Posts for 2025

!.
Last evening you hollered
at our dog when she started
to shit in your flower garden.
She jumped up and ran out
of the yard to the cow pasture
before she resumed her efforts.
together we shouted Good Girl

2. 
Soon after sunrise we take
implements to the ground
behind the soap shop to battle
Johnson Grass to the death

3.
We look up when a truck
towing a hay rake goes by.
Dividing Ridge Road 
runs in front of our house,
after a mile it dead ends
at another house 
which is in a different county.

4.
Forgetting the mail yesterday
you walk out to the box
and see two baby skunks 
strolling leisurely up the road.
When you get back you tell me
how cute they are

5.
i just remebered 
how in first light
you came upstairs
to rouse me out of bed:
Come and listen
to the wildy blooming
mimosa tree humming
with thousands of bees

6.
The battery powered lawn 
tractor has a flat tire.
I put it in the back of the car
and google Tire World.
Damn they’re closed on Saturdays.
You tell me to relax
and drink a glass of ice water

7.
At the heat of the day
we come in to rest, we are
growing improbably old

8.
We walk out under the four
giant pine trees who live 
along the fence line.
Wind from a coming storm
sounds like crashing waves
coming ashore
 
9.
After dinner we sit in rockers
on the kitchen porch
keeping the same two thoughts
from being said aloud:
how did we get here
and how do we get from here to there

My knees ache like they 
Weren’t made to carry me through 
This dumb fucking life 

when I feel ocean tongue sloppy kiss my soul
like my dog happy to have me home   

when I hear rain drops jigging on my skull –
happy for their fall from cumulus rage  

a moment
bringing question without possibility    

while watching clouds slow-waltz
in comatose sky                       

a moment        when I realize
I never really knew these clouds at all  

a moment     
when cool mist on desert skin   

becomes just a momentary joy – a tease –
like winter’s day that begs to stay  

through summer’s torment
a moment that comes  

from the crater of me – a darkness –
wanting only moon as salve  

I don’t know where god is
but these moments                  must be close

I’ll gladly shuttle
you to your heart’s desire, just —
Don’t forget to tip

A list of people I texted a selfie to while waiting for a ride to my first Pride:
my spouse, my long distance partner, my old boss, my best friend and mentor, my pen pal

A list of people I didn’t text:
my parents, my siblings, my in-laws

To Gillet Pond
          In wildness is the preservation of the world                 
                                             -Thoreau

          Find the trailhead beyond cell reach

How does one push through overwhelm? The news buries me beneath a mountain of anxiety, so I leave my swivel chair spinning when I ditch my computer inside. The trick
is to turn off all notifications and badges on your smartphone. Misnomer. Maybe holdouts without such devices are the smart ones. Silence the dings from the family’s group chat, appointment reminders, and memories of this past year’s losses.

          A warbler breaks into my head
                             with a trill

I agree, Henry David. (I’ve pulled out my pocket notebook while I sit on a fallen log to say this.) Under the canopy, I worry that I am a woman alone in the woods. Fear hurries me
to a place of seclusion, surrounded by fallen limbs and the green understory, the air gravid as an overdue woman whose water is ready to break. At the pond, I am safe in Mother Earth’s arms. Why must I let fear waylay me? Distant traffic sounds carry. Wary.  Always, there’s a reason. But, look: an American copper and a grizzled skipper have landed on the nearby orange butterfly weed. I pull out my camera.

          Nature paintings:
               ascendant trail markers

discernment  (          & the Ant)

Well, yes–marching along single-filed, good
-natured bunnytailbubble kids like us, 
 dropped Dorito-bound, lined up sock-footed 
en route down stacked cinder block inscriptions…
 We look up. A Dollar Tree clock, viscous thick
now over the Wall’s pocked bricks, oozing goo,
 fills the grooves. Our one request we quickly
scrawl, path tracing letters that reverse into

 cursive incantations. Intangible
Peace at last born, borne by child’s instrument
 of petulant destruction. We 
      called time here. Nursed it
     
       with salt water, and held it in our mandibles.
 We became wet nurse to an experiment 
Fusing fire, sweat, and ice. We are not the clock.

To sojourn on alone in the constant construction of continued existence
is difficult
but must be taken.
Other days, though, the path of perilous persistence welcomes companions along the way.

They journey with you to destinations planned and spurred
and while the winding path is fraught with dangers:
curving roads that lead you astray,
an idle mind that ignores the signs of caution (figuratively and literally), an unforseen discussion of vulnerable lore;
We seek the joys in the experience:
the roads are curvey and confusing but we find stories and jokes through the detors,
I forget the color red at a crossing path but my commarades remind my sight (we laugh horrendously about it seconds later), we’re vulnerable and it’s beautiful to be accepted for it all because it all equates to you, us, and this fellowship we have.

To sojourn alone is a necessary feature of our ever frantic reality,
but communion with kin and kindred
can be found betwixt the lonesome parts
of the hero’s destined journey.
Embrace it when you can. 

06-28-2025:

Something about having you in my passenger seat
captures all the moments that never developed on film
and tucks them tightly in my pockets
overflowing with the magic that fireflies make
on a warm night in July.

Something about the way you stick your head out the window
and smile back at me
makes the fears ebb and flow away
thoughtless as a jellyfish.
I think I made the right decision.