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.

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 #14

14

life

vigil

tune

mute

Life goes on. Really.

We keep vigil together .

It is possible to be friends

on a screen. David 

mutes to tune. Kathy C’s

computer is down

but she’s here, there,

and we know she is,

making art. Kathy H

met Wanda

in a parking lot

and  reports that,

as we suspected,

she is three-dimensional.

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.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #12

OPEN STUDIO POEM #12

patience
 silent
 ricochet
 hibernate
 

 

 

 Have patience, my friends.
 There is no need to run,
 to roar, to ricochet
 from hard place to rock.
 

 Practice being silent instead.
 Sit still, hibernate your mind.
 Go stand in the snow.
 Listen to the stars.

OPEN STUDIO POEM #11

OPEN STUDIO POEM #11
 

 zoom
 sure
 pattern
 

 

 How hard to see the pattern:
 new friends who zoom
 past for an hour.
 

 How tall are they?
 Do they wear shoes?
 And who were they before—
 

 before I knew them
 in this peculiar way,
 both tentative and sure.

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

OPEN STUDIO POEM #8

OPEN STUDIO POEM #8
 

 ribbons
 ukelele
 spew
 

 The sky spews rain
 from silver ribbons of cloud.
 It patters on the roof, unabating:
 Beethoven’s fifth symphony played
 by a ukelele orchestra in the park
 on a moonless November night.

Above the Stone

This is inspired by Hannah Dennison's Quarry Project. 



The dancers float above the water,
 above the stone, not dancing,
 floating, below the dancing
 clouds, the unknowing clouds,
 above the stillness of the stone.