As Mourning Doves Persist

My teenage daughter has had her heart broken. There is a journey ahead now. We have all been here too more than once, most likely, in our lives, but that is no consolation as she holds her face against the soft inside of her forearm, crying that she does and does not know what to do. This afternoon is the first public reading from my poetry collection, The Shape of Caught Water . Though the book will not officially launch until Spring, I will stand up and bare my heart in a room of strangers and friends as winter light stripes the air in the museum where history hangs on the walls.  As I was looking at the table of contents to select poems for the reading, I realized how many of the poems were written for or about my daughter. She is a "chip off of my heart", I typed to someone I'd not seen in thirty years earlier today, describing the awe-inspiring child I gave birth to. She is blistering hot and cold like lemonade and iced tea; she carries the rain in her precious h...

Now I am in receipt of 62 pages of chicken scratch, brilliant interventions like ants on PDF scroll. Insert hair space. Begin new paragraph. Move right. Move left. It's a marching band of squiggles. But, really, I am grateful for the all-seeing eyes of a editor who knows too the music inside the lines, despite the marks of which there are many. He points out that it's the vases that never empty of water, not the roses. Although I must admit the image in my mind now of yellow roses with petals full of damp curiously conjures the springy touch of aloe vera broken from its home before you slice it open, releasing the balm to apply to a scrape.  I read the margin's menu carefully, a page at a time, remembering another language, that of the proofreader's marks. From The Shape of Caught Water : This morning the mourning dove's call, overridden  by far off traffic sounds, I walk the hallway with  fingertips on the walls, braille in surrender. What will arrive...

When I first began posting on this blog I was inspired by a weekly horoscope that offered the following: "...It's important that you do what you do best without any embellishment, pretentiousness, or self-consciousness. Don't you dare try to hard or think too much or twist yourself like a contortionist to meet ... expectations. Trust the thrust of your simple urges." For ten months I worked collaboratively on a manuscript of imaginary letters with a dear, longtime friend only to eventually scrap it, or, let's say temporarily set it aside to age. We felt we could no longer move forward due to constraints that were being placed on the work from the outside. It was our decision that we were in fact twisting and contorting, re-writing and subsequently producing something that began to no longer resemble the original work. This simply didn't feel right. We opted to hold true to the initial intention. I then began assembling a book-length manuscript of poems and...

Rising from the damp ditch of short sleep acequia lady picks up her traveling mandolin to accompany boom box bass on wheels passing on the wet street. Bus comes by. Push brake hiss at the rigid stop sign corner. Wistful 'o' in the mouth of the bronze mother in the artist's yard floats as if a piano in her esophagus is escaping.

Entire summer days, we run slick pavement. Hurl ourselves from a low board into cool water for shiny pennies tossed. Underwater tea parties and handstands. Skinny legs in the air ready to ignite. At night from a back bedroom window, I spy on the swimming pool. Light left on illuminates  the moving rectangle of blue. Hole my father dug to hold us there. My sister and brother asleep in the same room. Outside, bats like dark kites dare the night.

Clouds or not. This tent marks the clearing.  Corners stitched together  make honeycomb cocoon.  Someone crawled out, solitary, first  to assemble breakfast. Bacon and berries and bread drenched in batter. Someone gathered lost shoes. Arranged palm-sized rocks. Shuffled canvas chairs to circle the fire pit still smoking, to awaken day's amphitheater. Brothers paired for strumming. Cousins who linger in nap tents  to talk,  stretching. Redwood trees and rock river quietly flatter silver banks. Kayaks of fathers. Monarchs, arching, glide. Someone stitched these burgundy seams. Who told the moon to greet me? When I crawled out, sleepless, no longer lonely.

for condiment, only mustard, dusty dark Dijon. Merely mustard for the garlic sausage and to spread across tortilla. Top curlicues of sweet potato fries. Dribble on fresh wilt spinach. Only mustard for this retreat. Two days away with this most confident of seasonings and a tall thin jar of olives, gin, Earl Grey, and dark chocolate covered toffee. But there is also salt in this casita and cane sugar on a shelf in a bag with clothespin to clasp it shut. A soldier’s queue of spices including Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Magic Blend. A writer will not starve here. Nothing bland. Sharp is the dab of smoky paste against the sweet fried bites speared with foreign fork. Not mayonnaise. Not sour cream. The mustard is the master, no matter.