What do you believe?

I’m sitting outdoors with a bevy of chickens clucking at my elbow. Across from me the cat is licking himself, fur soaking up warmth. Next to me Bean digs a big hole in an empty flower bed. The grass is wet from rain, and the sun is warm on the black rubber of my boots.
I […]

Sweet, sweet, bittersweet.

Morning Poem # 3

Swallows swoop in at the barn door
and their feathers, bones filled with air,
brush up against the corrugated metal roof.
The air is rife with musk and hay
and the hot piss of sheep
pressing against each other
in woolly urgent nearness.
The sky bends down closer to the earth now;
blue tucking the edges of the vermilion mountains in;
and every […]

Morning Poem # 2

Because his small hand fits into my palm still,
I hold my breath and feel the gills of my heart
pummel inside my chest.
There is no way for keeping this;
like stacking bags of sand
against the jetty,
crumbling
no way to keep back his tide of growing up.
“I’m you’re a little bit big boy,” he whispers
against my cheek in the […]

Morning poem # 1

The sun falls in broken rectangles on the floor
shards of yellow plates
we gather in our pockets,
for the winter ahead.
Our skin bare to the wind, the grass tattoos
our arms with zig zags and clover
while the moments grow steady
and the verdant humming
of summer dwindles
into the big-moon nights and stillness.

September mornings

Sometimes there are other things. Mornings of sleeping in an extra half hour instead of getting up and dragging myself to the keyboard in the pre-dawn chill, because my days already feel like the fragile worn fabric of a quilt. The first flu of the season has me bleary eyed and achy. I’d whimper, but […]

Enmeshed in forward motion

In the Pacific ocean, 1996.
This afternoon I sat among boxes in my studio and dug through relics (an attempt at organizing, gone very far tangent.) I found pictures of high school boyfriends; letters; collages. All small fragments of who I was then, different, yet still me, in ridiculous cut-off shorts and too-large plaid shirts (thank […]

Pell-mell Tuesdays

Every minute of the day was allocated for something. Gah! Do you ever have days like that? I’m still getting the hang of it, and mostly I suck.
If left to my own devices I’d be the haphazard, spontaneous, bohemian Aquarius that I am, to the core. I’d forget to eat, and then have pancakes […]

Celebrating right now

For DH’s birthday: I woke up to make pancakes and pick fresh flowers before heading out the door for work. In the evening we went out for dinner at an lovely little Italian place. Good wine. Excellent food: smoked/grilled fresh mozzarella with eggplant; pumpkin ravioli with duck; veal saltimbocca. Bean was a delight. A perfect […]

Snippets

Several of you made me promise I’d tell you when my piece hit newstands in Mothering Magazine. The editor says nice things about it here.
And also–I need your help: Dh’s b-day is this weekend. Any fun ideas?