Poetry

Were the endless reigns Of chainsaws lumbering, While bobbing along Crystal clear waters In the Trinity River, Away from home. I was warned of The pending rains And endless clouds, But could only smell Essence of conifers In the healing waters. The tastes of freedom Dwarfed my senses Need for pleasure, Where beauty determined What […]

No cat hair where you slept on the chair next to me. My milk glass – safe from your eager sips, or cereal stolen before I could sit down to eat. Or sitting on the window sill watching busy birds at the feeder, while you waited for me to scoop the last bite of breakfast […]

Were the endless reigns Of chainsaws lumbering, While bobbing along Crystal clear waters In the Trinity River, Away from home. I was warned of The pending rains And endless clouds, But could only smell Essence of conifers In the healing waters. The tastes of freedom Dwarfed my senses Need for pleasure, Where beauty determined What […]

No cat hair where you slept on the chair next to me. My milk glass – safe from your eager sips, or cereal stolen before I could sit down to eat. Or sitting on the window sill watching busy birds at the feeder, while you waited for me to scoop the last bite of breakfast […]

The place of my birth is reaching out to me like Janus, with its tentacles, sea-salty and inebriated. We remember the ocean as children: watching the water flow in and out, the glistening anemones and the sand dollars, the sea urchins, the fresh air and our mothers in their dresses. I gave the first boy […]

(and all who have been victimized by gun violence and dehumanization) In the only photo I’ve seen, the only one on file, he wears a Star Wars shirt and closed-mouth smile The rest, having not met him, is for me to imagine but seeing him next to his mother, I see compassion I see a […]

…Fifty-two, fifty-three, and fifty-four Are the number of years this young redwood Lived, my son. That’s tragic, yes, but we should Learn from nature how to live. Let’s learn more. Starting at its core, let’s count fourteen rings. That’s when your mom was born. Let’s count two more. One and two. That’s when I opened […]

   run to see beyond the trees five hundred or so snow geese in their vees – telling travelers’ tales to the island below. and here, down here, a thousand robins sing their nest-building song – so soon? and the long-tailed ducks? will they leave tonight? on the fifth of march we saw eight, maybe […]

I looked up and there was one low upon the sky. And then three seven twelve. Then too many to count or even see- a torrent flying just beyond my reach. Golden underbellies and outstretched wings turning the blemished sky for a moment into a feathered quilt. Then there were fewer …. fewer nine five […]

A pinging singing of Rice bouncing off roof Spittering, splattering. Deluge of ball bearings Heralding forty-four Days and 44 more nights Rain again and again When, when will it end? The sheeting sleeting rain Gray days, wet lawns But look: a yellow revolution Retribution of the daffodils James Floss

Sky becomes a hovercraft of doom and I’m thinking, ‘now what?’ as I sit in the queue waiting to cross this quake-damaged bridge, shaken even more by the string of events that followed, reminding us of everything nature has to throw at us, leaving the bridge open to one-way traffic only, each determined repair challenged […]