ON MY HONOR

ON MY HONOR

I will try.

 

Stand on the moon

and show me a country.

 

Falling rain is real.

Down by the rivers

 

it is killing people.

Fire is real.

 

Show me a country.

Death is real.

 

All over the landscapes 

no borders

 

and the loneliness is real.

Duty has an unpleasant sound,

 

not something I would choose.

And God? 

 

Stand on the moon.

Words again: a Story

tunnel

make 

gasp

pound

wave

turkey

blow

haze

 

A STORY

Our grandchildren found a baby bird 

in the driveway. 

What is it?

Where is its Mommy? 

 

In this hazy time 

when every little sorrow strikes a blow,

when the news pummels and pounds,

what is Daddy to do with this scrap of life

gasping in his hand?

 

The mouth of the dark tunnel

has narrowed again.

So many mommies, daddies,

so many lost, so much is lost,

and what sense can we make?

I used to tell myself I was a poet.

 

It’s a little turkey. 

Let’s put it in the long grass by the brook

where sometimes we see them pass. 

We’ll put some corn around for them to find.

Now wave bye-bye.

One way or another, this will resolve.

 

We saw them the next day

he told me. A parade.

Two hens with six poults

and a tom and a hen with one poult

scurrying between them.

The kids agreed that it all worked out fine.

 

We can tell ourselves stories, can’t we?

They all lived happily. . . 

Can’t we tell ourselves stories like that? 

Words again: Oh, art!

arch

sinew

fiddle

shadow

tremble

dance

one

art

peach

vain

indoors

hurry

Oh, art! 

Art is one—Oh yes. 

We do not dream in vain.

 

Do not hurry. There is no need.

Tune your fiddle to the canvas, 

 

chisel a marble dance.

Dress your singers in peaches,

 

and tremble in the shadow of a word.

The arch is wide; the road is wide.

 

Out doors is all, there is no in.

We who make art bind bone to bone 

 

by sinew after sinew.

We do not dream in vain.

Words again: Identity

—rye

—eclipse

—identity

—fumble

—gravel 

—sunlight

—cake

—please

—eddies

—release

IDENTITY

A child crouches

in a sunlit field.

A fighter pilot’s wife can’t sleep. 

A new mother cannot walk.

 

I am a whirlpool—

an eddy of identity

where a complexity

of currents meet. 

 

I am a layer-cake of scars:

Wry neck and fumbly fingers.

Knees marked with gravel.

Nose repelled by the scent of booze.

 

Nevertheless. 

As the pummeled moon

still glows in our shadow,

I am eclipsed but whole.

 

I am pleasing to topsoil and stones,

to bears and birds and trees.

I have been released 

by every disappointed god.

NEW i.d.

NEW  i.d.

First day on the job alone,

he had to keep calling the sergeant. 

Good-humored, she was,

joking about new machinery 

that made the work harder. 

Typical military we all agreed. 

 

I voted for Bernie.

I’m all about peace, 

and eliminating fossil fuels

and reducing my carbon footprint.

I drive a Prius, for Christ’s sake.

The new fighters they’ve got—

 

we couldn’t believe 

they’d be louder than the F-4s

but they are. We can hear them

all the way from the Adirondacks.

And they’re expensive, useless.

Can’t dogfight, so what’s the point?

 

Three took off. We waited

for the fourth, like clockwork.

Shit, they are noisy suckers. 

But fuck it. I’m a

fighter pilot’s wife.

My man used to fly machines

 

like those. I’ve stood on the flightline,

watched him take off,

seen him loop and hammerhead,

do the Memorial Day flyby.

I gave birth on the eve

of drill weekend, kept house

 

that winter he trained in Witchita

when he was DCM, that ice-storm winter 

our son was in second grade

and we had a funky woodstove.

I watched my pregnant friend

watching the Missing Man

 

formation over her husband’s

grave. What can I say?

What can I say?

I make no apologies

for my life. Love is a funny thing.

So now this new improved i.d.

