A Selection of Poems

From:  Conversations in Poetry

 

 

THIS NIGHT

​

Let me fly again

in that precious place

so seldom visited

wedged between

asleep and awake.

 

This night,

should my spirit soar once more,

riding on winds of elation,

I will become the bird I once was

a long, long time ago

​

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LOSS

​

Small word loss.

It slips from lips with frequency

while eyes watch

as it falls down and away.

​

Stripped from limbs

that will not bear fruit again,

stark spears of remembering

point to the sky,

while the Earth, in her goodness,

opens her tender mouth

offering herself up

as a final resting place

for all life's losses.

 

 

COME BACK

 

Come back to me in every way.

I will open to you,

look for you,

find you

in everything we loved:

 

earth in our hands

cold creek water

nests of trees

hot sun-drenched meadows

clear starry nights

coyote tracks in new snow

firelight and woodsmoke

 

All such thoughts 

spin us together

in a memory of tender joy. 

​

​

THE DREAM

​

How faint the dream

in the early morning hours

as my feet and legs

become grey tattered lace.

​

I gaze down and watch

as this change moves up my body.

​

With deepening resignation 

I rest my head

against my dead husband's shoulder

willing to be carried away

on his journey of disappearance.

 

 

NEW BEGINNINGS

​

Memories in my hands

run through my fingers

while the heart hesitates

as it yields up its treasures

to the deepening shadows.

​

Relieved of pain,

and finding a delight in rising

day by day,

yet still longing to feel 

one more time,

the exquisite yearning 

for a lost love.

​

Still, little by little,

the now carries me gently forward

in the current

of its new beginnings.

​

​

GREY MOUNTAIN

​

Death comes over the hill.

I can hear her padding footsteps.

I see her

as I look back over my shoulder.

​

She is no longer in my mind.

Now, I know her with my eyes.

​

She is softly humming a lullaby.

It is familiar, but I can't recall it.

 

An owl flits from tree to tree

as her companion.

​

She wears a purse

on her waist belt.

It is embroidered with images

of all living things.

Inside her purse is a key.

 

Ahead looms the grey mountain

of my dreams 

surrounded in wispy skies

all soft and neutral.

 

At the base of the mountain

is an ancient door. 

The writings on its surface

are obscure.

 

Black spires of tall redwoods

stand guard by the locked door

while a white feathered hawk

looks down

and shows herself

bringing notice

of what is to come. 

​

​

From: SUNSEEKERS

 

 

SUNSEEKERS

​

In the early morning hours

crows fly east together in the hundreds.

​

Black notes of sound flying across 

a sheet of music.

​

Minnesingers,

they fly from their roosts 

in the morning and woo the sun 

with their songs of love.

​

When she rises from her bed

in response,

the sun will paint

the sky's canvas a pale blue

with dark streaks of grey clouds

tinged in pink,

and the day will begin.

​

​

THE GREAT NORTH

​

The dun colour of winter

with its tree limbs stripped down,

stiff brown-grey grass

and trodden lanes of cold pale earth,

slump with longing

for the lush summer now gone.

​

In an arresting moment,

the deep-red and orange

of the setting sun

lays down brilliant colours

on the flesh of the sky

where the black forms

of leafless trees,

leaning bushes and spent grass

pen lacy patterns on its glow.

​

In the early morning the sun rises

sending its slanting beams

across the fields. 

 

Its moving light strikes the ice

that has embraced the remains

of summer's harvest

opening the scene with prisms

that spin

to the brittle sounds

of gelid chimes.

​

This is the time to stand still,

to see and to listen.

​

In the Great North

the ancient ones sit

with their murmured knowing. 

Jewels of wisdom fall from their lips,

a cascade of gifts,

but we are moving too fast

in our oblivion

to notice our neglect.

​

​

MUD SHOES

​

We were young,

wide open, let loose, 

headed where the cool rain

had married the earth.

​

The red mud calling to us, 

we dipped in our bare feet

listening for the squelch,

and feeling the coolness

of its thick silkiness

between our toes.

​

We stretched out out legs to let it dry.

​

Good mud,

mud shoes,

shielding our soles.

​

​

TAKOTSUBO

​

The sky lifts a lone goose aloft

away from its V.

It circles with plaintive calls

to a lost mate.

​

I close my door to muffle the distress.

​

Quiet wraps around me

as I grow cold

in the coils of my own losses.

​

Unforgotten, 

there in the hidden shadows

of my ribs,

lives a perpetual bruise.

​

When the cut of loss is deep 

it hangs heavy on the heart

changing its shape

as it pulls down

on its own wellbeing.

 

 

ROSEY-RED LIPS

 

Moonlight enters

between the louvers

of the shutters

laying itself on the bed

throwing down patterns

of light and darkness

in time with the flow of the clouds

across the night sky.

​

Rosey-red lips in the light,

plump and satiny,

part to reveal

the welcoming darkness within.

​

The scent of jasmine,

carried through the open window,

wraps its fragrant arms

around those entwined

there on the bed,

in the darkness,

in the light,

that comes and goes.

​

​

NET OF THE MIND

 

Words and images float

like fallen leaves

on the waters of aquifers

that rise up becoming springs,

rivers, seas, and oceans.

​

At times they are snagged 

by stones and branches, eddies

or foam along the banks

where they repeat:

I am - I am - I am...

until they are released 

and fed back into the flow.

​

They lie down on the water's surface

watching the passing clouds,

or looking down at life in the water

while being carried along

for days, weeks

and sometimes years.

​

They have no will of their own.

They have no hands.

They have no feet.

​

I reach out

leaning over the water's edge

to catch them up

in the open mouth

of the net of my mind.

​

 

WHITE WATER BLUE CLOUDS

​

White water blue clouds,

waves impelled forward,

chase after each other.

​

Crushing the undefended rock children 

that lay at the feet of cliff faces,

the spray runs back down

to the sea as tears.

​

The roar, carried up to the wind,

paints a glaze

on gull heads and wings.

With their ha-ha-ha call of alarm,

they scatter in all directions.

​

I watch from the cliff top.

Forgetting, I loosen my grip

on my white umbrella.

It flies away,

a white bird,

and falls on the rocks below.

​

Now limp and wet with broken ribs

and defenceless against

the pull of retreating water,

it is taken away.

 

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