I feared the fleeting sunshine
gleaming in the high tree branches—

Sunday’s final hours slowly wrung
out beneath the churning Earth.

School meant burned-out teachers’
glazed eyes ignoring cruelties.

Laying chips on my turkey sandwich
alone in the library’s AV room, in the back,

hunched over dusty, fallen piles
of LIFE, and long-dormant film cameras.

Even today, my stomach still churns a bit,
when I see Sunday sunlight in the treetops.

fed’rals bring pregnant
prisoners to the clinic
I get my meds at

Don’t you know the lightning bugs
make me think of you?
The way they rise up out of bushes
just as dew kisses grass to flash
signals across the yard
trying to catch some love.

Don’t you know it’s impossible
not to remember every summer night
growing up how I’d catch Mason jars full,
but then feel sad and let them all go before bed?
And how every year you smile when
I tell this same story.

Don’t you know the inky tree limbs
reaching out across the fading sky
still look the same? Like lanky hands
hugged by hills as dark encases them,
like when we’d wrap up in quilts across
the ground to watch stars when we first met.

Don’t you know seeing our kids
run in circles through fields,
pops of light glowing in their hands,
laughter woven into a chorus of frogs
has been one of my greatest joys?
They grow taller and steadier
just as these roots we’ve planted grow deeper,
and I can’t help but feel the years ache under my skin.

Don’t you know I’ll always have
a fondness for these moments in between
this day and the next?
Those are the ones that stick,
clinging to the sweetness of what is,
but anticipating what is yet to be.
It’s the delight and the hope
blinking away pain, holding onto love.

Eight years ago I saved a scrawny black kitten 
Outside of a store when I used to work in town.
Brought her home in a flimsy, cardboard box 
Big green eyes staring up at me as we drove to
The place that would be her new forever home.

Eight years of loving this silly cat, who is far 
From the scraggly baby she was that October.
A Halloween kitty that stole my horror loving
Heart right out of my chest. She’s now indoors
Taking up space on the couch and the bed, and
I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.
Sometimes I think that Miss Kitty Russell and I?
We saved each other, you know.

I look at you now and hear a song I could never play.
A poem I don’t know how to write jumps off my tongue
like a miracle of a fish off a diving board, but oh,
I used to write you buckets

of lines that almost said what I meant,
buckets of words that nearly cooled the fire
that made me want to leap out of myself into you, buckets
of words, letting them pour across

all the parts of you my hands desired but
didn’t dare to touch, pouring across your skin
which sang to me, flute to snake, a promise to bridge
the space between us as I prayed

that I wouldn’t drown in my own buckets
of sweat because seeing you felt like eating spicy food,
that I wouldn’t lose you for want, for desperate want of
a bridge or a boat.

I’m in my 50’s and I’ve never grown a garden, never attempted to, never thought I could.  

Food insecurity motivated me to buy my 1st seeds.  I knew ABSOLUTELY nothing about growing plants, vegetables or herbs.  I STILL consider myself a novice, but, I promise, the longer I do this, the more I learn and I’m ABSOLUTELY fascinated and IN LOVE with this journey and the lessons!

1). Plants are a lot like people…they come in all different shapes and sizes!

2). Plants are ALOT like women and children… they THRIVE off attention!
3). Different plants need different nutrients in order to live their best lives!
4) Plants remind me of Black people.  They can grow and THRIVE in the HARSHEST conditions!  I have added old dirt to my compost thinking I killed a plant- remember, I’m a 1st time gardener- and, weeks later, I see seedlings popping up in my compost!
5) Plants remind me that ALL THINGS (dirt, wind, rain, storms and sunshine) work TOGETHER for GOOD (bountiful harvest of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs!) Romans 8:28- 

“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep
down I just wanted to be a poem.”
     Jaime Gil de Biedma

To be not thought that seeks words
but words that stalk thought,
a hunting heron that slowly moves
one foot, then the other, until
blade of beak strikes, catches
the word that feeds the soul. 

To be not eye that searches out image
frames, shapes it, but image itself
that blooms, demands house-room,
curls around memory, creates the new
from bits of old light. 

To be the puzzle, word seeking word,
play of rhyme, repetition, music.
Ordering nonsense, disrupting order,
hoping to stumble into beauty. 

To achieve the final distillation,
mysterious and clear, where each word
rings true to its name while answering
to all it echoes. 

All froot loops in the world
taste the same
but there are no fruit in those loops
the dyes are arbitrary
meant to trick our brains
into thinking colors are different
but they aren’t
it’s all lies
Dahmer could have taught us that
we are all the same inside.

Walking while swaying.
Swaying while praying.
Praying while swinging.   

Swinging between acceptance and grief.
Grief in this case is not brief.
Brief moments of relief.   

Relief is always brief.
Grief is always chief.
Chief is always disbelief.

And our son, not yet 5 years old,
curled up on my lap,
hands over his head,
as if that would protect us
from our final downfall.

I remember the 4th of July
in this town without barriers
to keep us safe while
fireworks like cannons,
white plumes driving down,
burst stars and planets
in the deep blue of summer.

We huddled together under
red and white and blue incendiaries
that celebrate victory – over something –
I cannot remember what –

Only their concussion against my chest
that betrayed us in the end.