COYOTE COMMUTE

In the rearview mirror, I saw a scrawny coyote 

trot down Sir Francis Drake Boulevard,

midday, in the tiny hamlet of Forest Knolls, 

looking over his shoulder, watching for cars,

before turning up Tamal Road, 

headed for home as if he lived there.

I kept looking for Road Runner, 

knowing I was in the wrong cartoon.

6/16/23

HOUSE SPIDER

HOUSE SPIDER

Nearly invisible house spider 

spins desoléis on his delicate web 

searching for breakfast 

in all the wrong corners.

6/15/23

BLOW WIVES

BLOW WIVES 

She filled a cow pelvis with wild roses, 

as if that would repatriate the long dead. 

Scapulae nestled like snow angels

in the powdery alkali dust as if

the beauty of death in bleached bones

was seeking a redress with the darkness. 

Her small poems traveled on the wind 

like the wishes of blow wives, 

lost in the desert varnish of time.

6/7/23 Write On! with Terri Glass

Note bene: this is a stub, no idea where it’s going. Sort of Georgia O’Keefish! I have been looking at a lot of her work that I’ve never seen before.

A MEADOW OPENS

Here, a meadow opens with arms outstretched, 

where the meadowfoam and field iris 

paint the eye into carpets of color. 

The cattle work the grass and low to each other, 

they are far from the police state of cities and self. 

They peacefully graze, while we plan and strategize, 

ever vigilant to dangers, perceived, or otherwise.

5/17 Write On! with Susie Terence

AT THE VERNAL POOLS, and INNER DIALOGUE NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 4

NaPoWriMo write a triolet, an eight-line poem in iambic tetramenter, lines  1, 4,7 are identical, as are the 2nd and last lines—the poem begins and ends with the same couplet, within a tight rhyme scheme  — ABaAabAB. I don’t think I like writing in forms.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS

Across the pond the herons glide,
And the egrets seek higher ground
From prying eyes and compromise.
Across the pond the herons glide,
Hunting for froglings and newts’ eyes.
We used to watch them soar around.
Across the pond the herons glide,
And now egrets seek higher ground.

4/9/23

2023 April PAD Challenge

Write a dream poem, and/or Write a reality poem.

INNER DIALOGUE

Some say that in a dream, 

the idea that we carry a dialogue with us, 

wherever we go, day and night, 

it accompanies us, is like a familiar, 

watching over us, waiting for the news, 

hidden behind a veil of symbolism 

and random metaphor.

4/9

GREAT WHITE HUNTER, FOOLISH HEART, NaPoWriMo Day 1 haiku

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

Oliver the cat
tiptoes over the wet grass 

then sits on the bug.

He slinks down the path 

flat-eared and round-eyed, he chatters, 

but the birds are no fools.

Foolish cat lays low 

thinking he’s invisible. 

The birds know better.

………….

Last night’s storm damage 

is measured in increments 

by the sheer number 

of utility trucks 

parked by the side of the road

hoisting up cables.

………

Driving any old way to work

So much depends on

the SUV in front of me, 

which way it turns, 

thus mapping my path 

leaving the day’s route to chance.

The road least taken.

………..

Unlucky rabbit 

by the side of the road, split 

like a BBQ chicken.

………..

The marmot was right

Winter didn’t let go 

its hold until April arrived 

rolling up its trousers, 

ready for business.

4/1-3 (I counted syllables all day, but didn’t commit to print)

NaPoWriMo. Haiku & American looons.

FOOLISH HEART

Foolishly, I thought you’d love me forever.
Foolishly, I put all my eggs in one basket.
Foolishly I waited 21 years to seal the bargain
before I had enough of all this foolishness with you.
Foolishly you thought it would all blow over.
Foolishly you hedged your bets. And assumed much.
But when the promissory note came due,
there was nothing left, but your foolish pride.
Foolishly, I believed everything you said.
Foolishly, I believed that forever would last
at least for a half-life of forever and a day.
Foolishly, I believed in the fairytales.
I believed that love was forever today.
But my moth-eaten pride was in tatters,
my heart was dressed in Cinderella rags.
My heart harbored pestilence, rotted from the inside,
because foolishly, I took it all in and blamed myself
gaslighted by your foolish pride.

2023 April PAD Challenge Write a foolish poem.

Here are all 30 of 2022 poem a day prompts. Knock yourself out.

THE MAD OLD COW DAYS

These last three days of March are roaring 

their way out like a pride of hungry lions. 

The chilblains of the borrowed days of the brindled cow,

what the Irish monks called Laethanta na Bó Riabhai, 

are among us, making ancestors of our ancient ones. 

Complaining about the second childhood of cattle,

groundhog shadows, or the vagaries of weather is pointless. 

The almanac of winter love, dressed in sleet and snow, 

aquamarine and bloodstone, gets final say—

despite rolling out the new year’s equinox pledge.

It’s a portmanteau payback for those three stolen days 

in February, a false spring Jezebel that showered us 

with a swale of narcissus and blackthorn blossoms,

So, mad March stole a day from April, and the old cow died.