 

is good another three years. 

We stopped on the way out the gate

to look at the old F-4 

on static display.

Not Miss Piggy, my husband said.

It’s got Rich’s name on the door. 

Some dialogue from a play-in-progress

Some Dialogue from a play-in-progress

BARRIE

Well, I have no idea how my way of being will help because you and I are as different as a pea in a pod and a rhinoceros, but okay. Here goes— I don’t work. I’ve never worked, and I never will work. The day I start to work will be the day they put me in a home. There is absolutely no separation between, among, within, whatever the word is, the art I make and everything else I do. Getting up in the morning is art. Taking a shit is art. Reading while I eat breakfast. Arguing with Jim about whose turn it is to buy groceries. Making dinner with the kids. Walking the dog. Teaching. All of it. It’s all art. It’s all making something out of something, or out of nothing, but usually it’s something. Remaking, unmaking, starting over, turning around. Everything is raw material and everything is already finished before I begin.

MARGARET

Well, okay. I guess that works for sculpture and conceptual stuff, but not for poetry.

BARRIE

Why not? 

MARGARET

It’s words. They have to be right. 

BARRIE

Oh, well. I get that. Finished stuff, sure, like if you want it in a magazine or something. That’s gotta take a little tweaking. But the first burst of a poem, and the second and maybe the third? The energy of it? The way it flits around and settles? Is that work?

Perspective

PERSPECTIVE

Oak and Ash and Birch breathe their gold.

It sifts through their twigs and branches 

over our cars and lawn furniture.

Oaks and ashes and birches think

life is worth continuing. They want

to make acorns and winged seeds

and tiny cones. They want to make

food for turkeys and squirrels and jays.

If they told you the Council of Trees

had decided to fill this year with abundance,

if they told you they had decided

this was a good year to cover the wounded

Earth with their love, to spread their gold;

if they told you that you, too, could participate,

wouldn’t you say Yes? And here you are!

Every sneeze, every dribble, every gasp,

they tell you, is a price you can pay.

WHAT WE’VE LOST

Before I begin my celebration of Poetry Month, which this year will involve going on strike for better working conditions, here’s a poem.

WHAT WE’VE LOST

I was shopping this morning, double-masked

because my second shot is days away.

Young women working the check-out counters

were waiting for customers and laughing,

laughing loud at some private check-out joke.

And I found my anger surge up at them:

young women, masked, trapped behind plastic shields.

Being human, sharing humor. And anger

at myself for fearing the sound of delight.

What have we lost? What have I lost?

I hope someday no one will understand 

double masks, plastic shields, second shots.

BEGINNING

BEGINNING

 

The book cover shines gold 

in the lamplight.

 

Small birds irrupted from the north

cluster around the feeders.

 

I’m an old woman now

and none the wiser, but

 

at least I can define

emotion with precision. 

 

The landscape of exploration

looms underground. 

 

Forty years but surely not wasted.

Are we between wars

 

or is there simply one war.

Was there ever only one?

OPEN STUDIO POEM #18

OPEN STUDIO POEM #18

 

 

aplomb

solid

chrysanthemum

collage

secluded

 

Under snow, under solid ground,

earth knits a fabric of mycelium,

bulb, the roots of chrysanthemum

and rose.  The February landscape

shapes a shifting collage

of branch and cloud,

a splash of of jay-blue.

We stay secluded, painting

our lives with aplomb.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #17

 

Open Studio Poem #17

disco

lickety-split

splendid

magenta

 

Fairies shelter behind the disco ball

hung in the portal to the kingdom of odd. 

After sunset, they emerge lickety-split,

and all night they dance through the city, 

their magenta wings flashing splendid

in the lights of streets, and traffic, and stars.

 

 

The other occupants of the Open Studio are out to get me, as you can see. But I know where that disco ball hangs, and I know the fairies, too.

Open Studio Poem #16

 

OPEN STUDIO POEM #16

makeup

cattywumpus

kerfuffle

erase

 

I’m going back to makeup.

