Hackberry and red maple,
Pin oak and catalpa ~
Long fingered branches
Stretch across this
Narrow rural road somewhere
Between Lexington and Paris.

You can feel the air cool
As we leave the city behind,
Past barns,crossing StonerCreek,
pulling over toLet trucks pass.
Sharp scent of skunk,
Smell of a cattle farm and
The fresh green aroma
Of trees, fields and hay rolls.

My daughter provides
Well chosen country songs,
With banjo, fiddle and harmonica
Lending a nostalgic melody
To this backroad pilgrimage.

6/7/25
KW

I cannot be everything 
no matter how hard I try
I can’t be the scapegoat
the perfect daughter,
mother.
Why?

I can’t be the 
best friend
the lover
the star employee
I can’t be your sacrifice
fallen to her knees.

I can’t be
considerate yet sinister,
the hopeless optimist
the girl you can run to
but the girl you never miss.

I cannot be 
all these things
for you, it’s true
but rewind the clock 
let the day begin anew,
and I’ll be back on that stage
where you found me long ago
where you’ll find me years from now
the catchphrase,
the hope, the ego.

But when I exit stage right,
leaving the many “be’s” behind
I know deep down I would find you
with flowers and a sign, 
telling me you’re proud
that my anything was enough.
While everything, I couldn’t be,
your love isn’t fragile, it’s tough.

A Sketch of the Librarian on a Saturday Morning:

I met a man in the mountains
on the side of a dirty road.

Cigarette butts, empty chip bags, 
a used needle, old water bottles,
pieces of tires and chunks of asphalt,
butterflies: alive and dead–
markers of the map we made.

Dwarfed by jagged peaks, our paths
intertwined a hair’s breadth
from heaven.

They separated back on solid ground.
To remain,
(like so many things)
unexplored.

There is a storm threat for my area
the grey skies match my mood
it is easier to cope during the work week,
when I can focus on my job and the day
goes by quickly, but weekends are harder
I have been thinking of my son all day
and wondering how I will survive this
monstrous loss.  The emotional storm 
brewing is probably going to be worse than
the weather based storm headed our way

you swing at me 
fist grazes cheek but doesn’t connect
instead it breaks the small window
inside a door

Bare feet step in the glass
each shard is pulled out one at a time

Dillards fills my view 
the same mall landscape I’ve had
too keep me company for 
almost four 
years

your words when I told you 
my major was changing to biotechnology 
“Do you think you are disciplined enough for that”
still sting, ring and bounce
in the corners of my mind

I have an interview Wednesday 
for a lab position 
they reached out to me

I was once six years old,

swaying on your rickety porch swing.

We played I Spy for hours,

trying to find something

the other didn’t see.

I look for you everywhere.

I beg the clouds to shape

some sign you’re still here.

I pluck stray hairs from your brush

and make a thousand desperate wishes.

I watch for red birds and butterflies.

I kiss a pack of envelopes

until my lips are cracked and raw.

I let the dogs lick the plates clean,

hoping they’ll reveal

some matriarch Mona Lisa.

I pace at the doorway

to hear your late-night worry.

I search flea markets

for a duplicate collection

of ceramic pigs.

I eat a whole pack of orange crème candies,

pick wild onions,

and promise to spend summers

sustained on tomato sandwiches.

I search for you in the unspoken truths

tucked beneath my rib cage.

I frantically consider going to church.

I know I don’t have to look that far.

I have your wheezing laugh,

your green thumb

(a few shades in the making),

your sweet tooth,

and that crooked big toe

forcing us to round up

half a size in every shoe.

My bones ache like yours,

and my tender heart.

My first recognition of 
a bird is not the red tailed hawk
gliding across a crystalline sky, not
the bright red cardinal sparkling in
the snow after a lush winter storm.

It is a bird drawn by my grandmother’s
eighty year old hand, at the end of 
a letter on linen stationery, pink with
scalloped edges. Each letter promised a
bird or two, drawn in stick figure formation.

The birds made me smile, they were 
happy, appearing to look right at me.
I don’t remember seeing birds
in my city neighborhood in the northeast,
except for pigeons.

As a child, I did not realize pigeons were
birds, they were just pigeons, cooing and
walking around the concrete pavement. 
We threw them pieces of stale bread
when my mother allowed.

As I got older and became more attuned
to the natural world, I translated my sweet
grandmother’s drawings of birds into a
lifelong love language with these winged
creatures, loving each song. flight, feather.

It feels like one day I blinked
And 4 years had gone by
Like I had been living in this labyrinth of habit and routine
My feet moving without me realizing
No plans for the future,
Just surviving by day
I blinked, and I haven’t breathed since

All of my dreams and aspirations are circling around my head
Making me dizzy, foggy
They’re everywhere I look
Begging me, asking me when will I ever reach them? 

The fear of the future,
Of what’s to come
If I’ll mess it all up
Not fulfill who I am meant to be,
Drag me to my bed every night
I lay there fighting to fall asleep
With 1000 words pulling and tugging
At every part of my brain every second
I want out of this labyrinth

Will I ever make it?

There’s a part of my brain writing space opera: I wake, baffled, as vast plots unfold and civilizations are reduced to cinders.  A world oblivious begins to shatter: Our front porch railing  disappears with an electric crackle,  our nasty neighbors vanish,   transported to another dimension.  The space armada lands at Central and Unser. We’re all captives now.  Our alien jailers nowhere to be seen, but control all the boundaries.  Playgrounds and churches are off-limits, we live in techno corrals and we are part of a new commerce. But as hero, I can be subversive, rally resistance. Characters spring out of night-woven places I cannot access waking—complex plots lie buried here, chapters titled, pages numbered and indexed. Sequels in the making. My therapist would rather have me relate dreams of dad and unfinished term papers. But I’d like to pull just a couple of threads out into the dawn.