Cruelest April also promises a compound interest plan,

it rolls up its cuffs, trading taxable per deum days

with the war god, Mars, despite a shepherd’s wild vow 

of a sacrifice of a firstborn suckling lamb to slake 

the insatiable hunger that is the madness of March.

3/29/23

Extensively revised 3/31

To be fair, it was barely more than a line, ok so, the first two lines.  

See duchas, The Riabhach days, An unpleasant sting in the tail of March

March borrowed from April

Three days and they were ill

The first was snow and sleet

The next was cold and wet

The third was such a freeze

The birds's nests stuck to trees

BONFIRE

The horses crave more than oats, 

the cats crave more than kibble, 

the arroyo willow seeks water 

and will change course to follow it. 

The hawthorne keeps a date with the wee folk

we knew that picking blossoms led to trouble. 

We feared the changelings and built bonfires

while the darkness stripped the cold heart of ice.

2/13 with Susie Terence

AFTER THE STORM haiku

AT THE KOA CAMPGROUND 

Canada geese take
a spa day in the runoff 

ditch after the storm.

ADAMANTINE LIGHT

The sun burns the eye

reflected in the puddles

of a thousand fires.

2/6/23

PAST THE LAKE

The cursory notes 

of a black bird still singing 

in my memory.

2/6/23

AFTER THE STORM

After slaloming 

so many potholes the road 

crew offers respite.

2/6/23

SINE CURVE 

I swerve to avoid 

a redtail hawk brunching on

a rabbit in the road.

2/6/23

SIREN CALL

Anxiety is 

an ambulance careening

down the road of regret.

2/8/23

Before the storm

As I drove down Hicks Valley Road at dusk, three flocks of starlings converged over me, accompanied by the first drops of rain falling on my car roof. It was astounding to see hundreds of starlings murmurate overhead. I stopped my car right in the middle of the road to watch them pulse and bend and weave a dark curtain overhead. The bursting of their wings as they moved in unison was like ocean waves, or a gust of roaring wind in the pines. I thought: wow, such big drops of rain, the beginning of the storm. Only in this case, I found out it was a shitstorm. Literally. My car was splattered in birdshit, as if the storm clouds had taken up fingerpainting on my windshield.

RECYCLE haiku

Thoughtful cat barfing
In her food bowl, saving it
For later. Repeat.

Cat regurgitates

breakfast in her food bowl

saving it for later.

 12/23

…..

Cat moons my zoom class, 

flashing her tail, covering 

the lens with her love.

Writing down the bones, 

she strokes the iPod, claiming

my words with her scent.

12/28

HUNTER’S MOON

The warbler arrived during the very first days of fall,

yellow as the big leaf maple deep in the canyon.

Mornings I’m awakened by his body, a small sun

banging against the pane. He peers into my garret, 

determined to enter the dark dream of the house, 

but my grandmother said, Death always knocks. 

To let a bird in was to let death enter the house.

At first, I thought his reflection spurred him on, 

but on overcast mornings, he’s still at the ready. 

Sometimes he rests on the window screen, 

his tiny claws gaining purchase on the mesh. 

People offer sage advice, say, add pictures of raptors.

Close the blinds. It’s his karma, he’s not hurting himself, 

not like that nuthatch who attacked the outdoor mirror

with such ferocity, I gave him time out, between bouts,

he rested in the hollow of my hand, until the next foray.

Tiny warrior, he fluttered onto the daybed, spent,

his rage against the interloper knew no respite. 

I covered the mirror with a towel to ease our pain. 

But this time I’m not willing to cut off the light. 

Besides, this bird takes time out as he reconnoiters.

I wanted to write about something completely different,

not death, nor the monograph of a warbler seeking solace. 

I forgot the nuances of fall, the dim light, long nights, 

the waning hunter’s moon like a gourd 

glowing in the branches of the redwood. 

Hello Moon, I said, and the moon winked back.

10/12 Write On! With Susie Terence

THE RAPTURE OF THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE

While I watched the birds flit in the skewed rafters of Scheve Jan,

Oude Kerk, my friend pointed to a worn inscription on the stone floor.

I got down on my hands and knees in order to read it,

and shrieked, as I was sprawled atop a Petri dish, the graveslab 

of the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 

a draper who perfected the loupe and the aquatic microscope.

He, who discovered kleine diertjes, cavorting wee beasties, 

animalcules frolicking in the rainwater and in the canals of Delft—

delven means to dig, and so he delved a canal into the obscure arts.

He was the first to witness unnamed creatures of an unknown world—

paramecia, protozoa & spermatozoa—I don’t even want to go there.

In winter light, the church was too dark for my camera to record,

I needed spectacles to see. But at that moment my feet 

(& knees) gave me a more pious vision. I was so enthralled,

I overlooked the plaque of that other master of ultramarine shadow 

and light, I came too late to see—Vermeer, and his camera lucida, 

but at a vlooienmarkt in front of City Hall, I found antique Delft tiles 

painted with dragonflies, and a beatific saint rising above the marsh.

