Summer is here and I am ready to edit

I have been itching to dig into the 365 poems and begin editing. They haunt me like some creepy ghosts in the attic, hover overhead at night and beg, whine, pout. So, I will begin the painful (ahhh, but delicious) process of editing/revising.

I will start at the beginning. Hmm, maybe jump from the first week of one month to the first of the next? We'll just have to see, won't we?

Snow Falls, Maine a fanciful place

Snow Falls, Maine

White chocolates
on every pillow,
windows showing their lace
bodices like Victorian girls
who hint at what's to be
if only you'd declare your love.

Snow from some fairyland
place has come for the night,
Shut your mind off
to everyday traffic,
let in the dreams waiting
just beyond your imagination.

Snow Falls, Maine,
candlelight town, wind sighs
against the house where lovers
bundle under the covers,
hope that there is one more day
of doing nothing together.

Snow Falls, Maine
where spring is not a religion.

Since the 365 has come and gone, what of poetry writing for me?

I have taken a little breather from posting. I am embroiled (right word, thinking of heat and the root word: broil) in huge political mess with the school board on which I serve. But poetry is as ever, my respite. My love of the work and the words that create any world I want keep me going despite the fires of discontent that rage all around.

Yes, I am still writing. Almost daily, though not with urgency of keeping a strict discipline. Rather that discipline calls to me from my dreams, from meetings that are contentious, and from this abysmal weather that will not relent to the charms of spring.

I am writing more in the Wilbur book project; will soon set up a new discipline for that. I guess you might say I do my best when I am pressured, self-pressured. I have a bit of work too on the boyfriend book before sending it off to the rejection mill. Ha! I am actually fairly certain it will get picked up because it is a somewhat quirky premise and the poems are really good. Not being a braggart here; they are just really quite good.

I am holding off with the 365 poems revision as I need some distance. I may take them (oh well, I will take them since they are here in cyberspace with me) to AWP and work on them in the hotel each evening if my "dance card" is not too full. I really LOVED doing the project. I hope the love of it comes forth in the manuscripts (yes TWO) that are forthcoming from the project.

Until then, and in the spirit of "I'm back!" here is a poem I did recently:

Evanescence

This is the way of your dear dead,

gone but leaving a trace behind,

a waft of her perfume in your bed;

just below your window, a tread

mark in the garden, a sure sign.

This is the way of our dear dead:

not gone at all. You’re not mislead

by an etched stone. Wait for the shine,

a waft of her perfume in the bed

where you lay for years, fed

each other chiffon pie with limes.

This is the way of our dear dead

to stay on as our belovèds.

Your darling’s face won’t fade in time,

nor the waft of perfume in your bed.

Don’t forget the words she last said:

I’ll stay somehow — until your time. 

This is the way of your dear dead,

a waft of her perfume in your bed.

So enjoy this poem and stay warm. Apparently another snowstorm is rolling in tonight. Grrrr.

Maybe if we all wrote flower poems, things would change???

October Poetry, Week 4

This is IT... the end of my 365 Poetry Challenge. 365 poems, 365 days, no matter what —
Now enjoy the last bit.

Day 22

Odyssey

Four times

or maybe just three

every night the same,

the trip, the stumble, 

eyes half-shut. 

The dream

of water, running by 

the shore, paddling 

from the dock

begging for help.

four times

three

two half-shut eyes

dreams of water

In my old age,

will I be awake enough?

Day 23

Invocation Against Worry

Coming, tomorrow — not to worry yet —

as for yesterday, done with worry,

next worry maybe 

on its way —

stupefy the worry 

with roasted potatoes & thyme, 

good wine, heavy dose of turmeric,

& grease in the fire. A charm

against what will come, will haunt.

Gather ‘round the table

light the candles and offer blessings

cover your eyes against the burn

offer up your belovèd ones

worry

not

bless the worrying heart

charm the darkness

sit down with ghosts

at this good meal.

Day 24

40 weeks

Nowhere near making it,

you arrived at 26 weeks. Fear 

and blood gushed from me as I held

my breath and pushed. Nowhere

in the booklet did it say

labor on this day, nowhere near

40 weeks and safety. The odds

terrible. Push, push hard.

I wait for a cry — 
instead, a mewling sound, a kitten

coming into the world looking 

for milk and mother. I push hard, try to see 
who calls out of me, out to me. 

