July 2024
Bio Note: These poems, in one way or another, are about change, something that we humans can find difficult. I think the subject appeals to me right now because my husband and I are seriously thinking of relocating to the East after many decades in California, in order to be closer to our children and grandchildren. On another note, speaking of happy change, I have two new books of poetry out, If Only There Were Stations of the Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024) and a chapbook, Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! (Bamboo Dart, 2024).
Brief Impromptu Meditation
I pour cream—a rare treat—into
the steaming coffee in my clear glass cup
and find myself watching the seconds-long
dreamy adagio of mixture, the leisurely swim
of darker and lighter in constantly
changing interplay, seeming to surge
as unhurriedly as clouds aggregate, or thin out,
implementing mysterious algorithms, making me
think of swirling schools of fish, or swerving
murmurations of starlings in slow motion.
And I want to take my life as languidly
as these liquids eddy in the glass,
as if I would then be in tune with rhythms
at the heart of the universe—mine to comprehend—
unpushed, not pressuring
myself.
But the coffee and cream
seem not to fully blend until I stir,
and I must drink up, get in my car,
and onto the already clotted
freeway.
Originally published in MacQueen’s Quinterly 11, January 2022.
Full Moon
When the moon is mined—
when it’s visited
by re-usable space ships,
when it’s a drop-off spot
for scientists and billionaires
to hop to Mars...
If this earth we know survives,
will earthling lovers
wrapped in each other
still gaze at the colonized
moon as it’s caught
in the naked arms
of the trees
and released?
Will children still stay up late
to watch from their bedroom windows
as the moon’s silvery impossibly
vertical frisbee soars over the roofs
and is lost?
On silent frigid nights, will the icy moon
still seem to clang in the black heavens
like the bottom of a struck pot?
Will anyone watch as its pale face
floats up into the morning sky,
transparent as the bells
of jellyfish?
When the moon is mined,
will we mind? Can its round disc remain
a blank slate for us to engrave
our wonder upon?
Originally published in a moon of one’s own 4, January 2024.
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