Not the kerfuffle of my youth,

with eyeliner cattywumpus

to each brow,

not a sad attempt to erase

my decades on the road.

Just a streak of red on the lip,

a little taupe along the lid.

 

Since July, I’ve been attending an online Open Studio with four artists, who are now my friends. Most weeks, they give me words to use as prompts so I can practice my art while they do theirs. This week, I think they were out to get me.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #15

OPEN STUDIO POEM #15

leaves

haven

susurration

possibility

 

When the days lengthen,

the cold strengthens

but the light too grows strong—

apricity on a frozen day.

 

Last fall the young oak kept

its leaves. It stood, susurrating

in the shadow of its mother,

collected light feeding the roots.

 

We live these days

in a haven of possibility.

THE HAWK

THE HAWK

Every day I walk with the yellow dog who understands human language but can not yet speak. Every day, or nearly every day, we saw the hawk in the dead elm trees between the hay fields or on the power line. In early spring, two hawks circled the fields. In late summer, one young hawk called hunger from the elms while one adult watched from the wire. The dog was disturbed by the hawk’s wheeling or calling, and she raised the orange ridge on her back and growled and barked. And in November, when the hay in the fields was cut short and the living oaks and the dead elms stood as outlines against the sky, on a November morning when the yellow dog and I walked down the road with the mountains on the east and the hills on the west, I found the hawk on the ground, beneath the wire, not far from the elms. The hawk’s red tail was spread, the dark and speckled wings were folded, claws curled, the sharp eyes flat, the neck broken. What shall we do? I cried, and the yellow dog answered. —Carry the hawk to the row of elms and lay it down there. And weep awhile, and I will weep with you. But only for awhile, for you shall see.— So I lifted the hawk and carried it close to my heart and I walked with the dog to where the grasses and goldenrod stalks grew tall under the trees. And there I placed the hawk. And the dog said —Good—. And for awhile we wept. And that night, the hawk came to me while I slept. Her red tail was spread acorss the Earth and her wings opened east and west as far as I could see. Her great head touched the sun. And she spoke. —You see, she said, who I am. Now you see. Your eyes open to my flight, your ears open to my cry, your heart open to my life.— And with a shout the hawk rose up, then up, beyond the sun. And when I woke, the yellow dog was curled beside me and looked at me through her brown eyes, and said —Yes. That’s how it is.—

MATTER: A Pantoum

MATTER: A Pantoum

What gods do is make and let the pieces fall.

Billions of clocks on billions of beaches

turning as our hands move however they

move or our four legs or six or eight.

 

Billions of eyes in billions of deserts

move through their times or none and 

we move our two legs or four or six or eight and

our hearts and chloroplasts, mycelium,

 

our many eyes or none.

Our structures crystalize, the plates

and hearts and chloroplasts and mycelium

subduct and bump as we rise and fall.

 

The structure of our crystals, how the plates 

and all we do is an echo of clapping hands as we

subduct and bump and rise and fall.

With voices, silences, wavings of branches

 

we echo with our hands 

and twigs and whatever anemones use

for voices: silences? wavings of branches?

We’re all made of one matter.

 

Twigs and anemones

turn while our hands move however they

move because we’re all the matter

and making matter and falling is what we do.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #13: FOR THE LAST DAY OF 2020

OPEN STUDIO POEM #13

bobble

bauble

clarity

celebration

POEM FOR THE LAST DAY OF 2020

With smiles and nods, thumbs up

and applauses, with bright baubles 

 

of technologies—our new necessities—

we’ve bobbled through this hardest time. 

 

We have more courage than we knew,

our loves are stronger than we thought.

 

Now, let us begin a celebration, now, 

as we tiptoe toward the clarity of light 

 

at the far side of this dark passageway.

We are beginning to know 

 

how tender we are; beginning

to know how gentle we can be.

With thanks to Wanda, Kathy H, David and Kathy C for their words.