There, between my knees, a face 

so perfect, a pair of eyes blinking 

in harshness of light and sound. Another 
push to free your sister

from amniotic seawater. Mama!

At 20, what could I know of you

and your twin, bursting 

into my night like a pair of comets?

Day 25

The Call

If I had called that morning

if I’d dialed the number 

if I’d heard your voice in pain

as surely it was a mirror

of the pain, would I have jumped

on a plane to go to you? Or maybe

you’d have faked it, laughed

and said everything is okay, just fine

as you’d said the day before 

when I asked what was wrong.

I heard later that you sang

all the way to the hospital, sang

and died that day without me.

Now your voice and your songs

haunt me, wake me each morning

as once you did: good morning

merry sunshine. There you are

with a song for me each day,

and here I am singing for you.

Day 26

No Liege Poustie* for Millville

The town’s a ruin, conquered 

by blindness, eulogized 

by sharded windows, fall-down 

fences, rusted machinery.

Hear the breathing of frogs 

in the brackish pool by the schoolhouse, 

safe from scavenging boys 

with jars — pierced lid prisons.

Jump rope coils lay still

on the grass, no slap-slap reeraw

in flouncy skirts today. No recess 

bell ringing. No dinner pails.

Hundreds of crows light

the wires, wait for road kill, 

caw relentlessly. Fisher cats 

and badgers scream all night. 

The mill is closed two decades or more. 

Lathes rust in peace, untouched 

by your father’s hands, or mine, zing 

and hum of metal on metal gone silent.

The town’s a ruin

spooked by dreams of the blind,

dreams left to die

of starvation and neglect.

The river, still unclean, fluxes 

its aimless wander to a sea

that waits like Saint Peter

for the souls of martyred fish.


* Liege Poustie, Scottish phrase for being in fine health, in possession of full faculties

Day 27

Warning Label

May be outdated; 

May refill 4 times.

If unsure of interactions

avoid until advice is available.

Take only by mouth,

once daily in evening.

Until familiar with side effects,

avoid driving.

Take only on a full stomach;

don’t mix with alcohol.

Cannot return if opened.

Discard after use-by date.

Put E-Harmony on speed dial.

Refills: 2 

Day 28

Snow falling

hesitant flakes at first,

counting them easy —

10 then 50

then a blast of air

from Canada brings 100s

and the dance begins,

1-2-3 1-2-3

keeping time to the melody

of winter.

Count the hairs

fallen on your head, white

like winters of experience

10 then 50, then the dance 

between you

and the end of youth.

On the porch, 2 chairs 

1 for me, 1 for you —

We sit over hot cups

and tell our lives to each other.

You listen, then I listen

1-2-3   1-2-3

back and forth we rock

through it all, our days

counted, accounted for.

Day 29

Birds in the Chamber

I wake to their waking, slow

and ruffled, a trilling 

against the ceiling, struggle

to clear the mist of night, the last 

dream I remember:

It was of you.

We were fighting, 

fiery words 

not melody roaming the rafters. 

I thought then of skylarks,

wondered if you knew any birds

or if any birds would recognize you,

you with a fist raised, a stream of spittle

at the corner of your mouth, 

flame in your eyes. I call out 

and the birds in the chamber 

promise it portends nothing. Tonight 

I will put out seed, hang suet

from the beams of the chamber

where all dreams go for interpretation.

Day 30

Thunder 

Bad8gi* in the atmosphere. 

Boomers pound the sea, the land, 

like love — rain probably 

has no difficulty falling

Now the rain falls 

like mercy.

Bad8gi trembles

the grass, my hair.

There is lightning 

in the story, more 

to know about love,

about thunder.

* Abenaki for thunder

Day 31

Fenway Aubade #13

Hard to say so long

to the season, to hot and cold

bats, to slumps and thrills.

Hard to say it’s over

when blood runs

high and fever pitch

is our delight. So long —

I turn and go

to other days and nights

without you. 

Shave your beards, clean 

out your lockers,

plan some family time.

B strong for them.

I’ll wait 

for spring training.  

October Poetry, Week 3

Day 15

Leaving

what it’s called when buds

form in spring? Leafing out,

what a girl is doing at puberty?

Leave me alone, 

just want to be left alone

door slams, dishes leaving 

the cupboards in a clatter. Leave 

the mess, go stand by her door. 

