Category Archives: Uncategorized

Banana Bookshop

Set up a shop the color of banana.Cram it full of books and a window seat ripe for reading, tucked into a London alleyso you have to search for it, delighted when you find it, reveling in the sweetnessof banana, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Bright Monday

And so it isthe day after Easter,a similarly gorgeous day,warm and dry at long last,spring blasting out of ground and trees and skywith look-at-me insistence. And we do.We cannot look away, nor do we want to,finally released from what has … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Where the rainbows hide

for Joe Chan, with thanks and admiration They dive in or burst out of brick buildings,cascade over a meadow, backlight a majesticoak tree at sunset, reflect on the watersof a river called American under a bridgenamed Rainbow. You capture elusive … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Promise

And now,the piercing lossof the belovednewly goneeases a wee bit as you walk pasttulips standing atattention, as loose-lipped blossomswaggle a springy hello, dazzling scarlet,happy yellow, softsalmon, flamingpoppies flashingtheir bellies to the sky. They stop you,bend you closer—life eternal rightthere, the … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Leafsong

The song you heard singing in the leaf when youwere a childis singing still. — Mary Oliver from “What Can I Say?” If you bend near or stretch tall,put your ear close to the baby budbusily working to evolve—perhaps one … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Green tea and Spam musubi

for Dick Schmidt Only in a Hawaiian hospital,where he and I lodged for a fortnight,could one find tight white rice slabstopped with fried Spam drizzledin teriyaki sauce, bound in acrinkly green ribbon of seaweed. And after another mostly sleeplessnight—up every … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Balance

It will not always look like this,I remind myself as I walk, the lakeedging toward full, the bluest blue sky,the loose fringe of clouds over the hills. What I will miss most all too soonis when the green goes gold, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I wanna

From where I stand, sun-facing,toes-rising, hands chair-rooted,I study the black bird that flutters its way to the top of the treethree yards down from Marilyn’swhere Shelley bounces us oldies on the lawn through an hour’sworkout to the oldies. Focus on … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Maestra

(for Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928) Though I didn’t call her that,the two times I interviewed her,but oh, how her song reverberated, pinballing through my ribcage,the elegant woman onstage singingpart of her story, the notes charging into the audience … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What pulls you out

Driving over the seasonal sea that washesunder the causeway, river overflowflooding rice fields before the crop is planted, I look at the little islands with their reedycrewcuts popping out of water. Pulling my eyes from the road, I searchfor a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments