When I was in college I took a child development class with a lab, complete with Osh Kosh B’Gosh clad tots. We studied how they picked up language to convey meaning.

It was fascinating.

I r […]

Who knew milk cartons had gables? ‘Embossed on gable’ said the fine print, explaining where to find the identifying information, in case of what, a recall? Dottie wondered. Does half-and-half get rec […]

Full Snow Moon
 
Fat and slow, she climbs the eastern sky
like an old woman climbs stairs,
holding onto tree branches and stars
to make her way to February’s zenith.
She rises on time, a beacon fully se […]

Before there were Google maps, cable travel channels and live streaming from every corner of the Internet, there were slides, those posh cousins of snapshots. The tiny film inside a cardboard frame only reveals […]

I talk to dead people. Oh, don’t get worried. It’s not like they talk back. Although, there was that time…

What I’m saying is that I have some graves that are my favorite haunts. (And just to be absol […]

In a northern portion of the Midwest, on a night of light snow, during the few minutes just before and after ten o’clock, some things happened. They occurred along a route on which a southbound train traveled t […]

Agnostic
 
In the bath a spider crawls along the ledge.
It’s tiny enough that it doesn’t scare
this arachnophobe. Isn’t that the way
fear works, the smaller the threat the less
a reason to run? Unlike the […]

I wrote these poems to capture and preserve real events. They depict shifts from isolation and loss to connection and love—the dance of relationships in unexpected places, with unexpected dance pa […]

Common Stingray
 
                  Dasyatis pastinaca

In the infinite silence
   of her velvety skin, she roams
         through moon water at night,

scours coastal shallows, glides
   around th […]

I recognize that I may be a tad more sensitive to the prospect of police state behavior than the average Jo but I come by this extra helping of unease naturally. Because of his liberal politics my dad, Marcus […]

Blue
 
It must have been her accent
that seduced and baffled my ears.
The Egyptian woman, still lost
in the desert air of Cairo,
read her poems filled with water
from the Nile and blue heaven,
blue […]

In my almost 80 years it seems as if I have lived numerous lives because the world has changed so swiftly under my feet. My world now as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, pastor’s wife and poet could n […]

They arrived at the beach at dawn. The Family: Father, Mother, Son and Baby Girl. They enjoyed sole ownership of the beach, playing, swimming and napping as the tide rolled back. Morning settled in and […]

For most of my youth, I lived in a secure blanket of belonging. I belonged to the groups of people that surrounded me at my school and church: white Christians, married couples with children (children like me), […]