As Mourning Doves Persist

Rising from the damp ditch of short sleep acequia lady picks up her traveling mandolin to accompany the boom box  bass on wheels  passing on the wet street. Bus comes by. Push brakes 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. Accordion whistles through car windows. Down the block, one weary dishwasher steps out for a smoke. Cheap spoons a-jangle in his big, damp pockets... Excerpted from  The Shape of Caught Water available from Red Mountain Press or directly from the author (505.670.4327) http://redmountainpress.us/

                                 Sight of sound in the palm of the ear turning to the true face of the One in the room. With you, we are all toddling toward the sphere of the wave in our magnificent spin. Tuning the center of sound. Palms down. Pressing against the dervish    in the sanctuary                                   alcove,  the sight  of the music you have made  with  your heart in your ear. Stilling the wave. The spiral of sound traveling more slowly now as you center magnificently. Walking toward the two halves conjoined. Strumming  prayer.

...Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, into Your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.  Maya Angelou excerpted from " On the Pulse of Morning " which Angelou read at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993.

If I close my eyes Pickpocket ears offer Surprise All around us is the Twist of commerce Senses tested

...The wind distorts all familiar signals now, the light from stars like gremlin tumbleweeds my mother gathered from the road                                                                     that ran alongside the house spray painting their wind-snarled heads in golden wet drip decorating the small front porch with their bottled and suspended drift when anything the wind sent in was fair game and we made everything from nothing in our personal diorama of wind in this neighborhood of kites and tangled string, tetherball rolling side to side on the silver pole in the backyard, a modern  weather vane  keeping everyone awake at night with its harsh lullabye beating at the door from the whole ( how a thing so readied can explode. Like this ) Thank you to Cut+Paste Society Poetry Storm 3.0 Wi...

...The garden sings in her invisible weather. Of Russian sage. Of licorice scented stalks. All is fodder. You are turning the wheel with tender arms. Of dandelion and flock to dye the cloth with your indigo hands, collar turned up at the neck in this wind, and your shirt tail tucked in. You are timeless in your mother cloak, rivulets of dirt under your nails and memories of beach and snow. excerpted from the whole, a birthday poem for BR

I inherited you, brothers of barbed wire like the furry dogs dragged home and sisters of consent to anxiety, yet this is the holiday of hands, of arroyo clay, pie crust and dough when finally we settle and the dining is palatial, appetizers made of empathy, dinner of  generations' woe songs.