Baseball with the In-Laws
Father’s Day present
was not my choice but I love
my husband. Go Twins.
here I am again
the song on repeat
why am I not able to move past
there’s a vagueness
a desire to move forward
yet no true plan
ideas, dreams scattered like seeds
yet nothing comes to fruition
I’ve planted, watered
waited
perhaps the soil is subpar
dare I replant
toil and trouble for yet another year
I hope that is not what’s required of me
yet, so be it if it is
Too still outside at 5:00 a.m.—
few chirps, and those— far away.
No bee buzzes, no frog croaks
from the pond. The willow
and flowers barely sway.
Nor the thistle standing tall
and all alone in the yard.
The air, smelling like
old books, musty.
For what have they all paused?
Me too? Or do they simply rest—
anticipating what lies above
in the heavy altostratus cloud cover?
A shadow of a cat moves
among the stalks of liatris
and bee balm, above
the creeping thyme.
From a cloud overhead?
Or is this the ghost of old Butch
who passed early this morning,
on a journey to rest with
his brother, Sundance?
It might all be
from my imagination—
or is this Mother Earth
assuaging our souls yet again?
for Kathy, in memory of Butch, 2003-2025
I dream of you
and your sister was in it,too.
A voice on the phone
asked me if I know your sister,
after giving me her name.
___
Of course I know her,
and her sister.
The next thing I know,
your sister is at my house,
___
drunk,
naked in my bed,
and you come
to take her home.
____
I can’t tell whether you
are mad.
You ask me if we had sex.
Even in the dream, I know
we never had sex,
your sister and I
and you believe me,
neither you nor your sister
had sex,
but I loved you once,
and because she was
your sister
I respected you
more than that
and I woke up
without
knowing why
she was naked
and in my
bed.
We were born from refugees, those who came before
First from lands across the Atlantic, then from regions
All across the continent
For generations we grew food, raised livestock
Managed the earth’s bounty to trade for goods we
Needed through the barter economy
Then for money as the cash economy grew
We became disconnected from the earth
Wresting commodities from the soil while
Forgetting that the sustenance offered freely
Came from the ground, water and air
We owned people whose labor provided the crops
Supplanted those who lived before us on the land
Plowing over the remains of their lives and stories
We grew rich on the abundance
Then poor when the crops failed
Some of us lost our minds, took our own
Lives as the disconnect with the earth
Became more intense, more severe
But my grandmother knew
The earth speaks to us still
Calling us to marvel at what she gives
To feel the bitter cold of drifting snow
And behold the glory of yellow daffodils
To savor the intensity of wild onions
Longing for spongy soil beneath our feet
To always listen for the kingfisher’s call
I’m thinking about how words accrue meaning,
when Chloe, elegant in her mottled habit
of white, orange and black fur, vaults onto my lap
and begins to purr — and I reflect on the senses of calico,
a captivating word I first encountered in What About Willie,
treasured book of childhood about a stray kitten.
Then I remember a dress of calico, trimmed
with red ruffles and piping, I wore in third grade,
and the cowboy tune met a gal in calico, down in Santa Fe
that sometimes haunts me like an earworm. I’ve explored
calico rock formations in deserts, dined on calico scallops,
read about calico bushes and fish — a surprising array
of uses descended from a term describing fabric,
cheap and white, that entered English during the Raj.
But as I contemplate the feline occupying my lap, I conclude —
with absolute certainty — that Chloe is the cream of all calico.
“No pain, no gain.”
Countless times
I’ve heard this—
as I’ve said it too.
Is this something we
should continue to advocate
for future generations?
I pause,
lost in another thought.
Pain gets glorified—
as if hurting is what makes us grow.
Or yet,
it’s required to grow.
Is that really what pain is?
One lesson life has offered
is that pain is more of a signal—
a warning.
It whispers, or sometimes screams,
that something isn’t right.
That I need to stop, look closer,
maybe even change something.
Strain, though…
that’s different.
Strain is resistance.
It’s uncomfortable;
though not destructive.
It’s the kind of weight that teaches.
It’s tension that builds me,
doesn’t break me.
I think about lifting weights.
Strain means I’m working.
It burns, but it doesn’t injure.
Pain, though—
pain means I’ve pushed too far.
That something’s off.
So I have to question myself:
Why do I often ignore that distinction
in the rest of my life?
Mentally, I’ve felt both.
Pain that leaves me depleted,
spinning in circles,
wondering if I’m broken.
Then there’s strain—
those tough moments
where everything in me wants to quit—
I keep moving, though.
Those are the moments
that seem to change me the most.
Perhaps not every struggle is pain.
Perhaps it’s strain—
and that’s a strength, not a wound.
Strain feels worth facing.
Pain deserves care.
I think both can teach me something—
though each requires
its own response.
Instead of clinging to
“No pain, no gain,”
I need to start living by
something more honest.
Like…
“No strain, no gain.”
If I’m hurting—
truly hurting—
maybe that’s not failure.
Maybe that’s a moment
to choose a different path—
a rare opportunity to offer myself
the same grace I’d give anyone else.
Little sleeper, little root—
breathe slow now.
Outside, the world is teaching itself
to you already:
Watch how the ragweed lifts its fleeces
in the cracked & empty lot
beside the trailer—how its stubborn bloom ignores
the burn pit
half-swallowed by the grasses.
Notice the creek’s low amble—
thin thread of a brown-painted blue–
let it be your eyes,
patient as breath in a sleeping chest.
It knows nothing.
It remembers.
See the light? Not the hard white
of the gas station lot at midnight,
but the orange floodlight: a slow star.
Let a moth-hung dark accompany
you there—watch its frail halo
slick on the damp grass
when the angle’s right.
You’ll inherit this:
the bent fence by the old root cellar,
the lying mockingbird
in the dry and rustling corn,
brown–sudden orange–
sulfur-yellow in the afternoon.
Inherit the rust, the runoff,
the stubborn ditch still carving
its name through the very mud.
And when the world feels thin—
like old paint over old wood—
remember the thrum of water
in the heat, the far train’s moan
which stitches all this together,
your own blood’s soft drum in your ears
against the quiet.
Rest here, small watcher.
Dream deep.
Tomorrow, we’ll learn the names
of flowers and weeds that thrive in gravel.
We’ll listen close to what the broken
things have to tell us,
over and over.
Easy does it
slow
into the ice
I make myself known
every nerve in me tingles
blood rushing through
every appendage
I forgot about
how alive I can feel
dunking myself into slow
cold
ice-cold
sitting only in the moment
letting every part of me freeze
letting the cold bury itself in my bones
giving it space to fester
so that the bad might die
letting all dead things finally meet their maker
an attempt to clean the slate
an attempt to start over
an attempt to freeze off
the cold
dead-cold
parts of me
that keep me sluggish
once all becomes warm again
My apartment was a minefield.
I found your hairs on my mattress, and in my bedsheets.
My drawer held the shirt you left behind,
on my bedroom floor the morning you left me.
I cooked with the stack of garlic you bought,
when you made me dinner that fed me for a week.
In our final moment,
I knew deep down I wouldn’t see you again.
I tried to kill all hope I had of getting you back,
but it gasped for air every minute of the day.
Just as I thought I was ok,
and that I didn’t miss you as much.
I found another part of you left behind in my home.
It hurt me for a long time to not talk to you,
and I forced myself… to not lose my already fragile mind.
I know I deserve better than you,
and you’re a coward for running away without as much as a simple “goodbye”.