MAGI GOING HOME

MAGI, GOING HOME
 

 

 Go home another way, 
 it told us in a dream. 
 Another way?
 

 What would an angel 
 know about ways? 
 We had to sell the camels 
 

 and the slaves. Another way 
 meant bad roads, no roads. 
 We were not accustomed 
 

 to walk, but walk we did 
 till we bought a donkey. 
 It was old and lame.
 

 We rode in turns. We were not 
 accustomed to taking turns, 
 nor to buying food ourselves. 
 

 Now and then we begged,
 and more than once 
 we slept in stables, in the straw—
 

 the only lodgings we could find 
 after we were robbed of everything. 
 But that’s another tale. 

OPEN STUDIO POEM #10

OPEN STUDIO POEM #10
 

 riff-raff
 heart
 glue
 synchronicity
 

 

 SYNCHRONICITY
 

 I dream of unmasked riff-raff.
 Anxiety is collaging my heart:
 scraps torn from memory,
 the flattened faces of my friends,
 a quarter of my granddaughter’s life.
 Will I ever have glue enough
 to paste it together?
 

 Emergency.
 Emergence.
 Emerge.
 Resurge.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #9

OPEN STUDIO POEM #9


coats
coax
helm
ochre
 

 

 

 A captain stands at the helm
 in his ochre coat,
 coaxing the wind
 into the sails.
 

 The artist in her rusty coat
 coaxes the ochre
 from the leaves.
 Her easel is the helm
 of a ship sailing
 into the winter sky.
 

 His coat of arms:
 a purple coat 
 on an ochre field,
 crowned with a silver helm.
 

 too many suit coats,
 too much ochre light,
 too many vying for the helm,
 too many trying to coax 
 a resolution from the deep

CAMP FIRE WOMEN

CAMP FIRE WOMEN

My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.

Sometimes all night she watches,

holds the flame at the center

of the world. It is her sacred way.

 

And mine? To search the forest,

to gather the wood: This for kindling,

this for tinder, this for cleansing,

this for a long and steady burn.


			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Open Studio Poem #7


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		





OPEN STUDIO POEM #7


words:  legs   along   fire


 


We go along and along,


our legs aching, shoulders


sore from the burdens


we bear. So many, so


heavy. But the year will


end, this terrible year


will end. It will. We will


build fires on the beaches,


fires on the hilltops,


fires in the deserts,


fires in our own backyards.


We will throw our burdens 


in the fires, throw them down,


throw them down in the fires,


open our arms,


embrace our friends 


We will remember 


how it feels to laugh.


We will remember.


We will. We will.
			

	
	



				
					


	

		
TIGHTROPE


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
TIGHT ROPE


My ancestors did this, so I can.


I’ve practiced for this all my life—


to be suspended between cliff edges


above a chasm filled with rapids and rocks.


Without a net.


I’ve done the high wire a zillion times. 


It makes no difference


whether there’s a chasm or a sawdust floor. 


The far edge is in sight.


Breathe. 


My thin-slippered feet


move along the cable.


Cloud shadows, a bird shadow.


One foot in front of the other.


Eyes ahead, toward the edge—


where someone is bending


picking at the cable with a little knife


and no one is there to stop him.


Will it hold? Will it hold?


I can not take time to be afraid.


My ancestors did this, so I can.


Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.


One step, one step, one step

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
REPORT: OCTOBER 20, 2020


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
REPORT:  OCTOBER 20, 2020


Dark clouds over Buck Mountain. 


It will rain.


More sugar-maple leaves on the ground than on the trees. 


The oaks and popples are turning.


Soybean fields amber, hay fields cut and green. 


Luke’s old milking shed is falling apart. 


It’s just a storage shed now,


with the old SURGE and AG JOURNAL signs rusting on the wall 


and the little lightning rods standing bravely on the roof. 


Last year, a young man took the bend in the road too fast


and the laws of physics being what they are,


he glanced off a telephone pole and ran into the shed. 


And died. One of the dead


elms has fallen. Now it’s raining, 


and taking pity on the dog, I turn. 


