January 2020
Maryann Hurtt
mhurttds@excel.net
Bio Note:   Now retired after thirty years of hospice nursing, I continue to love stories of resiliency and wisdom in hard times. I live midway between the Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin library and the Ice Age Trail, and hike both ways almost daily. My chapbook, River, came out in 2016 and several of my poems were recently published, both in English and Chinese, in Poetry Hall.

Waiting for Jesus in Tucson
Hay un angel cerca de usted

behind Funeraria del Angel
ghosts ramble down the alley
stop and hover over the young woman
curled in sleep atop
a semen-blood stained mattress
they mumble among themselves
wonder about parents
who would barely recognize
their daughter

overhead power lines stretch
from pole to pole to crosses

the ghosts want to believe
Jesus might care
but for now they perch high
dissipate in desert heat
listen for angels

Even the Queen's Lace

on this August day the sky
so blue and deep
you believe nothing evil
could ever exist
but your head rewinds
news
over and again

see how the sumac screams red
its seeds send drops of blood
to the Queen
who thought her lace
was pure
but soon will understand
we all bleed when even
one of us is touched

With My Father a Month Before His 100th Birthday

not a lot of conversation these days
maybe no need
to fill what used to be
too much silence
now we sit and stare out
the nursing home window
where bird feeders swing with the wind
and bird flight-fight maneuvers

we flip through
Birds of the Willamette Valley
believe we are watching
Fox sparrows
Lark sparrows
Vesper sparrows
and a lone Dark-eyed junco

earlier this morning
he read the Eugene Register Guard
underlined Trump's rantings
noted a story about the world's most resilient
creature the size of a period
he doesn't remember what he read

but the birds
how they flock to his window feeders
and how when the old man
was sick and away
the birds never showed
even with feeders full
till the day he returned

I want to believe
in this story of birds and man
how we fly in and out of each other's lives
still find our way home
©2020 Maryann Hurtt
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