A meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

Over the place where Long’s Peak and its slightly less imposing companions stand in lofty isolation and invite the summer tourist to their cool retreats, the waves of an open sea once rolled and its tide as ebbed and flowed, unhindered by rock or shoal.” (NPS.gov)

Meadows swim: yellow, periwinkle, and green

framing curlicues of snaking streams

washed down from the mineraled mountain

I touch an icy, bubbling flow and salts eroded from ancient glacial slabs

coat my finger connecting me to those upswept ocean floors

The sea is now the sky, tides of air directing the clouds like swells

reflections wafting through the horseshoe streams

bringing clouds back to earth

Mirrors interrupted rhythmically by waving grasses until

it all feels

like an ancient weaving

like time turned over

like I have always walked here

 

#4 Dog Talk

Sit

Lie Down

Wait

Let’s go

Sit

Wait

Good girl

No Diggity

No

Sit

Release

Off

Leave it

Off

Leave it

Off

Leave it

Good girl

No

Leave it

Leave it

Leave it

Kennel

Lie down

Please

#12 Steam

Golden Shovel with line from Rudy Francisco, “Honest Poem”

 

my concern is always with the explosion inside that I’m

trying to hold in because it feels so rude to let it out, but still

I feel the toxic impact within my body and I am learning

that the only way to be okay is to balance how

I express myself, how I give life to my thoughts, to

let them breathe, to embrace the scream and the whisper

#11 So. Done.

i am

i am so

i am so over it

i am so over it that

i am so over it that i don’t even know what it was

i am so over it that i cycled back around and now i am under it

i am so over it that i am Godzilla on a bad day in the big city

i am so over it that when i started a Zoom meeting to tell everyone that I am done with that shit i immediately muted everyone else and myself before anyone could speak

i am so over it that I am all over it and this poem is so over

it

i

am

so

done

#10 Insecurity

Did I lock the car?

is there someplace I should be right now?

A corner of circumstance?

A room of requirements?

Was there a checklist I left empty?

A book of checklists, left unchecked?

Is anyone even as together as they seem on Instagram?

My whole damn life

needs

an organizer and a stylist

And it is supposed to be myself

#8 Nonet for Babka

Babka prances, carrying a box

proud to have captured cardboard prey

the evisceration brief

loud ripping and chewing

so satisfying

yet so simple

and bloodless

hunter

quenched

#7 Cinque Terre: Manorola to Vernazza

We ascend the switchback road above the town

moving away from the church square towards the cerulean ceiling of the world

 

Tiny staircases lead to a path and the path into an ancient vineyard

grapevines trained in neat rows on steep terraces

We wind our way across

paths punctuated by timeworn stone steps and

the skittering of lizards

 

How many other feet have walked here?

The Ligurian Sea sings to us of history, myths, trade, pirates, fish

Each coastal village has its song, too, of invasions long before the tourists came

 

As twilight creeps into the trails, we speed up, descending through woods, then allow, then into Vernazza and the scent of oranges

The train removes us from the storybook and then we slowly dismount, exhausted, to fill our bellies with wine and fish and bread born from past and present

#6 Choreo (Fibonacci poem)

Turn

Hop

Contract

Two steps right

Hips and knees circle

Scoop those arms to capture the space

Hold that ball and let it fill out

Invisible prize

Let it go…

Deep breath

Touch

Hold

 

#5 No monochrome chromaticity poem

They say a

monochrome room is simple

and relaxing

full as it is of

 

emptiness

The stillness sends bees into my brain

and my bees

need

someplace fertile to land

some

flowers to spark their work

My no monochrome room needs a garden within it

to fill it

becuzz

in a monochrome room my bees would only

fly around

and buzz
and buzz