Category Archives: National Poetry Month '09
I had a Good Time
This poem is my reaction to all the fun I had eeking out a poem a day for the last ten days of April, National Poetry Month 2009.
I said I would put up
one poem daily for ten days
through the end of April.
I’m relieved I made that happen.
Now for my next trick
I think I’ll put up—
content [...]
Just Outside
Summer and fall
little brown birds
and bees pollinate
the weeping holly
doing their parts for
the trees to bear fruit.
By early December
I have only to open the blinds
to see my Christmas tree
decorated by nature,
my only job is to be thankful.
The advent of spring,
weather still chilled
invites the cedar waxwings
to pick the berries.
Wooshing fluttering wings
surely hundreds altogether
announce the advance
of the berry [...]
Master Distraction
It’s late and my page lays bare.
No writers block is visiting here
only over-tired delirium.
Words come not belonging to me
but to those I’ve read repeatedly,
those who inspire and intimidate me.
So it is better to speak
remembering we were never
meant to survive
comes through from Audre Lorde
and I pause to wonder about her emotions
at the moment she wrote those [...]
The Nature of Things
Mom first noticed
the bird setting up home
in her hanging basket.
I saw the bird there
the day after,
and thought I felt something.
Once, I lifted my nephew
because even standing on the chair
he couldn’t see it.
We still kept our distance.
One windy day I was closing the umbrellas.
It was my first time alone with her
and I swear
I could feel her [...]
Persona
I’d like to write the consummate herione
to embody a mixture of
the complex women of
Barbara Streisand’s
characters in later years.
Especially I think
I’d channel the honest
female lead in
The Mirror has Two Faces.
As a bad heroine type,
her almost law-breaking
lead opposite
Richard Dreyfuss and
Karl Malden for starts
in a favorite I don’t own, Nuts.
I could imbue
her faithful defiance
and courage
in the face of [...]
Time Enough
If I could stay awake
hours on end
for days or
bend time to my will,
I wonder would it be
time enough to
gaze read listen write
play love laugh
cry dance walk
swing high, run fast
eat and drink tasting fully?
Enough time to
do to cherish
to savor
all that beckons to me
before I’m forced
to let go of
my time here?
I think of this now
because there
never seems [...]
Another Pen Bites the Dust
I’ve emptied out a pen
yet again in the middle
of what I was writing.
It doesn’t mean that I’m
barreling through ink,
having filled longhand
three hundred pages of manuscript.
I like to tell myself, though
it’s because I’m writing
my hands off productively,
thinking, Girl! You’re
doing the damn thing!
No stopping you once you get a new pen.
The truth is it happens too
just the [...]
Walk on By
Remember that song?
And the message?
It’s Dionne Warwick’s version
I can hear
playing in my head.
She’s hurt and
implores her ex-beau
to ignore her—
I understand this.
Nothing in your head says
he’s even alright for you
yet nothing in your heart
will stand up for you.
Telling him to walk past
spares you trying to muster
a resolve not present in you.
Not only did
hating him never work
you [...]
