Poetic License

Another autumn day of perfect beauty, Perfect light. Clouds forming On the mountains, Crows noisy In the cottonwoods Outside the kitc...

I was a sixteen year old girl in a school desk, trying to make it through English class to lunch time; when Sister Mary Michael told us to...

   After A Dream of Rain Clouds pile up daily over the Sandias. We can see it raining sometimes on the Crest. Dry Thunder rumbles in ...

Hard to believe that two months have flowed past since April's poetry challenge had me writing a poem a day.  May and June have been bus...

Today is International Migratory Bird Day.   It is also the 80th birthday of the poet Gary Snyder .  It is also one of the many days that wi...

May Morning All night the canyon winds have slammed the house, loud noises keeping us awake and anxious. This morning gravel paths are s...

  Letting Them Go I have held this hornet swarm of anger Within my heart too long, The venom, buzz and sting All painful things But real en...

Evening, Fly-In, Bosque Del Apache A cold wet afternoon of birding hiking soggy edges of the fields, the trail along the river, follo...

Shipwreck Never did I plan, nor was it my intention, to spend my life asleep on a deserted beach with the moonlight on the dunes, landsc...

Small Bones of Time These may be all we have: moments picked as clean as I have seen gull bones on the sand, mouse bones in the dust ...

The Serendipity of Gardens I’ve tried to write this poem Five times now  Today and yesterday, Pruning the vitex and desert willow Trimm...

Bird On A Wire Migrants coming through Backyard birds nesting Constant motion at the feeders Appeasing avian hunger Small birds in the...

Celebration We went to the Earth Day Party At the Co-Op in Nob Hill, Bought an iceplant for the berm  at the Santa Ana Nursery, Listen...

Naps They found the old iron bed In a junkshop on Route Six, Loaded it in the truck, And took it home. It took four weeks In the sun by the...

At Twilight Yesterday at twilight as I crossed the lawn something moved above my field of vision. Up where woods' edge slopes to lila...

Life According To Hoyle  How would it  be If being a human Was like bridge Or poker or chess, And it came to us Complete with a book Of r...

In Defense of Looking Back Don’t look at me like that. I know you think me cowardly, Call me slow and weak. If you had ever loved this ...

Thomas Jefferson’s Poppies    It couldn’t have been easy. As founding father, empire builder, philosopher of state, He suffered headaches,...

To Be A Bird Next Time If we return, And mind you, I’m not saying That I think we will, I’d like to be a bird. Probably a raptor, A Cooper...

In The Presence Of Chlorophyll   When Mike came to prune the trees in late September, he said the cottonwood outside our kitchen window ...

Pulling Weeds   An afternoon of weeding by the neighbor’s low stone wall, Begun in sunshine, ended in thunder and rain. We come inside ...

A Deadline Missed On a lazy Sunday afternoon, sun so hot I have to get my hat, put sunscreen on, I wander through the garden, noticing th...

At The Nature Center They’ve been sitting on their nests For weeks now On the islands In the middle of the pond Taking turns on the eg...

The Prompt was actually "A Love Poem or An Anti-Love Poem" Thirty Years Without A Love Poem How long has it been Since I wrote...

Duke City Contradictions Mariachi music in the Plaza, Gang  shootings every other day. Techology corridors hang over The river’s crumblin...

  (Saying Goodbye To Molly)     One Last Time   I wrapped her in the old quilt We’d had as long as we’d had her Eighteen years or ...

Transformations Like a bear or werewolf in a suit and tie, silk stockings, good wool coat, Domesticated, cooking meals, laundering the be...

Poem for Myself on Monday Morning                         I stand among the blue tiles brown and naked, toweling my wet and fragrant ...

  My Mother’s  Garden Knife Blessed is she who weeds her mother’s gardens And every garden that I've had was somehow hers. Even this...

Until The Lilacs Bloom   (With Apologies To TS Eliot)       December’s not the hardest for a gardener Bare branches, winter’s barren roo...