A Selection of Published Work
Remind Me How It Goes
Where will I put this love when you go?
It’s piling up in drawers and closets,
blowing about like wind-tossed leaves,
filling every cup I empty,
weighing like snow upon the eaves.
How will I hold this gift you gave me?
My hands – a child’s – unable to grasp
the depth or width of a life’s long tally,
the space between the first and last.
Your songs, I know them, all but one,
and there the mystery remains,
the notes, a faded score to follow
to where our hearts unite again.
I try to pour myself into you:
food for the journey, but you are filled.
You pour me back, say, Do not worry.
My champion ever, my father still.
All that you are you’ve given to others
without demands, without a show.
So let it rain in my soul’s garden;
in this rich soil, your love will grow.
​
Blue Heron Review, Issue 13, Fall 2021
Wind
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Wind,
your wicked fingers
grasp at corn stalks,
blow in the tempests,
you let loose
like a mad bully.
Never still, rarely quiet,
you are the loud mouth
of the sky,
you scream and whistle
and sometimes
whisper names
of the ancients.
Wind, you slip away
into a breath, a memory,
and then a hint of movement
among the cattails,
a rustle of dry leaves,
and there you are,
cooling us on a summer afternoon.
Notable Works 2023 anthology, Voices of the Earth III, Grand Prize
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​Aquamchumaukee Rock
​
We, daughters of the long-dead moment,
regret our part, the blood connection
that pumps through our arteries,
persists in our cell structure.
Here, where you tended
the three sisters,
corn, beans, squash,
our fathers murdered
your sons, husbands, chief.
Rich with names we cannot pronounce
(Asquamchumaukee, Pemigewasset, Watermummus)
your village burned
by the crooked water
from high places.
The rock we places, the plaque,
two hundred years late:
a rough apology,
and even that grows neglected,
obscured by the living earth.
​
Frost Meadow Review, Vol. 11, Spring/Summer 2023
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Resurrection
​
I awoke after hours
of thundering rain
to find that God
with a great green crayon
had scribbled all over
my maple trees,
left the shavings
on my lawn.
​
Mundane Joys, Derailleur Press, 2021
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The Last Box
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A laundry basket, not a box at all, packed in the way you pack the final things that matter.
Frantically, needing them in any condition:
Uncle Bun’s old violin: no strings, bridge or pegs. Chinrest, bow, long gone, a slight crack down the middle, but salvageable, like my dream of playing again.
Two-and-a-half rolls of blue-marbled shelf paper from the last kitchen, when, surrounded by cherry cabinets and black appliances, I yearned for the shore.
A pencil-shaped wind sock, never used. An orange rain slicker in a small tote bag, always missing at the right moment.
Two large wooden dragonflies that once hung from my ceiling. A warped, yellowed collection of sheet music by the “best composers,” copyright 1885.
That missing piece of the antique spinning wheel we gave away. An electric heating pad. A plastic container filled with magnetic poetry.
A silver illusion puzzle, in its wrapper. An empty wooden box. A spool of kite string, untouched.
A two-inch sailboat, made by my husband’s father, and a clam shell, wrapped together in blue tissue.
A brass door hook. A palm-sized woven basket. Cassettes of Roy Orbison, Eric Clapton, and a mix tape made by a friend with songs I’ve never heard.
A gold cross given to my second child on her christening, a set of coins minted in 1997 for my first. A Saudi Arabian bill – ten riyals, folded in quarters.
A tin box of extra-large paper clips, which I needed yesterday.
Daddy’s silver spurs, once attached to the boots of a man I almost knew.
​
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Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Issue #13: These Things We Carry, 2023
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A Living History
They were born
and I let you die.
I could care for my two foundlings,
or begonias, cacti, peace plants.
I don’t recall the choice,
only the brittle fronds
and fallen husks
on the floor at your feet,
the way your parched root base
elevated toward a faith in water.
Even the pretense of your existence
shamed me.
In this empty nest, you return,
green, precocious, forgetful,
you and your neighbors
crowd the bay window so uproariously,
I must turn you from the sun.
My daughters, home from school,
suckle the oxygen you forge,
with promises to care,
they take cuttings,
razor through the nodes
of your sweet stems.
​
Blood & Bourbon, 2022