As Mourning Doves Persist

Saturday afternoon, having returned home, nothing much pressing to do but lie down on the green sheets in fall heat with the ceiling fan switched on. I reach for a book. Just c ome from south side of town, El Dorado , where an 80 year old friend read her poems, restless lullabyes, while outside in the half demolished parking lot construction workers hollered.  Afterwards three of us pulled off for salad, burger, a potent porter in tall cool glass, and Shaker lemon pie - thin granulated citrus slices hidden in crust thick as the aired out top soil after sporadic monsoon. We talked of the mistakes that poets make. Downtown, fiesta . Don Diego, his court, and young unmarried  reina cross the plaza.  I drive the opposite direction, down Old Las Vegas Highway and spy the old ones, abuelas and their granddaughters pulling dark colored cars off to the side of the road, seeking shade. They exit with weathered sticks and flat, sturdy pillows. Together they will squat to sh...

I am the man asleep on the stoops of others, never to return to the warm places inside. Crooked in the morning, thirsty, the river freezes in winter. This is the mortgage of my homelessness. No leisure in this. No romance in nowhere. No shame in the hump of belongings on my back. Man seen and not seen Volcano of a world erupted. from the Shape of Caught Water Red Mountain Press 2013 www.redmountainpress.us

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...