My Poetry

I 80 The scent of diesel and cigarettes put me in that white Freightliner with you. We tugged forty tons up the Pennsylvania mountains. The load pushed us back down jake brake barking all the way. Every curve in that highway mapped by muscle memories and twisted into logbooks. We were wild women powering down the Interstate.  Men struggled to keep up hoping for more than a CB romance. One of us slept while the other one drove a fuel stop in Milton a shower a slice of truck stop pizza to go. Headed into the sun 'til our eyes turned red and the horizon bled into the road. The changing landscape a new world being born before us. Topping mountains the stars just out of reach city lights melt into Van Gogh skies. Raising children over the phone. Had to keep moving outrun the guilt of being on the road. Rolling through chicken coops dodging four wheelers ears on, hammer down. Miles and miles of asphalt lined by maple and spruce. Counting carcasses became a game. Punxutawney Phil didn'

 Birds Something stirs the peacocks as I sit here in the dark, their cries echo such a primitive sound. I remember the first time that you laughed like you had a feather tickling it out from deep inside your belly. You laid on the floor next to me chewing on your fingers your laughter filled the room. What did your four week old eyes find so funny? And I remember your first fledgling steps taken on slippery, yellow tiles. The very next day, you were racing the wily coyote. Born ravenous, like a chick that’s just pecked its way out of the shell, I could not feed you fast enough. Your hunger never decreased eagle eyes swallow up everything in sight. You gulp life the way a pelican chokes down fish without taking time to taste it. And sometimes when I look at you now, I see a young peacock preening and flaunting your tail feathers at the world and yet, so overbalanced you can‘t fly. ________________________________________________ I wrote this for my son, Tate, when he was 18. On April 21

Home Fires  My first ten winters were spent barefoot and fat on California sunshine. My eleventh winter crammed my feet into boots that leaked starved for vitamin D. Moving to upstate New York in 1977,  was like going back in time. Urban sidewalks replaced by snow banks along dirt roads.   Isolated by cold and snow, separated from  grandparents and friends.  Older step-brothers bullied me and Mom lied; the sled ride down the hill was not worth the trek up it. We collected wood to burn after my step-father cut down the tree and cut it into sections. With frozen fingers and runny noses, we’d stack damp hemlock on a flatbed trailer pulled behind a rusted Impala. After it was chopped we burned the wood in a 55 gallon drum. That drum got red hot. My sister fell against it once, and two layers of skin peeled off her hand like a flour tortilla. Food was often scarce as dry wood in the winter. When the well-pump froze we hauled water up by the bucket. If the wood stove went out at night we’d w

Presleigh likes to ride her scooter on the patio. She throws the squeaky  ball for the dog, and squeals when he brings it back.     And Presleigh turns summersaults on the grass.  She calls them "flip flops."    She runs to me, a rock in each hand. "This one looks like space!" she shows me.  "And this one is a heart."  She stashes them in her bib pocket  just like her father used to.      He filled my house with rocks.  If I wasn't careful I would step on jagged ones with bare feet.    He would stack them on tables. The vacuum would find them under the sofa and the beds.     He brought me fistfuls of the most ordinary looking rocks. He would explain why each of  them was beautiful. I loved seeing the world through  his eyes.      When he outgrew rocks  I turned his collection into a rock garden.   Now, his daughter has his same eyes and finds beauty in the same rocks her father loved.      At dusk Presleigh's father lights the firepit  so she can &