December 2024
Bio Note: In addition to writing, I am a musician and singer, and have worked professionally in that arena, too. A mother and grandmother, I reside in eastern Virginia but travel all I can. My current books are The Right Mistakes, The Widow’s Lovers (Kelsay Books) and As I Lay Dreaming a self- published chapbook.
She Was Here Yesterday
In her ridge-soled combat boots,
a contemporary protest against
customary teen femininity rules,
much like her grandmother wore.
Today while she and her parents
drive the four hours to their home,
I am feeling lonely, with only
her size-nine rubber tracks
still exploring room by room,
and my mental image of her
seventeen-year-old body curled up
in my blue chair like she is still seven.
Something Like a Horizon
So there he lies, the one who beckoned the best
from me for so many years, whose love felt like sunrise
over the green Atlantic–fluid and sparkling atop the waves’ crests.
Each time I thought I would sink, his yellow-sun self rose high,
assuring constant warmth, light enough for me to blossom.
For me, he became something like a horizon.
Today he is so still, no light, no warmth, only the dark horizon.
And I may be drowning for lack of him.
When I Do Not Speak the Words
“truth habitually
gives birth in private”
W. S. Merwin
The ones I should have said,
it is most likely due to quaint
Southern social etiquette tugging
on the back of my tongue,
insisting that I not express
what ought to be spoken
in the moment of madness.
Grandmothers, mother, aunts, cousins–
we all suffer for the same cozy
constraints, which now may
have left you thinking that
I am not disturbed, am not aghast
at your recent behavior.
But now that we’re alone…
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