Two poets of the vineyards awards

 No date. I still need to look up what poems.

FEAST OR FAMINE

FEAST OR FAMINE
—After William Carlos Williams

This is just to say:

I usually know better than to open a man's

refrigerator no matter how good

the loving was the night before.

The newspaper was still readable—

not that news is important enough to eat—

the salmon on a plastic-keeled raft

had a knowing look as if a fishing rod

had snagged something other than dreams

during the night's repast.

Not that we kept each other

in hunger and health the whole night long.

However, for breakfast, I only eyed the avocado

which you were probably saving for tonight's dip.

Eggs tossed in a frail paper boat

on a heavy cabbage sea, and the mushrooms—

like puckered toes under an incandescent moon,

would have been good in an omlet.

Though my appetite is stirring,

there are always greener pastures farther south.

You see, my mind was on last night's dinner

which stood me up when we fell back into dreams

and the salmon swam freely home—

I'm still famished, no matter how many quarts

of kisses were stored on the shelf

during the famine years.

Cotati, 1984
rev. 4/89
1993 We Are Not Swans, with Cecelia Woloch
1985 Poets of the Vineyard, First Prize (another version)

Poets of the Vineyard award, First Place, Free Verse (for what poem?)

Poets of the Vineyard award, First Place, Free Verse
(not sure for what poem, I've a note that it's for FEAST OR FAMINE, but I think that isn't right. They didn't list the poem on the certificate. I never thought to write the info on the back...)
Sonoma County Chapter, California Federation of Chaparral Poets
Winnie Fitzpatrick, President

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES
          —for Bill Snow

Some members of the Donner Party didn't wait for spring.

Their bones grew new coats of skin.

The survivors slept, dreaming of hot ash bonfires

remembered the earth was a vast burial ground

but did nothing.

Deep inside, the earth shuddered.

Liquid bones of molten lava tried to escape

& snow soothed the terrible thirst

from their hearts.

They say beauty is only skin-deep.

Skin stretched over the cheekbones of women

means nothing without inner structure.

Leaves are homeless without

wind-polished femurs of trees

to hold them to sunlight.

Look to the architecture of bones for strength.

Without them, holding snow would be impossible.

Mountains would bleed back into the sea.

In spring, no skin would slough off

to reveal the bare-boned mountains.

Who keeps moving the bones?

Soon they will rise up

& reassemble themselves

but the pattern is forgotten

& the earth's strength is altered.

Bare bones. Hidden bones.

For a year, Albion Ridge

swallowed the bones of young girls.

The murder was not avenged.

No one lit hot ash bonfires for them.

Their skin sank into the earth in a slow trickle

& the trees were the only ones left to listen

to the soft music

of skin falling from bones.

10/31/82

Sebastopol

rev.88

1985 Napa Poetry Review
1984 Deepest Valley Review
1983 Poets of the Vineyard, 2nd Prize
1983 ARC/Rural Arts Services
1983 Poets of the Vineyards, 2nd prize

RITES OF EXTREME UNCTION FOR MONO LAKE

RITES OF EXTREME UNCTION FOR MONO LAKE

In these unadorned camelid hills, ancient 

clam beds seek absolution from baked adobe 

while unseasonable green fountains of corn 

suck water from this desert oasis. 

Sacrament. This morning, the priest wore 

an alb and the purple robes of penitence,

as he offered up the blood of the earth,

the palms give voice to parched santana winds. 

Grapes from Chile at two dollars a pound; 

the price of water from Chilean earth 

3,000 miles south of this desert where 

campesinos struggle for the dailiness of bread.

And in the north, an ancient lake 

 is dying of thirst so a garden may grow. 

What is the color of forgiveness 

when mirages of real water slick the surface?

Easter 1983?  It may be 82
Bakersfield

1984 Napa Poetry Review
         Poets of the Vineyard, First Honorable Mention