Poetry

The trees in my hometown are tall. And old. So old and so tall they attract tourists. Tourists look up. We look down. We know the real action is far below their fancy boots. We understand what’s at work: the far-reaching intricate pattern, ancient roots crisscrossing the darkness somewhere near the water table, anchoring everything […]

Do not go into the wilderness expecting anything. Keep your eyes down, remembering what is wild cannot be easily approached: Ask what you must ask, but ask it slant. Listen to the sound of your breath, the wind, the stream whispering over the cobbles, your heart beating madly in your breast. Just beyond flowers and […]

On the Humboldt coast Under two quilts and my Mariner’s blanket Warm gifts given to me by warm people all of whom live in warmer places than here The entire planet is hotting up A twenty mile drive would find me twenty degrees warmer with sunshiny skies I’m not complaining It only sounds like it […]

The finest cats In the nation Patrol Eureka. Hard, barrel-bodies with Broad, Chicago shoulders, Slice through the Blackberry brambles With New York efficiency. They prepare a meal of mouse, Plated fetchingly, and placed On your doorstep, Not to be outdone by Southern hospitality. Big voice, big action: Their doings dominate Every conversation, And they glory […]

Remember there are lush, green redwood ravines, groves set aside for citizens’ respite and renewal, so ancient that current problems seem a wisp of spider’s web. A league of people preserved this sliver of coastline, wrested woods from those wanting only profits. Because of their persistence, I walk the Hope Trail as the morning fog […]

Today an unexpected gift To come upon a grazing deer She looked at us and stood quite still Likewise did we to keep her there. So gaze I did as she returned To munching on the grass nearby The timing gave me such a lift As it was four years since my mother died. I […]

Turkey buzzard guards this delta from fence post perch to where Salt River runs to meet Eel & both snake as one to sea. Who salted that river with her tears? & why did she weep as her gaze turned to where it ran to join the mouth calling itself home singing itself to the […]

a sense of place etched on her face erosion from emotion frozen as though she’d been wrote on in that cardboard burrow where every neuro, every furrow petrified traumatized and cast aside shuddering through sleepless nights struggling to win needless fights with blurry eyes and worry lines at sixteen going on thirty-nine leaving all she’d […]

A white woman, I had learned the history of horrors: grisly holds of jammed slave ships, cruel auctions of black families torn apart, picnics at lynchings of castrated bodies. Then at seventy-five I learned, dismayed, that it took two full years for news of Lincoln’s proclamation to reach slaves in Texas, not knowing they were […]

It’s a good thing that puppies are cute E’re their fate would be in deep dispute When they while away the hours Digging deep in your flowers Pulling them all up by the roots! Dottie Simmons

My sledge hammer Reigns down, Slowly dismembering What once was Well built. Hard as I swing Each joint resists My elder efforts To move forward, With new plans. Shingles fly, Glass breaks, Joints hold, Until they don’t … Kirk Gothier

Could it be Could it be I’d forgotten During the long months Of clouds and fog Forgotten the unbelievable bliss Of falling into the Infinite depth Of a clear sky full of stars On a warm night ✨ Dottie Simmons