Sumac is mostly red along the east side of the road.


If it were colder, I’d swear it was snowing in the mountains. 


Jim’s VETERANS AGAINST TRUMP flag is up on his porch.


At the far end of her pasture, his old horse Molly crops the grass. 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
ON MY WAY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		






ON MY WAY


It was all so familiar—the icy road, the falling snow.
The tricycle was bigger than it used to be, less
embarrassing for an adult to ride. It took awhile
to get across the city street, awhile to see
a safe crossing under the glaze of snow.
The other side was fine, and I was on my way.


Home at last, but boxes all over the table.
I opened them one by one, each filled
with plastic things: flutophones,
cheap bath toys, disposable cups and spoons. 
Or tin automatons: monkeys playing drums, 
jumping mice, walking quacking ducks.


Box after box until the house was full.
When I awakened, I laughed at it all.
Not a nightmare, a description.
How full I am, these days, of things
I do not want or need. And how far
must I ride my little trike, in this storm.




			

	
	



				
					


	

		
DONA QUIXOTE


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

DONA QUIXOTE





Listen to Sancho, Mistress.





These are only windmills.





This is an inn, that is a basin,





what you have is a computer





glitch, a mis-behaving phone,





a broken coffee grinder,





an inconvenience. 















Look at the world as it is,





not as it never was.





Knights were brutal and mean.





Subsistance farming was hungry and hard.





The Enlightenment was a flash in the pan.





Father never knew best. 





No country has ever been great.















If you want a romantic occupation





dangerous enough even for you,





stay home and write poems.





Maybe someone will read them





and write more.





As our creator says, turning poet





is a catching and an uncurable disease.

			

	
	



				
					


				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #3


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Open Studio Poem #3:  USE THE WHOLE PAGE


The point is growth toward beginning.


Start again—nothing flat or square—


this time learn to move in three


dimensions—cubic, spherical. Can you


write like a dancer? Paint


like an actor? Draw like—


a potter? Remember knitting—


how to turn a heel, shape


a sleeve from a strand.


DO THAT WITH WORDS.


USE THE WHOLE PAGE.


FILL IT WITH SHAPE AND


COLOR AND SOUND AND FLAVOR—


BITTER GREENS AND HOT PEPPERS


AND LEMON ZEST.  WRITE 


BIG AND ROUND.


USE THE WHOLE PAGE

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #4


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
OPEN STUDIO POEM #4


final   granite  light  synchronize


Rilke said, “No feeling is final.”


Not even granite is permanent—


it crumbles and weathers into parts.


And isn’t it a fine thing


that nothing stays the same?


Time is after all unsynchronized space,


shifting into shapes that cannot last.


Therefore, do not fret.


Keep your touch light,


or maybe don’t touch at all. 


Simply breathe.

			

	
	



				
					


				
					


	

		
words: Three Bold Attempts


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

WORDS:  THREE BOLD ATTEMPTS


cricket   illustrate  tone   pearl    snap    quilt

THE GAME

Last summer, I studied cricket.
Not the insects in August, 
their crispy vibrations
adding tone to the fading garden,
but the sport. I like the langauge. 


Let me illustrate:
Overs (six balls per), Stumps
and Maidens and Leg Before Wicket.
Innings, not as in baseball,
is both singular and plural.
That’s tea. That’s drinks. 
Declaring before All Out.
Sixes and fours and centuries. 
Ducks and Golden Ducks. 
Silly mid-on. Test (the best)
and ODI. Howzzat? 


I followed the World Cup 
in the Guardian online.
They did OBO coverage. 
England won, to their surprise.


