03 Tuesday Feb 2026
Posted in Poetry
I wanted to fall in love,
Like a lost horse,
Back to a warm barn,
Or a babe, left in the woods,
Back to its mother’s arms.
And so I went flitting about,
My heart, on different paths,
Taking circuitous routes
Back to itself, then past,
Then back.
30 Tuesday Dec 2025
Posted in Poetry
A New Year, or so they say,
A new start, the passing of one day,
Which allows us to close a door.
I am thinking of who I want to be,
If believing a clean slate can set one free.
What didn’t serve well in 2025?
Or, didn’t serve my entire life?
And how does one change the habits
Of who we are, even bad,
The hobgoblins of our past,
Which lead to regrets, sadness.
What is it blocking joy;
What foils our better self,
Cedes territory to the evil elves
Sent to destroy happiness?
If age, and wisdom, could be a shield,
And we’d yield no more to influences,
What could rebirth truly be?
I’m asking you to envision
What I cannot see. Or, haven’t seen,
A shiny new door, clearly marked ‘free.’
15 Sunday May 2022
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Children, Division, Divorce, Family, Hate, Healing, Life, Longing, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Marriage, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Self, Souls, Women's Poems, Yearning
The push, and pull, of memory,
When you left me I got sadness, despair,
When I left you, I got amnesia.
Be careful what you forget,
Memories, hostage to one another,
Shoved into the abyss, together they go,
What was beautiful, too,
The joy of holding his babies at my breasts,
The sound of love in first words;
Hope, like a childhood dream,
You’re embarrassed you believed.
And now, no plumbing the hole
With dirty hands, arms not long enough
To reach what was so easily given away;
(The hurt was not traded for living,
As I’d hoped,) no, I want them all back,
Though they bring you, with the sadness, too.
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.
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Death, Death Poems, Life, Memory, ocean, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Truth
Another day, I’ve collected
over eighteen thousand
now, but none like this:
the birds have returned,
and the clouds hang low,
like the mist of what is
unknown, and I don’t care
to know, because I gave up
predicting the future
when I realized
I was always wrong.
The only thing, now,
is this poem, and how
it pulls me toward confession.
You see, a life recedes;
place a bottle in the ocean
and watch it slowly
carried away by the waves;
that is me and you,
this moment,
and this poem.
24 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birth, Death, Flowers, Forgiveness, Loneliness, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Scared, Self, Soulmate, True Love
Never miss an opportunity
to buy yourself flowers.
You’ve been there
from the very first
scared and lonely cry,
and you’ll be there
until the last,
scared and lonely breath.
from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
You searched through the years
for the one big love,
a soulmate, the person
who wholly understood,
but that person was always there.
Buy them flowers.
Say, Thank you. Thank you,
and, while you’re at it,
beg forgiveness,
for the moments
you were unkind–
the voice that said, no,
the voice that said, not enough,
the voice that, come to find out,
was always wrong.
*This poem is dedicated to the roses I purchased at Walmart during a long, cold February, and who inspired several poems.
I could snuggle
between your fleshy petals,
stretch my whole body
into the many folds of your mystery.
The world would be a better place
if your breasts were its universe,
your perfume, its stars and gods.
The quote “No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone,” is from Robert Frost’s, Home Burial.
04 Friday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Divorce, Forgiveness, Freedom, Life, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Self, The Universe, Truth
“It isn’t the experience of today that drives men mad. It is the remorse for something that happened yesterday.” Bob Burdette
The tape that plays
is not always a good tape,
or an accurate replay
of what happened.
What you said,
what I said,
over thirteen years,
a million things.
No, an infinity
of words and actions
that speak louder
than words, truer
than our memories
of one another.
I told you,
when I finally leave,
it will be forever,
and I think you believed me.
If I could do over
I would do the same,
and wish you would.
No part changed.
No person gone.
No person, gone,
brought back.
Remorse? I want to say,
No. I want to say
this unplanned chaos
is part of a plan.
I want to look back,
someday, and say,
This is what I wanted,
where I wanted to be.
02 Wednesday Jan 2019
Tags
Belief, Courage, Forgiveness, Freedom, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Life, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Self, Soul Poetry, Yearning
He said, Tell yourself who you are,
or others will make you a minor character
in a play where they are the stars.
So, I gave myself permission to be
a poet, a musician,
a good all-of-the-above:
wife, mother, sister, friend—
the many roles I inhabited,
but always felt deficient.
I have rarely known love
in the way I need love,
yet, I am surrounded with love.
Tell me, self, where have you been?
Why haven’t you defended me
against the dark thoughts?
Why haven’t you picked me up
and protected me,
held me in your arms,
and told me I am worthy
of these simple things?
14 Thursday Nov 2013
Posted in Uncategorized
I am One.
I am what one is
And, what one is not.
One of us is wrong, or
Both of us are right
About the one thing.
One last time:
I am not yours,
You are not mine,
Though we will die
Trying to prove it.
Can I help it feels right
To think I’m one with him,
The momentary shared skin,
Then the frightening birth away.
Someone said we were halved
Long ago, halved,
And we are always seeking.
I am what one is,
And, what one is not,
Though I will die
Trying to prove it.
Bits of Poetry 