On the last day of National Poetry Month—today—I turned my attention finally away from Leonard Cohen and listened to a CD of e.e. cummings reading his own work. Undeterred by the fact that he was a pretty terrible reader (or this was one truly substandard performance), I was happily reminded how much I love his poem “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond.” Continue reading
The grebe builds its nest
in a compost heap,
a basket of dead and rotting plants
sending up ripples of heat
to warm the eggs.
My mother might not have known this
when she built a compost pile
below our rabbit hutch. Continue reading
I’ve never tried that chocolate angel food recipe
but each time I see it in my cookbook
I think of you
trailing Grandma Fay around her kitchen
writing down her every move
forcing her to measure ingredients
she could gauge by sight or feel
getting in her way
so you could replicate her result
transform the mediocrity of your own first effort
(the mediocrity of her written recipe)
into the mouthmelt you knew this cake to be. Continue reading
A spring breeze rustles the trees
shooshes across my neck
as a solitary songbird
dee-da-das from afar.
The sun pokes a morning face through tree limbs,
breathing hello at me
just as my old dog did minutes ago,
filling my nostrils
with her warm doggy scent,
the universe’s most gentle wake-up call. Continue reading
In poetry I find beauty
In poetry I find peace
In poetry I find an antidote to daily life
an antidote to noise
an antidote to chaos
an antidote to cruelty and to uncaring
and to thinking about the unspeakable horrors people commit Continue reading
The shoreline meanders and we with it
skimming rocks across the sleepy water,
murmuring to each other,
our voices hushed as we watch
for the shimmery flash
of fish surfacing
to snatch an evening meal.
In the distance a solitary fisherman
casts off,
the silken thread from his reel
spinning out into the lake,
offering a too-easy dinner
for any fish lazy or foolish enough
to accept. Continue reading