Poetry, biography, and children's book author
Like a present found under the tree when everyone's sound asleep on Christmas Eve, and the feeling of trespassing. The rustic wrapping full of hope, a family’s intimate history in twisted straw and cursive grass and sometimes fine sepia print. The urgency of architecture: this twig here, then this one crossed with that… Continue reading Gift of a Sparrow’s Nest
some of my breath, some of yours his last breath and later hers a prayer on my knees for grace if I should die before I wake your whispered words, a choir’s song the droplets that are passed along dust I touch but cannot feel a rising howl that seems surreal … Continue reading Pandemic VI: Things That Fill the Air
Once we made gold that sweetened the drink of Egyptian kings, elixir of gods. Once our god was an ebony gold that drove our machines and drove countries to war. Once we beat our wings at the sun, our castle a colossus that hummed. Once we made wings and flew past the sky to a… Continue reading Pandemic V: Once an Empire
(Remembering Life Before Covid19) The morning sun that wakes with a yawn, the everyday San Diego blue sky, the sound of our dog munching her kibble, her tags ringing like bells on the bowl, the smoky aroma of toast lightly burned and breaking off a crust for the dog, a female black phoebe setting up… Continue reading Simple Fortunes
I saw the gracious windows of our house like two eyes that manifest its soul, the sycamores we planted are godparents, the homestead looking happy on the whole. Certain houses get along without us when others adopt them for their home. The sound of children’s slippers in the hallway— shouldn’t that be our memory… Continue reading Certain Houses Get Along Without Us
Spring, 2020 That sudden in-air collision of palms breaking the rule, Keep your hands to yourself— it felt Friday night, it felt Mardi Gras, a home run bottom of ninth opening day. Always brazen, sometimes a rebel the way it laughed with its head thrown back, a teenager with a mischievous smile. It sometimes said… Continue reading Pandemic IV: Elegy for the High Five
when a storm surged for days off the Mexican Coast and finally breached California shores Old Testament style and flushed our streets with epic amounts of spring clean rain. In the morning epidemiologists reported the virus was last seen in filmy rivers jumping the curbs in San Diego. Oceanographers are saying this event makes history… Continue reading Pandemic III: I Dreamed the Pandemic Was Purged
Today it isn't just the fresh marsh grass that inspires me, each blade bent and turned to glass polished by a quiet rain, or the clouds that race to stay ahead of wind's invisible paintbrush, always loath to strike a pose and every day a masterpiece. It's also the sight of a nest of webs,… Continue reading Despite the Mess of Us All
My first three teeth fell out last night at Sarah's fortieth birthday party and I mistook them for pebbles or seashells in my jaw and shored them underneath my tongue. I spit them out in two pink flowered paper towels that danced in the powder room and— the sink handed me two more— returned for… Continue reading Pandemic II: Dreams in the Time of COVID-19
ghosted west to the sea and I missed my off ramp like most of the others who prayed to the fire gods oh please, not me, and I saw from a distance the mean residue of burnt chaparral and blistered black trees, the carports and cribs of suburban tribes who fled with heads down from… Continue reading A Column of Smoke