As Mourning Doves Persist

Forest of thin trees not so thin to not hide her. Dips  in the walk needles, soft, Light through feather arms,  likely no more than a man-made block but for this girl, it was Sherwood Forest. Long scream of hawk, wingspan broad. Pausing first at the pond with its pollywogs. Then entering. This limitless place -  not lost, no one  need  find her.  Caps of moss. Hooves far off . Honeysuckle  and her dull duplex  left longing with its barbie dolls  in small  travel cases with  pink  shoes,  always lost.  What grows  here is edible if you can identify. Patches and squares of timeless scruff. Missing  reference, she  names names - shirtless tree, paint can, pokey man, little sister's tease, her mother's favorite  poetry: Dickinson's slant of light.

How to describe the distance I walked for those six days. How I reached inside. What exactly transpired, meeting women who could tune the entire orchestra or craft a snake wrapped around a boy's ankles standing on a precipice, sweating. How to tell that one scholar had dyed a portion of her wispy hair electric blue and that another joined me in the farthest room in the library (always open) and that before she began writing, she laid out her utensils including a chocolate colored fan folded on the flat table. I typed with two fingers on the pad of an iPad inherited from my college bound daughter, evoking sixteen brothers and sisters as if they had just, after 59 years, been handed to me anew as a whole to hold up to the light. Desert light which under my green umbrella on the path brought less unsettling glint to gradually reveal the most frightening parts. Home now, I walk through the house shirtless and with knowledge. Recalling how on free Friday we paused only long enough t...

Having just spent an exceptional week of study and sturdy walks from one end of northern New Mexico's Ghost Ranch property to the next, in the company of more than one hundred women writers at A Room of Her Own (AROHO) retreat, I was introduced to the concept of the hero/heroine's journey with its setting off from a safe, if not full color, home - think Dorothy in Kansas not yet Technicolor; crossing the threshold; dipping into battle or exploration - yellow brick road; witch on a bicycle with monkeys; and rising back up again in the companionship of your posse, then...having prevailed, returning. This is, mind you, an enormously over simplified version of the equation. We struggled, the ten of us in this Master Class, with just what weapons, wounds, and accolades the woman receives in her trek. Given a writing prompt to record my version of the heroine's journey, the poem below is what was generated: (amniocentesis: voyage of perfect delay) Root cellar here or bomb ...

Patsy Cline is singing in the living room while I wash the morning's dishes. My husband is at the computer refashioning his novel. Last night I sat at the table with two other poets, thoughtful women with whom I will read tomorrow in a local bookstore on the acequia in Santa Fe. We practiced tentatively at first with one another. Barbara pretending to look up and out over her glasses at the imaginary. I closing my eyes to gauge the distance between the reader and the song spun out to the songs inside of others. Tania brings her elegant, old world surname which we mark into syllables for proper introduction though, under the influence of two dark beers at that lesson-taking, I am not even entirely sure where I scribbled the phonetic cheat sheet.  Not to worry. We will forget certain things and remember others as we stand to clear our throats and aim to remain calm projecting the humor, our compact stories, and favorite music to those present.  When the cowgirl's nostalgic ...

Perhaps it's just me but I found it odd that his statue is here. Ghandi standing behind the San Francisco Ferry Building, blessing the day's horizon and wire span of the suspension bridge that broke once with earthquake. Did I miss something? Did he journey here once, to this wharf where today there is a market housed in the one-time passenger hall of metal and glass, people standing in long lines for Peet's Coffee, lines no deterrent to one in need of matcha or espresso or chai, patiently texting their lover or boss?  Ghandi is thin as ever, his stride here, a wishing bone. A single hand raised, scooping out solutions or simply waving in benediction, hailing wind for the damp ride for boat travelers en route to Sausalito or safe passage for automobiles on the distant bridge passing through the mountain of Yerba Buena.  It was only due to my impatient walk out to the fringe of tea hawkers and cheese barkers that I discovered this halo of a man, prince of non-violent rea...

for children everywhere, broken, homeless & disabled My eyes are brown and green as the mountain's pi ñ on. I wear thinning, purple long underwear in the morning and warm socks sometimes late into the day. You probably don’t know my name,  but it was stitched simply.  Perfect quilt of father and mother.                            Occasionally  I fold up inside myself. Doesn't everyone? What I love best is laughter, cold water running through my hands. I should have been a whole boy with no  mystery inside of me,  but others don’t see me that way, look straight through me, except my mother who will always love me as I am.  Firecracker in the closet hidden  behind someone else’s shoes.  Too many times I could have been  disowned.  But I know  the newborn ghosts that haunt the corner  hotel downtown now,  o...

I write of the mourning bird's persistence. Only I know precisely what this evokes. The sadness of certain sounds brought home. Sun as nest for childhood symphony. Perimeter roads charted solo or with siblings. We have grown but still there is an edge. Where frolic is sparked by song. With recipes. In the croon of the crow or a room of forgotten friends turning to smile on your approach. Gray doves lift and sail. I am brought present while swaddled in the pleasure of past napping. Holding still long enough to know the moaning, nostalgia of never forgetting. W alking a rutted road with shiny pebbles and pick up sticks fallen from trees.  Girl at home at a window with downpour on the other side of glass.  Forgiving what is absent, in age we register connections, yet we run our hands over inherited chenille and seek. Mournful bird song. Grandmother who always fed us. Letters from invisible fathers. The tangle of hedge and holly with thorns.  Shadow dog at the foot of th...