I want to see a game someday, 
a whole five-day test. 
I want to hear the snap of leather on willow. 
I’ll bring a quilted vest and a thermos.
I’ll wear a ridiculous hat, and pearls.
I’ll wait for an umpire to Offer the Light,






Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen


The summer palace in Oslo.
The Queen in residence,
a conversation on the terrace. 
No birds, no crickets singing.
The dining room in the palace:
candles in the windows, 
late sun through the windows,
green leaves outside the windows. 
Paintings on the walls—illustrations of green.
No furniture but the black piano.
The pianist wore striped socks. 
The soprano wore a green gown, 
no diamonds, no pearls.
A silent audience on screens.
No applause.
The studio in New York. Monitors and clocks.
Christine Goerke’s sad and gracious tone: 
A difficult time for singers and thank you.
The program a carefully stitched quilt:
Wagner and Norway’s Grieg, and Strauss,
the snap of Kalman’s “Heia, Heia!” 
The peace of Ronald’s “O Lovely night.”




Zuihitsu for the end of a terrible summer


1.
Crickets drone away in the dark. I used to love them. This year, I find their rasping cricks most annoying.


2.
Last night I watched a moon like a yellow pearl  poke through a torn quilt of cloud and leaf.


3.
My voice has taken on a querulous tone. I can’t help it. I am possessed by a tired and hot and hungry and frustrated three-year-old child. 


4.
The purple snap beans I grew do not snap. They are blotchy and stringy and not particularly flavorful. The purple blossoms, however, are lovely, and hummingbirds feed from them, so growing them was not a total waste of water and space.


5.
The tone of this zuihitsu illustrates the way I have felt about this summer. A few times only, I have glimpsed something lovely, far away, and still.







			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Not a Mast Year


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

pit   sew   break   fan   milky   frail


NOT A MAST YEAR--theme and variations


This is not a mast year.
I toss peach pits to the one frail squirrel
who comes to our yard. 


Am I the only one
who is not making masks?
I’ve never liked to sew—


a break with family tradition.
Degenerate daughter
of a great house.


At least the Milky Way
is a constant, fanning out
from the great starry swan.




pantoum

This is not a mast year.
I toss peach pits to the one frail squirrel
who comes to our yard.
Am I the only one


tossing peach pits, the only one 
who is not making masks?
Am I the only one
who doesn’t like to sew,


who is not making masks?
A break with the family tradition—
I’ve never liked to sew.
Degenerate daughter—


(a break in the family tradition)
of a great house.
I am the inconstant daughter.
At least the Milky Way,


great path through the heavens,
is a constant, fanning out
like spilled milk
from the great starry swan.


We need a constant: that hungry squirrel
who comes to our yard
under the sign of Cygnus.
This is not a mast year.


sestina

The one squirrel in the yard is frail.
She’ll eat anything—peach and plum pits.
It’s not a mast year, it’s a broken
one. I’ll feed the squirrel, but I will not sew.
At night, Cygnus brightens in the Milky
Way, his stars spread out in a simple fan.


I once had a sandalwood fan—
sweet scented frame, frail
silk the color of milky
tea. It didn’t last—a child pitted
against something so fine, sewn
together with invisible thread, easy to break.  


The squirrel keeps breaking
the suet feeder, opening it like a fan.
I don’t begrudge her. She is so
hungry for acorns, frail-
winged maple seeds, cherry pits,
even the tiny seeds of the milk-


weed. She breaks the stems, milky
sap sticking bitter to her paws. I break
stale bread for her, save pits
from fruit, scatter them in a fan
across the lawn. The grass too is frail,
each blade a fine strand of thread sewn


over the cracked soil. A summer so
dry the heavens complain. The Milky
Way trembles with heat. A frail
moon shines through the broken
trees. Not a breath of wind fans
the simmering ground, pitted


with dust. This is the pits.
It sucks, like having to sew
aprons in junior high. Fans
of rebellion, unite! Milk
your courage untl it breaks!
I’m so tired of feeling frail.








or the alternate last verse, which I kinda like!
with dust. This is the pits.
It sucks, like having to sew
aprons in junior high. Fans
of rebellion, unite! Milk
the bastards till they break!
Let’s stop being so fucking frail.







			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: WHAT WE CARRY


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
tough   sleeve   bag    wave    half    fire


l.


