Moth Orchid


I take this as a sign 
that once a year, one 
of my orchids blooms.  
This one was saved
from the sale table 
at the garden center, one 
I’ve nursed for two years, 
and finally the nose 
of a shoot poked between 
the broad paddles 
of leaves, then a slender stem 
with five small buds, winter-white 
against a winter window, 
and today’s unwrapping--
like a star, a small mouth 
singing at its center.





On the Line


 “I’m sick and tired of being sick 
and tired,” said Fritzi, my co-worker 
at Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego 
Back then, I made sandwiches and salads 
for the cafeteria, washtubs of lettuce 
soaked and broken, sliced carrots 
and tomatoes, while she stocked the line 
with pans of enchiladas or meat loaf 
or steaming cooked corn.  I was 20, 
not old enough to drink the martinis 
I made for T. Claude in his railroad 
dining car. Pearl, the Jamaican woman 
with broken broom straws for earrings, 
Martha, the dishwasher and Tino, the guy 
who cleaned up, the one who started 
a fight with the chip and cookie man, 
told me I had a nice ass, big legs, he said, 
motioning with his hands, then kissing 
his finger tips like it was a good thing.  
Ralph, the chef who squirreled bottles 
of vodka in burlap sacks of rice 
and potatoes, his nose red, 
his apron bloody, had no 
opinion in the matter at all.  





To the Poet Who Pets Chickens
for Katrin Talbot

An Adirondack waits in the shade
in the chicken yard, an iced tea 
sweating on one arm of the chair, 
a notebook and pen sitting on the other 
as she sighs into her seat, her mind 
wandering myriad paths for poems 
until Rosy, her favorite Red Star struts 
over, one long leg extended at a time, 
orange feathers ruffled around her thighs 
like a tutu, bird head cocked and rocking
on the ratchet of her neck. Rosy stops, 
bobs, then hops into her lap, 
part flight, part flounce and nestles there, 
The woman strokes the bird from comb 
to tail, cooing her love until Rosy calms, 
adjusts her golden skirts 
and sinks deeply into sleep, dreaming 
of the eggs she will keep someday 
and the gift of a few to this woman 
for lemon custard and cake.





Volunteer


From my window, I can’t see 
your leafy collar; your yellow head
is turned away.  Only weeks ago 
I plucked you from the window box 
where geraniums made room.  
A seed split and unfolded leaves 
like cupped hands.  Now you’ve grown 
six feet; now your stalk is coiled 
with an errant bean vine.  
Now I imagine Jack in this world, 
looking up your tangled stem, 
wondering how far he needs to go.  
He can’t see your face either, 
but he knows that nothing can stand alone.  
Sunflower, see how you are held 
by this vine, see how it loves you.  
Your moon face turns with the light. 
See how facing east 
is the way to gold?





Some Days I Feel


The way I wake a little too old 
for the part, but blue-eyed and braided, 
my pinafore more than a little tight.  
When the tornado rolls across the stage lot, 
I’m pelted and pummeled by dead owls 
and gum, ears assaulted by suicidal 
Munchkins and that bad-breathed dog 
humping my leg.  I try to steer clear 
of those giant color cameras, and it’s true 
that I had to speak-sing-prance 
without exhaling into the frigid air, 
a tedious task for someone used to belting 
“You made me love you” to Clark Gable.  
No wonder I need seven pairs of ruby slippers,
a lucky number by some accounts, 
but I don’t feel so lucky.  Enter Miss Gulch, 
hook-nosed spinster who morphed 
into the Wicked Witch in my spinning dream.  
“I’ll get you, my pretty,” she says 
when she is only a broom’s length away.  
I am currently on a path to find my bliss, 
so I turn, pail of water nearby, say, 
“And your flocking monkeys too.”