Category: Poem

Octopus on a Sea Dock: New Poem at Split Rock Review

Posted on Posted in issues of nature and environment, PoemTagged , 1 Comment
this lovely image popped up from Split Rock Review on Facebook
with the link to my poem

So another prompt-inspired poem, this one from an April 2021 National Poetry Prompt at NaPoWriMO:

“Go to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and choose a word to work with.” I chose “onism”: awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience, which seemed apropos for that past year’s solitude. And then I thought about imagination and memory and went places I never expected, certainly one of the joys of writing poetry.

Octopus on a Sea Dock

It floated out from a sea bucket
into the silver spilt water
of the sea dock we’d come to visit,
so quiet at our feet
that the fishermen nearby were oblivious,
their fishing poles . . .

Read the rest here at Split Rock Review

Pre-orders for Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic are open until November 29. Flying Beneath the Dog Star was a semi-finalist for the Finishing Line Press 2020 Open Chapbook Contest. The chapbook, fingers-crossed for a lightening of the shipping boat snafus, comes out at the end of January 2022.

My book, my book, my beautiful book!

Posted on Posted in Book News, PoemTagged , , , 2 Comments

Am I allowed to say I love it? I’m going to (:

I wrote the poems for Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a pandemic during National Poetry Month during such a terrible time and found such peace in my search for some kind of faith in a shaken world where my only “knowns” were a cabin porch, a spill of morning sun, and a nuthatch at the feeder. And I wrote it in honor of my sister. And then it was picked up by Finishing Line Press as a semi-finalist for FLP’s 2020 Open Chapbook competition.

And now it’s pre-publication sale time until November 20th and the sales determine the press run. If you think you want to order this book, please! do so through this direct link at Finishing Line Press: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/…/flying-beneath…/

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

book cover and author

To the Swallow This Spring at the Nest Box

I own nothing of you
nor this leaf that shivers
into a half-bud above
the phlox and blue flax
that burrow with me
into this old winter grass.
Yet how much I yearn
for your blue-struck wing
like an arrow over a sun-
struck river, as if it were some
prayer to fit between
my strange and lonely palm,
so hollow its feathers,
so frail I could breathe through them,
so iridescent the sky
you harbor down that
whoever hammered this wood
together did so
in such hurry, in such
love, that even the nails
were left unflattened. And now
your nestling waits
at this world someone
cored into the box for it
to see: a little
knot of light,
a song
to dip and break against.

                        published by Tiny Seed Literary Journal

Morning on the Cabin Porch

Posted on Posted in Book News, issues of nature and environment, PoemTagged , , 1 Comment

My beautiful visiting bee this morning reminded me of this poem I wrote last spring. It will be part of my chapbook, Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic, to be published this January by Finishing Line Press.

The hummingbird mistakes
me for a flower: something
half-wan and camouflaged
in a wild iris shirt.
The aspens riddle my slant
of sun like snakes of shade.
Far off,  past the pines,
a meadowlark trills
from the draw where, yesterday,
I found bear scat fresh,
flies swarming it.
I walked, clapping my hands
at the dark of woods
until they hurt.
Now the air stirs.
A hummingbird zips
past the porch, circles,
hovers, a tiny god at my face.
I am all blossom and sepal,
sweet petal and wing dust.
And at my feet, a tiny bee
crawls for the first time.

a junco eyes me from a slip of pine

Posted on Posted in issues of nature and environment, PoemLeave a comment

and blue glass sings
in my palm, the sky engraved
with vowel and wing, so
much to hear, our bodies
speaking across great plains
of air. soon beneath
moons, we’ll murmur
something: me, on love
as a rift of stars, of broken
pieces i once thought
the earth waves past.
and this little junco? nothing
i could guess to know.

On Photographing Heron: A Poem

Posted on Posted in about writing, PoemTagged , 2 Comments

First, there is the necessary quiet of close grass, of fallen rodent, belly up in the path of your wanting. This morning, all you loved disappeared, ghosts you’ve kept in your palms, the tip of your tongue. Now you stoop to the wide paths reckless others have shoe-ed into the mud. Above the flooded salt quarry, a woman hugs her knees. She will not waver in the hour you walk the wide lake, peering one-eyed for heron through your lens. Then, nothing, until you are back at the beginning, the water of a blue reservoir you had long forgotten spilling out of a pipe at your feet, water so quiet, you think, this is why the birds rush in. A heron hugs the lakeshore; a heron balances on the gray curves of a tree fallen so many years ago that it floats upon the water’s light. Long-necked, short-necked, the heron wait for the sun. Their feathers are the light hairs of moss the wind tassels. Why do you wait at the edge of the water, the camera heavy in your cold hands, waiting for cloud, for sun, for the stretch of wing, the long dangling feet of departure? A quick moment and the heron sheds a bit of itself, just one color the camera opens its eye for, then shuts: a blue shade gripping the half-cave of a tree that keeps trying to bury itself. Soon you will drive home. Soon you will cook, sit by a fire, prop your camera at the table’s edge to see what you have taken.