Just breathe there. Remember 

being left alone to sulk 

in your room? You, left 

not wanting to be treated as a child, 

warm cookies left by your bed after 

go to your room, young lady.

Don’t leave. Stay and breathe 

as if your sweet cookie breath

could leave something to warm her.

Day 16

She Dreams

She picks apples and corn

grown together on the same trees

behind the house where she lives;

She dreams so real

that nature dreams with her,

so real she rises from sleep 

to pick corn with her right hand, 

apples with her left.  Under the trees,

a fox mother and her kits eat apples 

with chickens from the yard next door.

She picks dreams like apples, like corn,

goes into the sky to harvest 

every dream every dreamt in baskets

made by her grandmothers. And at the end,

when no more dreams can be dreamed,

she will watch other dreamers 

dreaming how she picked apples

and corn, sisters growing together on trees.

Day 17

Periodic Table

I am 70%

2 molecules hydrogen, 

1 molecule oxygen, carbon-based 

organism with a splash 
of sulfur, nitrogen. 

I used to be 

periodic, heme molecules

pouring from my body, water

and wine of childbirth.

I am 100% 

woman, except 

for the traces of testosterone

intended for balance

and passion. 

I am 30% 

sure at any given moment 

that my life is perfect, 

20% that it is a mess,

50% pure chemistry.

So if even if no one else cares

even 1%  about the numbers,

I’ll spend 100% 

of the rest of my life

giving thanks for all of it.

Day 18

Fall and What’s Coming

It starts:

a sniffle, a sneeze —

into my sleeve?

Mom always said don’t 

wipe your nose on that,

but now it’s where

to deposit the phlegm

the snot, the germs

that fly when it comes

to a cold. Dad used

a steaming pot of water,

a towel draped over his head.

Mom smoothed Vapo Rub

on our chests, covered

with squares of flannel.

As a child, my husband used 

to eat it. All that menthol

cannot have been a good idea.

So what’s the plan

for all the ooze a cold brings?

It’s starting: a sniffle,

a bit of scratch in the throat,

and me with bare arms still.

Fall, and what’s coming 

has no place to go. 

Day 19

Weez

I saw the name again

game challenge, social media 

game: invite a random opponent

there it was: Weez.

You told me 

you were waiting to die, 

a tick tock of consequence

ready to go off inside.

Then I heard you’d run

away with a nomad guy

a no-good, a ruffian

who lured you west.

Did the you, Weez, die

to us for him? Did you give

all your things away

and go off, like the old ones

who walk into the woods

and wait? Did you find magic

and now you are a ghost

online, waiting for a game?

Weez, not such an ordinary name

for not an ordinary girl. 

Are you haunting me 

for not trying to make you live?

Day 20 

She was right: 

Carole King singing 

making me cra-a-a-azy, 

anticipation

of you, your coming late

to my door, softly rapping

and me opening to you

in the dark. Butterflies, bees

wait for dark too, dark

for making cocoons, honey.

Greedy anticipation

heat surging up the stairwell,

we never thought to ask

if this is right, proper. 

Instead we honey each other 

like bees, as if extinction

is the only other choice.

Years, years, and years later

we know anticipation

is not enough. Making me crazy.

Day 21

Verboten

Spitting on the sidewalk,

not scrubbing the sidewalk 

on Saturday morning, sidewalk

graffiti in München, sidewalk

a scared space where we all walk,

Volksplatz for walking.

Ist verboten. 

October Poetry, Week 2

Day 8

Beast Day

It reared up like a horse crazed by a snake,

a day so full of thunder and wind

that breathing was impossible. It came

breaking all the windows, drowning

every bird at the feeder. It came

to watch me as I crumbled. 

This beast, day-stealer, took pieces 

of my brain, my hands and feet. It left 

me thrown upon the stairs

like a ragged raincoat, like a cast-off 

shoe along the interstate. Its black tail

stung my face like a hundred whips.

This was not a best day, not a memory 

for my scrapbook. It was a beast day,

a day of apocalypse. One day can shock 

everything, even if you know it’s coming. 

Legend now: how he stopped speaking 

to the neighbor who mocked

the only car he could afford, how he walked

12 miles to my Girl Scout Fly-Ups,

how he lost his wedding ring

in a bag of groceries he bagged at Winn Dixie. 

