cling
Photo credit: NASA / Bill Dunford
06 Monday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Bird Poems, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Dying, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Spring, spring poem, Survival, This Pendant World, Yearning
2.
Today, I trusted you,
straddled your wide,
bare back,
sweet mare,
doe-eyed, and healthy.
We breathed together
what good there is
of this April day,
and offered thanks
to a world,
mostly untouched:
the mountain, still there,
the grass, still starting to green,
the birds, still returning,
singing their songs
into the dark hours
of the night.
05 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Alone, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Fear of Death, Grace, Hope, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, This Pendant World, Winter, Yearning
1.
Grace,
where are you now,
embraced in loneliness,
poetry was a kiss,
now it’s this:
today, a fog—
from doorstep
to trees,
to sky—
all blended in white,
our world reduced
to blindness.
04 Saturday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
CoronaVirus, Covid19, Dying, Life, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul Poetry, Survival, This Pendant World, Yearning
A bristling north wind,
just rambling now,
cameras rolling for hope,
distant, like the sun.
There is a sun,
we tell ourselves,
behind the clouds,
and cold of this breeze,
a life we once knew,
where poetry was a kiss,
an embrace,
a crowded room,
alive with chatter.
28 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Courage, Death, Divorce, Forgiveness, Happiness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Love Poems, Marriage, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, Vows
New eyes, your eyes,
not their eyes, you see
yourself anew, beginning
to love again. How can that be
a bad thing? Love is not bad,
ever. Make it worth it,
she said, and she’s dead now.
If she’s right, you thought,
could it save us? A love—
worth it, worthy of—
holding past what we thought
it was, what they thought
it was, to what love is:
mostly forgiveness,
he said it, I’m sure,
in the vows. Forgiveness,
he went on & on
about grace, & letting go.
Bits of Poetry 