My puppy sticks her whole
face in the water and blows bubbles
over and over
after our walk around the loop trail
ending in the creek
where we stand in the shade of
hemlocks who are dying from
damage caused by the woolly adelgid,
but Maple doesn’t know that
isn’t aware of catastrophe or worried
for our fate in these coming days.
She just knows how good it feels to
stick her head in the current and let
water wash her senses with joy.
Eight years ago, you left this earth.
I no longer ask why.
Nor do I remember the drugs
They found in your body.
Declared an accidental death
It no longer matters if it was
Suicide or not.
You were addicted to drugs,
To alcohol, to taking chances
All to cover the pain and loneliness
You had inside.
An overdose, a collision, an altercation
Waiting to happen.
What can you say about a life
That has gone terminal
Other than to remember
You for the things you loved:
Your dog, climbing very tall trees
So you could sway with the wind.
Watching the sun streak the sky
In pinks and yellows and red
Until only the dark night remained.
You loved poetry that spoke of
Caring for rivers and the earth.
You said you would never leave
The place you loved, our family home.
You are still there
Ashes scattered beside your dog
Beneath the palms you wanted to plant,
Both giants now giving refuge
To birds and lizards and bugs
And the memory of you.
Awesome.
What better word
to describe the entirety of
what is surrounded by ancient shimmer.
Resting under those frozen fireflies,
I needed to feel something steady
while everything in me feels so uncertain.
It’s quiet up there.
Ordered.
Beautiful.
Every light, anchored by purpose.
I sit in wonder—
What if those silent sparks
are setting an example?
I’ve given so much to this music.
Poured out my heart in chords and choruses
that haven’t broken free.
Sometimes I wonder if my voice
was meant to echo—
or if it’s just been drifting
through a world too loud to care.
I look at the years I’ve lived
and feel like I should be more.
Like I’ve missed something.
Like I’m standing still
while time runs ahead,
mocking me with every calendar page I tear away.
It’s at my lowest
that I fix my eyes highest.
The universe preaches to me
without a single word.
It’s just Awesome!
Everything so flawlessly arranged.
So precisely positioned.
Not by chance or accident.
Jupiter—
a silent guardian of Earth,
its massive gravity pulling in comets,
shielding us
without ever asking for thanks.
The moon—
locked in perfect rhythm with our tides,
whispering its quiet influence
on every crashing wave.
And Earth—
spinning at just the right speed,
tilted at just the right angle,
placed not too close,
not too far
from a star that burns with enough mercy
to warm our skin without burning us alive.
None of it random.
None of it rushed.
Every force in balance,
every orbit obeyed.
I wonder—
what if my delays
aren’t disasters?
What if the ache I feel
is gravity—
pulling me into alignment
with a purpose I can’t yet see?
The stars are awesome.
Yet, I am more so.
I say that not with arrogance,
but humility.
I am made in the image of God.
As are those who read this.
The stars can’t claim that.
Maybe the God who spoke all this into being
knows what He’s doing with me too.
With all of us.
Maybe the silence isn’t absence—
it’s patience.
Maybe the emptiness I feel
is room being cleared
for something sacred.
I will keep playing,
even if the room is quiet.
Keep creating,
even when doubt tightens its grip.
Somewhere beyond this moment,
there may be more for me—
not despite where I am,
but because of it.
I am not lost.
Just waiting for the right orbit.
Just learning to trust—
Everything in the universe
is perfectly placed.
It is awesome to know
that I am too.
After Becky Boling’s “Melt”
The quilt my grandmother made
was not for me, or summer.
I never held it in my arms,
nor hung it on a wall, like art.
Too thin to swoon cold,
but all her breath could give.
My grandmother’s eyes closed,
though Mother said she couldn’t
let her go.
Did Mother stretch into the quilt
on cool nights, searching for warmth?
In the note pinned to it,
my grandmother said that cold
had risen in her blood, an icy rainbow
pieced of scraps, she needed
drips of hot beauty.
These notes my tongue
can sing.
an ekphrastic from a photo, Granddaddy and Q, by Mia LeNoir, 3.30.25
Your grandson’s cherub face, lit up in a grin—
as he turns your grown-up wrench, tightens a joint
on a 2 x 4. You, knelt behind, push up glasses
he’ll surely wear one day. He wears your
beige canvas work apron well, wound twice
around his small frame. Both of you in jeans
and khaki shirts blend together, against a green future.
Your toolbox, open nearby, spills out love and time
and heritage. His toolbox, smaller, but just as full.
He turns the wrench again and again,
throughout the day,
tightens the hold on your heart.
she finds the middle of me
parting my hair into an even
two. the white line of my skull defining
as she pulls each long blonde strand
aside. we joke about an old friend’s
past while her soft pearly fingers
twist against my heavy head. not even
my mother knew how to braid. only
ballerina buns, pulled tight, straining skin
with bobby pins, an old script
useless in holding any wildness back. though
with her, there is always play anchored in
our bellies, laughing together since we were
eighteen. so i sit cross-legged like a child
wanting love although it is so freely given. she smiles
says, “sure, anytime”. i pass her the hair tie
this time and another time, time and time again.
the truth
is always told
through poetry
there are words,
but then —-
there are words
that make images
come to life
and once liberated
these words sing
from the inside out
lift you, carry you
and show you
the universe
even though
just seconds ago
you were
stuck in the weeds
I live my life in couplets
betcha expected a rhyme here
that’s too suspect.
Maybe I’ll dalliance with a quatrain
although I’m perhaps more partial to a sestet.
I’ll try to cram as much meaning
in as few words
as I’m able.
Then again often
I’m not expressly trying
just channeling
my emotions- deepest feelings.
Metaphor and simile
sprinkled in enough for you not to see
these just as thoughts of a madman
but poetry.
the sweet june air is ripe as plump orange bites
that color i never could rhyme about
yet father’s mother loves it dearer than others
adorned is she in tangerine patterns, beaded
braided jewelry reminiscent of a floridian
shop with an appeal to women seasoned
with “refined tastes”—none like that poor crop
of kentuckians grandma’s yielded from
and she never smelled like papa’s body shop neither
but rather warm vanilla perfume
i recall so well, each visit that fragrance attached
to our worn and weathered family room couch
my grandma told me she once was a writer
short stories and ditties of the like
though her ma tossed that proof of existence
right out, along with any naïve dreams containing
worlds of words and wonder, so grandma
settled for trips to the drugstore with papa
to purchase words rather than write her own
the slow-rolling hills of the flesh-toned sunset,