WHAT WE CARRY


 


Each of us carries a bag, a tough bag, 


filled with the weight of our times and years.


 


Each of us is half-dead these days. We wave


to one another across the firewall.


 


We wave, and blink our eyes. For each is still 


alive, one sleeve rolled up, scrubbing along


 


however we can, lugging our bags, 


bearing our bit of the impossible load.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: SIX TREASURED THINGS: A ZUIHITSU


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
rigid   draw    meadow   peer     lemon       cap


(another one with those words)


 


 


SIX TREASURED THINGS:  A ZUIHITSU


1. A rigid plastic lawn chair, one of four that my parents kept on the deck of their condominium. I keep it on the front step from spring till snow.  I sit there at sunrise and sunset, watching the yellow light flicker like sparks between the leaves.


2.  The white linen cap I bought in Traverse City in a shop that sold hats and, unexpectedly, wine-making supplies. A young friend told me that when I wear it, I remind him of Yoko Ono. I wear it often.


3. Our backyard. It was forest, then meadow, then lawn, and it is now growing up again into forest. We’ve reserved a patch of grass around the house, and bits for vegetables and flowers, but what was barren lawn is filling up with grasses and goldenrod, bramble and sumac, gray dogwood and pine and oak. Five years ago, I planted one solemn young chestnut tree as an act of defiance.


4.The drawing of a cat we had for a few months. Her name was Nanette, and she was tri-colored, and very small. The old woman who gave her to us could not keep her. “There’s something wrong with her,” she told us, and there was. In the drawing, Nanette is curled, sleeping, in a chair that once was in the living room and is now in the kitchen. The drawing was made by an artist friend who stayed with us for a summer—along with her husband and three children—in the room that once was our guest room, and is now the study where I write.


5. The lemons I always have by me. Here is a new maxim I try to live by: When in doubt, add lemon. To vegetables, to pastas, to soda water, to soup. The scent of lemon revives me and a lick of lemon opens my senses to all the good in the world that remains. 


6. Ursula Le Guin wrote “There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.” I treasure a company of peers—poets, artists, women who keep doing the next thing, and the next thing, and the next.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  SESTINA FOR THE SUMMER OF 2020


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
 


cap   rigid   lemon   peer   draw   meadow


 


SESTINA FOR THE SUMMER OF 2020


Like a drawing  by Van Gogh,


I stand rigid in the meadow. I wear my white cap. 


I peel a lemon, and peer at the trees.


I wear my white cap


though the brim is too rigid


for me to bend against the lemon-


brightness of the sun. I stand alone, peer


into the middle distance like a drawing


by Van Gogh of a woman in a meadow.


 


It is August, and the earth is dry. The meadow   


crackles with brown grasses capped  


with seeds. The summer draws 


to a close. Have we yet let go our rigid 


sense of what is real? My peers 


cannot guess. News sours me, like lemon.


 


When I was young, I wore lemon


cologne. I lay in this meadow 


beside a man—my peerless


lover—who wore a Greek fishing cap.


But our bones have gone rigid


with the years. We have drawn


 


living water so long. Now we draw


water grown bitter, like lemon


rind, and brackish, from a rigid


bottle. A butterfly wavers over the meadow


searching for one plant to cap 


with one pale egg. I peer


 


at her with shaded eyes, my only peer


now in this tight-drawn


season, this heated season, capped


with grasses the color of dried lemon  


peel. Under my feet, the meadow 


soil is hard, cracked, rigid


 


with the hard rigidity


of this rainless summer, a peerless


summer of an anxiety that a meadow


cannot know. The trees live on, drawing


their life from deeper water. The lemon


sun beats and beats on my white cap. 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: SIX WORDS, SIX STANZAS


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
joy    exhaust    chorus    toll    appear     trunk


 


SIX WORDS, SIX STANZAS


 


The steamer trunk might have been my grandfather’s, 


but I don’t remember seeing it in


his dark little room that smelled like old clocks.


