My Publications

Beauty and happiness come! Unexpectedly
in the single seconds that make up our days. 
They come as two mourning doves umbrellaing
together under the branches of the lacy, tea-green
fern just outside the rain-flecked window. 
They come as the Japanese Beetle, its metallic-blue
and green head, its copper-colored back and tan
wings, almost hidden in the rose bush confiscated
from our mother’s garden. They come in the sun’s 
slant in mid-afternoon. In a deceased sister’s succulents
surviving the winter’s hard freeze. In baby’s breath.
They come to one awaiting a bone marrow transplant, 
to his spouse of forty-nine years packing for the one 
hundred days away from home in the city of steel 
and strangers. They come to the refugee fleeing
her birth country, a brimming paper bag and walking
cane her only possessions.

Published: Verse-Virtual, 2023; photo from Unsplash

—to my husband, recently diagnosed with rare and debilitating disease

Today I’m thinking about my legacy,

what I can hope for, what I might achieve.

I will never be a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Picasso

or a Keats, will never be crowned with an olive

wreath nor Ticktok my way to fame. I won’t be

in the annals of history or in the research journals

of science or in the exhibits of great Pharoahs

whose cartouche carvings and jewelry collections

blazon the family tombs of their mighty empires

like a jillion coral polyps underneath the surface

of the sea. But what I could achieve is a good name,

one chiseled in a single stone, a name suggesting

a rock or a gracious giver or one who has withstood

great heat. A name like Shadrack, a name like yours.

Published in my April 2024 collection, Come before Winter

-with a line from Mary Oliver

I’m child seven born the seventh month.
I do not have to be good
because I am already perfect, you see.
The prime, boasting about the seven wonders
of the world on everyone’s bucket list,
singing of seven colors of the rainbow
and the seven holes in your head.
(Go ahead, right now, and number them.)
I am Joshua’s horn blown seven times
at Jericho, I’m trumpet seven at the
resurrection of the dead.  I am finished,
complete, whole.  I am luck and mystique,
the winning jackpot at the gambler’s slot.
Popular, powerful, holy, I’m the septad, and
I do not have to be good.

Published: One Art, 2020; photo by Unsplash

The spider,
Nature’s mystery.
To leave home her first need,
To escape the devouring of family.

Through her jeweled and silkened weave,
She sends warnings and receives messages.
Her gossamer ensnares,
Her venom paralyzes.

Humans, like spiders,
Liquidate their kind —
If there is no communication or
Retreat.

Published:  One Art, 2020; photo by Unsplash

–After Danusha Laméris and Ted Hughes

The heart is not a gate.
A door that opens and closes
at someone’s will. Not
automated. Not smartphone-
controlled. It is not a soft start
and stop and could even develop
jerks and skips and flutters over
time. It comes with no guarantee,
and the warning is clear–whatever
happens there, happens.

Published: One Art, 2021

The new year is a road of curiosities and
surprises, possibilities at every turn. Open
your eyes wide and lean into the curves. Feel
the wind against your skin and hold your breath
for sudden drops and fast declines. Look left
to see laurel mantling the mountainside,
right to take in the striped Painted Turtle resting
on river’s rocks. Glance in your rear-view mirror,
the sky ablaze with persimmons and honey,
kumquats, and malted milk. The year’s
opportunities are as thick as big toe’s old nail
polish, as sweet and layered as Christmas baklava.
Perhaps white rainbows will frequent rainy skies
this year, maybe an okapi’s scented hoofprints
will appear on your path.

Published:  Verse Virtual, 2024

—after George Flegel’s Dessert Still Life (1620s)
and Carl Sandburg’s Four Preludes on Playthings 
of the Wind

We have our moments, the scenes perfectly set.
Maybe we’re romping in the autumn field
just after sunset, hay freshly-cut and baled,
suffused in soft blue light; or we’re sauntering
through the park in early February, awed by
a single daffodil gussying up the newly-raked,
russet-red pine straw; or perhaps we are
conversing with family at the evening meal
complete with meat and fine wine and
confectioneries ribboned in cinnamon and
snow. And crack! Time lowers his baton.
The scene shifts, the music changes.
Enter crows, the rain, the rats and lizards.

Published: Verse Virtual, 2024

our breath in first-month’s morning air, bubbles in the sand,
the pain of childbirth, fevers, fun, the croup, the pox—

except some things do like old age spots and wrinkles,
first loves, the ocean, and generosity. Like the sun, moon

and truth, Mona Lisa’s smile, and God’s words burned
upon the prophet’s heart. But most things come and go—

Polaroids, eight tracks, jonquils, Tab, and youth, Woodstock,
plaid leisure suits, and the rainbow after rain.

Empires don’t last nor do the bees’ stings nor nightmares
draining out of rocks; neither hangovers, scabs on elbows,

bills and echoes and promises to pray. But the twelfth of never
is aye and always, the wind and pine’s song guaranteed.

The Grecian urn scenes don’t change, do they? And kindness
remains ever the balm in Gilead.

Published: Verse Virtual, 2024