Sometimes, mostly on fall days that shine

like jars of honey, it is that crazed horse I hear,

smashing its way through every bit of sunlight,

flicking its black tail across my face.

Day 9

Epiphany

My child called
it an epi-fanny, 
the aha moment, the surprise.
It’s a word we use now ourselves,
mispronouncing on purpose,
setting ourselves apart
from other families. It’s a word 
like silly-and-diflia, willn’t, boushallis.

It’s how language morphs
into table-talk symbols
of family life. 

Grandson #3 and I 
once had a whole language
traveling to and from pre-school.
The only words surviving
to his adulthood still used 
as we buckle up for a trip. 
Aniata ateetu? I ask. Akookecad. 
And off we go.

It’s home language, sweet words 
that may be heard in his car 
one day as he drives his daughter
to the boushallis for a haircut.




Day 10

She Hears Bears
— for Kathie

From the woods, a shaking
sound, a boom echoing off trees
she’s never seen before. No city 
sounds to drown the danger
she senses coming at her, the beat 
of breath soon to be on her neck, 
in her flesh. Quiet here is not quiet,
not white noise or ambient, it is bear
breath the same beat as her pulse,
the same as the giant bee
not quite pounding against the pane,
the fly deserving of a death by poetry.
It is a shadow just off stage,
just off the path where she pulls
every muscle into duty, imagines
the news story her family might catch
on the 11 PM broadcast, complete 
with the photo of her
from the jacket of her latest book:
Woman novelist, fearing being eaten 
in Maine woods, stops nonetheless to write the scene.



Day 11

The Fox

hidden in the gulley brush
at the end of our street
comes to my porch 
for a rest. It’s the mother
with her flame tail 
at attention that calls me
from my safe window.
Her kits are denned nearby.
I hear them mewling.
She is hungry; they are too. 

My cupboards yield nothing 
much for foxes, some leftover 
panko, figs, bread and butter
pickles we made two years ago. 
She must want chicken
(a common story: foxes in the henhouse)
but it’s a bit frozen still, thawing 
for my dinner. She catches my eye.  
Her kits call to her again. 
We are mothers. 
I put the chicken on the porch.

Day 12  

Diane

You say you have no talents —
you are nothing, no special 
gifts you say; you’re blank, a hole 
in life, a person sitting, smoking 
waiting 
for a clue. 

I say look at your sons’ birth 
certificates, the diplomas,
the full-to-bursting recipe box,
the husband sleeping next to you
for four decades. Talent
isn’t a mirror, a self-portrait.
It’s being here, being here, being here.

Day 13

Wires

On bad days, very bad days,
she knew that people were coming down 
on wires; she cried to see them, 
angry we couldn’t see them, stop them.
What’s it like in there? Who’s coming?

On good days, very good days,
there was out to dinner and chocolate
silk pie, and matching tops and slacks
and her funny faces. 

We wanted good days
but more and more the very bad days
came down on wires, scorching her eyes,
sparking her cry for help. 

I remember a circus, beautiful girls 
on the high wire, sliding down to the center ring, 
caught just in time by handsome men in tights. 
Who is there for her, her handsome man gone 
to the cemetery these many years. She calls to him 
in her sleep, begs him to save her from the wires.

Standing at their grave a year later, 
I think I hear far-off circus music. 






Day 14

Safe Burning

He asked her to dance, simple request 
that changed everything. No tear-jerker romance, 
no sad tale of missed opportunity, no torrid
affair (though it is all of that). He came
with a question and she had his answer.
Yes. She let it go at that, it’s just a dance.
He held her lightly, but flames zigged
between them, heat she’d read in books, seen
on the movie screen. She let him burn her
with that heat, let the flames take her.
Over his shoulder she watched her husband
drink himself to a fare-thee-well, fawn 
over the general’s wife. He never saw the smoke
curling over the dance floor, never smelled
the ozone sparking the place. She was safe,
a domesticated gazelle in his pasture. 
She danced and burned and no one saw it happen.

October Poetry, Week 1

Day 1

You and You

I have the two of you, both

lovely men — one now, one then.