 


If I sit for a long time in this chair


the right words will appear. Like magic.


Despite the evidence, I still believe


 


that. Believing in anything now takes


a toll. There doesn’t seem to be a god,


for instance, who gives a shit about us.


 


It’s August. The dawn chorus is over


for the year. Sometimes, one dusty robin


lands on the lawn and hops around. The worms


 


have burrowed down under. Everyone is


exhausted by the heat, the drought, the plague,


waiting and waiting for some kind of relief.


 


My grandfather had a small life, and yet


he made himself a bit of joy. Magic tricks.


Walks. Old friends. Keeping all those clocks ticking.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #2


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
with thanks to Kathy, David, Kathy, and Wanda


 


lazy


looking glass


friend


pluck


OPEN STUDIO POEM 2


Too lazy today to pay attention


to the face in the looking glass—


mirror, mirror on the wall—


Does it matter what we look like?


I’m learning lately to be


my own friend. The kind


of friend I need. A friend


with pluck. Spunk. The kind


of nerve it takes to ignore


the face and see


what’s on the other side.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words:  Is it too late to invent America?


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
sand


braid


task


invent


rife


mauve


 


 


Is it too late to invent America?


1.


While the sky outside turned mauve, 


Kushner’s Belize said, “I hate America. . . .


You come to room 1013 over at the hospital. . 


I’ll show you America. 


Terminal, crazy and mean.” 


In a city rife with AIDS, 


every day he did his tasks.


Compassion isn’t what you think.


 


2.


Nobody knows what Jesus wrote


in the sand, but the men dropped their stones


and crept away, one by one. 


No one is without sin


and it’s a commonplace to hate in others


our own grimmest angels.


I hate people who aren’t compassionate.


 


3.


America has never been great


and we’ve never had a decent metaphor.


From the beginning, the pot didn’t hold us all—


why should we stew and amalgamate? 


How about a braid—not of hair, but of water—


slow river moving over a delta, 


living streams carrying their histories,


interlacing,  winding toward one sea.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
words: Open Studio Poem #1


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
For the past few weeks, I have been the only poet in an online open studio. Instead of knitting last time, I decided to ask each of the other artists for a word, and I wrote this poem while they did their arts.


 


fuchsia


malleable


daffodil


liberty


 


The unpruned fuchsia in its faded pot


is a mess of sticks, spotty leaves, a few stunted buds.


It is not a malleable plant; 


it’s fussy about water and light.


Not like the daffodils. Every spring—


flood or freeze or April snow—


they push up through thickets of grasses


and edge the lawn with yellow and white.


I expect there is some liberty


in taking what is given, staying deep,


blooming from the settled bulb.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
LETTERS NOT SENT: Two


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
To His Holiness the Dalai Lama:


I’m re-re-re-re-reading Little Women, of all things, and find it a great deal more moralizing than I did when I was young.   And women’s laughter–the Heretics group I’m in  (all of us over fifty) laugh a great deal when we’re together–not necessarily even about anything.  We were getting to be a bunch of boring old people sitting around telling the same stories all the time.


To St. Francis:


Well, as you said, I’m about to ramble.  I planted Swiss chard this morning, and gladiolas, and cherry tomatoes in pots.  And the Apocalypse didn’t come yesterday–were you surprised?  I hope that you are all better after your “very, very, VERY rare” experience.  The chorus I sing in is preparing the “Laudamus Te” and the “Magnificat” from the Solemn Vespers for our spring concert, and I got to thinking that maybe the whole suffering bleeding mess of the world has been worth it for that music.  It’s political, but we came at it obliquely, through Vikings and El Salvador and the Crusades and the Trojan War, for example.


To Christopher Robin and Pooh


I think it was Martin Smith who said/wrote that women’s soul work is different from men’s.  “Holy detachment.”   I want to come visit you soon.  Maybe I shall.  I miss you.  What would it be like to be in that café and see people Raptured away? And speaking of books, I now have The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary.  I have been wanting one for awhile.