9/27

Observationes microscopicae drawn by Antoni Leeuwenhoek, 1682 Wiki

IN THE KINGDOM OF WILDFLOWERS

IN THE KINGDOM OF WILDFLOWERS 

In the kingdom of wildflowers, clarkia and lupine,

iridescent dragonflies hitch onto stems like airships. 

I admired the way that blue dragonfly held onto the grass 

like a docking station in deep space 

and I suppose it could have been a she 

laying a constellation of eggs so far from water. 

Obviously she has hope for the future.

Her goal was the headlands of Walker Creek 

or the other fork, another dammed tributary 

in that nemesis of a watershed, where

that bend where the road nearly killed me. 

The bumblebees whirl and spin on the teasel,

each one circling a small white rosette of blossoms 

providing nectar and succor. The bumblebees nap.

In the garden I find a pipevine but not the pupae, 

shrouds of black swallowtails driven to near extinction.

Soon the sky will be filled with iridescent shadows 

and ghost thoughts in the air.

6/15/22

PIPEVINE SWALLOWTAIL

In the garden I find the elusive pipevine 

but not the pupae of the black swallowtail butterflies.

Soon the sky will be filled with iridescent shadows 

and ghost thoughts will drift unmoored in the air.

This is how we measure the beginning of extinction.

fragment 

see IN THE KINGDOM OF WILDFLOWERS

SURE SIGNS OF SPRING

I stood beneath the madrone tree,
alive with the buzzing of bees,

and I wondered what species? 

A voracious party of bees leaves

a lake of small white bells at my feet.

European honeybees? Carpenter bees?

Whatever the species, they begin early, 

gathering nectar at the crack of dawn. 

Small bells like drifts of snow cover the car.

The tree buzzes and drones on, 

sounding like it’s about to take off 

to join the twin propeller planes 

crossing a flawless West Marin sky.

Two drunken bumblebees fall from the tree 

and wobble onto me, piggyback.

The little furry fkrs fking on my finger!

I had no worries about being stung. 

That was the last thing on their minds.

4/23 PAD

GARTERSNAKES

I swerve to avoid the wedding carcasses
of small snakes in the middle of the road.
Tiny garter snakes looking for love
in all the wrong places discover

too late that the open road
is also the end of the road.

4/11

Blackbird and crow

In the sky, a blackbird dives and pecks at a crow flying too close for comfort. Tiny speck, like a period at the end of the sentence, the blackbird harries the tail of that interloper in his airspace. With this airshow, we begin to understand the fable of how the wren became the king of all birds by hitchhiking on the back of an eagle to see who could fly the highest. That little bird, well out of his comfort zone, dived and swooped in the air like an acrobat, leaving the crow so perplexed, he headed for safer skies.

CLEAR CUT

When I was a child, our neighbor, 

Lucien Vincilione—his name, a clue—

in an attempt to establish a preordained
sense of order in a fecund wilderness,
vigorously cleared manzanita and coyotebush,
to let the land breathe. He sawed and whacked
and sprayed the brambles with a vengeance,
leveling with impunity the berries and wild roses,
eradicating the snowberry and the pipevine—
what we called the greeny Dutchman’s pipe,
never learning the names of those wild plants
that survived for eons in that unkept garden.
Still not content, he torched the honeybee nest
in the bay tree down by the creek, he
felled the venerable crabapple in the gulley
all for the idea of order, and a good riddance,
he said, having abolished the slovenly wilderness
for a sterile landscape of non-native grasses.
First to go were the shooting stars, then the creamcups,

then the larkspur, and the tiny wild strawberries,

the death-knell of the blue-eyed-grass and hounds-tongue 

and the dainty iris. Only the death camas survived.

Of course we were unaware of the role of symbiosis,
an interdependent dance of host plant and insect.
And for all his efforts, for decades there was no longer 

a verdant wildflower carpet to greet us,

nor a crown of black pipevine swallowtails
with luminous indigo and russet eye patches
swooping around our heads in spring.
No accounting for taste, my grandmother said.
Not even the small birds could survive 

that onslaught of progress.

4/10 PAD

Persian door, Aleke and Kobe

Southern Iran or North Kurdistan. From Hawraman, Facebook

The hen contemplates the day, standing on the lintel hovering between inside and outside, the enticing odor of green grass, an oasis, as she can’t fathom the distant lake or the the dark mountains, or gender; her world is contained within the twin cerulean doors opening inward spilling the memory of sky inward onto the dung walls of a room with a flagstone floor, a curved mosaic bowl worn down by time, and the secret whisperings of the past. The hen stands on the women’s side of the doors. They each have their own gendered story of segregated entrances. The verdigris brass aleke, a delicate wing, or more often, a finger-shaped knocker for the women to gently tap, was on the right side, and the thick kobe fist, in the shape of a lionhead or a hand for the men to bang upon the door was on the left. The pitch of the knock, a code, so that the inhabitants each knew how to answer the door. Women answered to the tap and men answered the more robust knock. But in order to close the door, both halves are needed—you can’t have one without the other.

4/9 PAD. Aleke and kobe