Thirty-Three
 
The number of vertebrae in the human spine
when coccyx bones are counted individually.

The temperature at which water boils on the Newton
scale. In Fahrenheit, just above freezing.

It’s a […]

Beatitude
 
It is winter. It is cold.
Meek sky offers no color.
Hardwood skeletons assemble
along the treeline. Roots knuckle up
through blizzard’s encumbrance, grasping at sunrise.

Rhododendrons sa […]

The Bear’s Back
 
Last night I dreamt of a bear
who carries us through the forest on his back.
He goes through the mud,
we cling to his fur,
he wants to bury us
in a storyteller’s thro […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

23 Feet Deep
 
The footway we walk sketches
brown lines on green fields that seem
to hover over the Irish Sea. All around us
sheep and cows hold their mouths to grass,
unmindful of heaven. This perpetual […]