Author Archives: janishaag

(at Mission Ranch, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California) ••• Clouds meander overhead aswe graze on an open-to-the-skydeck overlooking a vast pasture,the cumulus rippling overover meadow grass like waves, watching dreadlocked sheepmunch soft green grass, takingturns under a favorite low-hangingbranch for back scratches, theirblack … Continue reading →

(At the Tickle Pink Inn, Carmel Highlands) I study the sign for some time,thinking I shoulda learned someLatin when I had the chance, but that’s why God inventedthe internet, so I look it up.What on earth could restabit mean? Ah, … Continue reading →

Every time I walked up to the old housewhere we stayed—in this placewhere people were banished, sickand dying—I went between the posts that had once supported a latchedgate that kept out the undesirables.This house, where the doctors ofthe settlement had … Continue reading →

Up early (for me), I driveher Hyundai to her town,which long ago was my town,which is this morning my townagain, to sit in a shiny showroomnear the $40K snazzy electric car,which I will likely never acquire inthis lifetime, though I … Continue reading →

Even the most ordinary, doe-brownversions discarded by Canada geeseas common in this park as leaves. My walking buddy does not ask whyI bend to pluck them from the path,nor what I will do with the feathers, which I appreciate, because, … Continue reading →

This face has the countenanceof every crone I have known,the one I am becoming— not the malicious, disagreeable,sinister old woman, but onewho embodies wisdom, inner knowing, intuition,as all the crones I have everknown have done for me, guiding my younger … Continue reading →

On Memorial Daythe Artist in a Van parks her VW buson the sidewalk by McKinley Parkbetween the rose gardenand the tennis courts, she and her mama setting up campchairs on the shady lawn,the daisy-stickered van with itscargo door wide open … Continue reading →

May turns the home territory yellow,spring green grasses giving way todrying weeds the color of straw, ournearly perennial state in thisgolden state. By mid-month only the poppiescontinue to show off their brightfaces as the first wildflowers havesped through their swift … Continue reading →

I get the garage cleaned out and keep it that way,not load it up with boxes that delivered stuffimportant in the moment to my door? If Iget the back bedroom tidy of its full boxesand bags of gifts and books … Continue reading →

…poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping… What we have to dois live in a way that lets us find them. —Naomi Shihab Nye from “A Valentine for Ernest Mann” ••• If I take off my shoesand … Continue reading →