I am a person of metaphors:
trumpeting truth
through indirections,
whispering wishes
into the wind.
Bio
Category: poetry
Soul Mapping
There rises from deep within me,
before thought, shaping feeling,
choices, sometimes words —
heart and gut desires
Sometimes I listen,
sometimes I hear,
sometimes I close my eyes
and plunge another way.
The crest of a thought
wakes me, warns me,
pulls me back onto the path
and towards the shape of my life.
New Wellsprings
I had allowed my heart
to wither
and dry out
in the absence
of one I loved.
Looking at the lushness
of another summer,
I discovered
different sources
greening me up.
With the swelling and softening
of my heart,
beyond tears, my eyes
Could recognize
new wellsprings of joy.
In the Memetime
PostEnlightenment: Unintended Consequences
In my late middle age, I emigrated
from linear thought and paper
to the New World of meaning-making
- digital and screens -
and the dubious democracy
of social media.
With the accents of logic and rhetoric
I spoke this new foreign language
of tweets and memes,
aspiring to live the Technology Dream
of constant accessibility
to information and delusions.
(My grandfather told me
before he was born
no plane had flown,
and before he died,
a man walked on the moon.)
The Great Generation saw movies,
still shared pageants and singing,
but welcomed electric light,
phones, radios, and tvs
into their homes, ----
steps towards this hive mind dance.
Matrilineal
I am making the sounds
my mother made -
the steam iron hissing and thumping,
the ironing board creaking -
as she stood in the first kitchen.
Then, I wordlessly wondered
what dress she would iron
if she could hear me
standing in the silence,
a doorway between us.
Now, I have learned
I can iron the wrinkled words,
slapping sounds into the silence
separating us,
smoothing the space between us.
Morning Light
When the earliest light
touches my face,
I wake
to black pine branches against
the palest, palest grey-blue.
Morning has come
and I am called to rise and
find my way
in this always losing
and receiving world.
By the Light of my Digital Devices
By the light of my digital devices,
I wander in darkened rooms.
This world is too much with me,
early and late:
I twist and turn, whirling.
I go to the lake
with its hint of wilderness.
Despite landscaped edges,
the lake shifts and breathes:
womb of potent Mystery:
Stillness in sunshine,
quiet under clouds,
watchfulness in wind,
release in rain:
Peace, - I settle and ease.
Weathering Storms
Weathering storms and
pausing for moments of joy:
sunlight in shadows.
A Senior in the City
A Prose Poem
Sometimes, when I realize I am awake, my mind is already moving down a path of words, pausing briefly to evaluate whether they say what I’m meaning, whether they fit together well.
I pause, remembering the small, youngish woman, struggling her grocery cart loaded with bulging yellow plastic bags across the subway car door threshold, and lurching it around. Her eyes behind thick glasses, her mouth never fully closing, she stared openly at the man in a suit, then at the man in jeans next to him. I was pulled from staring at her by a deliberately loud voice approaching and straining to make out what it meant. A large scruffy man was moving through the crowded car, chanting in a loud monotone “Spare some change,” never pausing or thrusting the ragged paper cup towards anyone. The small, youngish woman turned to an attractive young man sitting near where she was standing and said, “That’s wrong” and gestured towards her yellow plastic bags. “I do this; never ask for money.” The attractive young man kept looking away, while the rest of us watched, relieved she wasn’t talking to us. When the disembodied subway voice blurred out the next station name, she clapped her hands together, then struggled her cart over the door threshold and through the impatient pushing-in crowd.
Sometimes, ingrained politeness is a weakness.
Credo in Youth and Age
Written in my mid-twenties
Written in my late seventies
Credo 2
I have lived long enough
to understand
I will die;
I choose
to delight
in moments
of bright joy.
In the early morning light
I surrender
to the glory of June.
In the morning breeze
branches move and sway
while their shadows
dance
in the sunlight.
In the quiet of solitude
I am
alive.
Learning Living 