Morning Deer and Poetry

Posted on Posted in issues of nature and environment, PoemTagged , , 5 Comments

How to See Deer

Philip Booth – 1925-2007

Doe at Cabin
Thought to write my own poem on seeing this quiet doe at the edge of our cabin, but then found this already beautiful one by Philip Booth, How to See Deer. Seems like a good way to start the morning.
Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

Last year, we had twin fawns here.

Thanks to Poets.org for its everlasting beautiful poems.

Sandhill Cranes, Wild Swans, and William Butler Yeats

Posted on Posted in about writing, PoemTagged , , 3 Comments

I finally got down to see the Sandhill Crane migration through Monte Vista and the San Luis Valley. Watching and hearing hundreds of cranes rush past in great waves overhead reminded me of the swans in William Butler Yeats’ beautiful poem, The Wild Swans at Coole, which “scatter wheeling in great broken rings/Upon their clamorous wings.” And I feel too the sadness of this passing year. For how many of us has all changed?

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Hand (or On Finding the Prompts of Poetry)

Posted on Posted in about writing, PoemTagged , , , 1 Comment

I am thinking of the hand I found in Indiana, epicenter of this naturalist soul-to-be.  I was ten, younger, when I found the hand, laid it to rest in what I called the “dead box” we found in an ancient trunk in the loft of that massive red barn on the hillside where I watched cattle slain and ponies bred.

I was walking the fence line. It was summer. Dry weeds crumpled to dust along the foot and cow paths.  And then I saw it.  The hand on the ground. A perfect bone of a hand.  A fairy hand.

Fifty-one years I have kept the dead box and the hand and everything else I have found.  Years and years, in writing workshops, I have handed out each object to a stranger,  never wondering why I trusted these beautiful things from the world past with people I did not know. But always there is this giving back and forth — those who share my awe silent over the changed deserts of their linoleum desks. I am always astounded how poetry starts anywhere and takes you everywhere.

Bird’s nest so perfect
so round
woven of mane and tail hair
from my childhood ponies.
Owl pellet and yellow mouse teeth
and white bird claw and, oh,
the mollusk shell  
open-mouthed
where a petrified snail
curled inside.
And all the pale shells
of blue and speckled dust
I’ve lost and that Indiana flint
with yellow crystal
I found near the creek I barely
remember now except
a bulldozer tore that day
its red dirt. And here
the chrysalis
from my father’s pond
attached to a twig
since I was the girl
I will never be again–
what I swing and tremble
until it lives.

Poet Patricia Dubrava, in her blog, Holding the Light, posted a wonderful poem and poetry prompt and that’s what got me going! Hearing the Canadas.

My poetry chapbook, Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic, will be published this spring by Finishing Line press. Just received the contract. More as I know it.

Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic to be published by Finishing Line Press

Posted on Posted in about writing, Book News, PoemTagged 12 Comments
my cover image?

I just learned this week that my one and only chapbook, Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a Pandemic, will be published by Finishing Line Press as a semi-finalist for its Open Chapbook Competition 2020.  

I wrote Flying Beneath the Dog Star in the first spring of our pandemic during National Poetry Month, using many of the poetry prompts offered by NaPoWriMo (napowrimo.net).  These poems, written on the front porch of my cabin, are my journey through this strange and unknown world we are still living in.  Who knew when I sought solace at 9600 ft amidst the birds in my little spot above the Arkansas Valley, grieving over the deaths of eighteen hundred, that almost a year later we would have buried almost a half million in this country alone, including my mother, my aunt, and my uncle?   

Finishing Line Press received 402 entries and will publish the 14 poets who make up the list winner, shortlist finalists, and semifinalists. Congratulations to the fine poet, Maura Stanton, who won the competition for her chapbook, Interiors, and to all the other first rate women poets I will share this new journey with. And thank you to my sister, who was my inspiration for writing these poems that I hoped she would love, too.

I will share this publication journey as it continues to unfold.  You can find the (almost) title poem of my chapbook at Kingsview & Co, published by the lovely Michael A. King, editor: To the Three Ducks Flying Beneath the Dog Star. Other poems in the chapbook (and a few of my bird photos) will appear shortly in the Raw Earth Ink poetry and art collection, Creation and the Cosmos: A Poetic Anthology Inspired by Nature.

Stay Tuned!

For the Black Angus Sold Last Spring

Posted on Posted in PoemTagged 8 Comments 
Each winter until, finally,
barely spring, the black
angus cows returned
to graze the fields we rented
to our neighbor, to drift through our high
mountain meadows past glory
holes and the half-buried
barbed wire a homesteader
nailed a hundred years
ago to the trees.  All month,
I have missed them, though
perhaps in the springs past
that we’ve had of days and days
of solitary jays and the tiny
mouse skulls that I pocket
to hold tenderly in my hand
and show you, this day is still
only the day before the day
of their coming, the day before
they will once again wander
up ancient paths, their hooves
chipping at the old cow pies
that our dogs, ash now, rolled in.  
This spring, I think, far
into mid- summer, I will wish
for them, for their calves sleeping
midday in old winter
grass, tucked so quietly in
as if they were a dark blossoming
before the evening’s dream:
the earth returning everything
to us now, perhaps musky
and heavy with its clustered yarrow
and its blue harebells of grief,

but here.