I could never leave you or you

so I keep you, each in a separate

chamber of my heart; the you of then

pushes the blood of love through

to the you of now, partners 

in the crime of loving me, sending 

a pulse through my vessels, you 

whose great kisses beg me go 

again and again, like the morning 

glory opens and opens until the sun

is too high to reach the petals, 

and the bloom, mourning and glorious

for love, closes it chambers.

Day 2

Nothing Much

Factoring, cosines, primes —

nothing much to poets

who deal in image, sound, 

iambs, line. It’s a fact

or is it, that some have the gene

for math and some don’t,

some have meter 

in their heads from birth. 

We ought to celebrate

the decline of language some say,

the rise of text-speech, memes,

the death of grammar rules,

celebrate the passing of spelling,

the demise of formal verse.

But would those mourners hold

a wake for mathematics? 

What if Pi no longer equalled

3.1459 to infinity? How would

boy scouts pitch their tents

if  the angles of triangles 

no longer equalled whatever 

they equal? 

Everyone doesn’t need

to attend the same celebration. 

Go to the party where they serve Pi

if you must. I’ll wait outside

composing 3 stanzas of 14 lines.

Day 3

On His Birthday, Hats Off

to Larry, he broke my heart

by dying young, his heart

broken like a clock, gears

and springs flying out of the case

against the floor, crystal face cracked

from 12 to 4 like a lightning bolt

sears the night sky. Each October 3rd

I spend some tears, write him 

a note I’ll never mail, pause

to touch the lips he touched when

no one had died or left love’s pulse

behind. If there is heaven

some kind of lofty perch where loves

can see what came to be because of them,

surely he celebrates the kisses

he taught me to give and get

those days in his sister’s room

at the top of the stairs. If there be hell,

then it is a world where kissing

has been relegated to nothing more

than foreplay or conquest. Larry, hats off

to you, on this birthday as I touch my lips,

feel the happiness you planted.

Day 4

When it’s dark

in Maine, it’s not dark

enough to swallow sounds:

footfall of the fox, lowering 

of antlers at the pool,

folding of feathers as jays settle

to sleep. Your own heart

settles too, folds its valves

over and over, blood shushing

along the highway of your body.

Traffic hums far over on the road

that leads into the city

where light and noise never end.

I choose dark, the barest of stars

above me, too far away to count.

If there is to be light, let it slide

across the floor at dawn,  

light that wakes me feet first. 

Let it make no sound.

Day 5

A Philosophical Trilogy

1

de Beauvoir’s Mystery

In grey reflecting pools, the mystery

grows and grows, like a rancid lily dangles

from its pulled root. Angels fly and dip

their toes and men fear the shadows 

of their homely cotton wings, patched

like denim knees. Angels are not slaves

to the Pharisees who beat their breasts,

then visit local prostitutes.

2

Bordo Refuses Botox At the Gym

Barbie tells Ken to get lost, to erase her

from his little black book. She gives back

the thong panties he bought — three sizes

too small for her hips. Behind the lockers,

at the 24-hour gym, a tall Swedish 

personal trainer offers her Botox.

She crinkles her laugh lines at him 

on purpose and hands over the keys 

to her pink plastic convertible.

3

Harraway’s Body

Part woman, part writer, part brain,

part blurry lines in the sand where man

has built his castle and his servants’ machines.

Not black or white, slave or free, just cyborgian

analyst with a pen that writes in four-colored ink.

Thoroughly changed creation, clicking your dentures

and squinting through cadaver-donated corneas,

what do you see in your silver-backed mirror?

Day 6

In Absence of Sound

Sit. Open your hands.

Feel air in your ears. Smell 

rustling leaves as they drift 

from the maple in your yard.

A bell rings a mile away

at the church where vespers

are chanted. Extend

your arms to gather the chuckle

of nesting jays in the forsythia.

Bring in every grass whispering

by the road, take all the silence

and play its melody against the sky.

Day 7

I Suppose

I suppose hunger 

could make a bird give up heaven,

make it dizzy the surface of the sea

looking for a meal. I suppose 

it could hobble along the drafts, 

brief beautiful pose on air 

that won’t stop the plunge, the dash 

onto the cliffs. I suppose hunger 

could sear the skin from inside its beak, 

make its wings weak enough to fall like Icarus. 

Mothers at the back doors of churches,

pray for groceries, do not see God

or grow the wings of angels. Daedalus

could not prevent his son’s fall. 

I suppose that kind of hunger 

could make a boy give up heaven.