WHAT THE OAK TOLD THE CICADA

Be at home in the heart,

who cares what extends beyond your brittle hide.

Home gives space for light,

lets it feather the soft unformed.

Be at home with the hunger,

who cares that we tremble.

Home makes room for mercy,

lets it cushion the sharpest edge.

When you go

follow warmth,

the ochre,

the golden rod,

each umber and ecru,

the endless green,

the lavender and rust.

These signal our songs

and bring clues for what twines

the plucky hours of July with November.

Be at home for the peace,

join its long name:

Grasshopper

Phoebe

Rosemary

Mother's milk

Alabaster

First light

Gibbous Moon

Waterfall

Morning fog

Lemon balm

Black dog

Red tide

Oak pollen

Boney night

Dandelion

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Temerity

Helen holds hands with thunderheads. It helps when she's weak in the knees, lightning running down abductors, running down bones. Even temple guards succumb to such days, soft as pillows - scarlet velveteen on silk sheets. Pink cyclamen bells the air, and Helen cut her traces. Bridget dreams the summer wind. Its susurrate moan rises in waves, swells with tides of sandalwood to chariot the night. She spins rhapsody around its howl, dawns a golden jet stream on spangled festoons of cirrus. Weak knees fly off with yellow wind, before Bridget stills the night. Sicily wets her lips with limoncello, quells the rabble of heartache, the clatter of waiting. She rings goblets like temple bells, makes a sound map for lost days. Her boat of pink sand brims in blood oranges and cyclamen. Lightning festoons the rabble, Sicily finds Helen’s hand.

Covid19 Journal Entry 16

April 6, 2020 Today’s image – I was thinking about a news story from a couple weeks back. Las Vegas municipal services decided to manage their homeless population’s infection risk by moving these unfortunates to a parking lot that was taped off into spaces six feet apart. Out in the open elements these displaced people were parked, while the hotels in the casinos stood empty. Today, I listened to local news while sewing masks after school. They interviewed the director of a local homeless relief organization that provided shelter to hundreds in our area. The director mentioned that more often than not, these people live in such crisis already that they miss the big news stories or just decide to tune them out because they don’t want to stack more crisis on top of their own unsolvables. She said they were managing the mandates of the outbreak dangers with federal funds that were matched by community funds to put up their homeless clients into hotels in the area for the d

The Red Coat

You believe in open society, big dreaming and serendipity! You got perspective - a rock cairn with prayer flags. What did it take to pack up home and family, to travel treacherous miles - thousands, to be a stranger in a partisan land? This is the story of your grandmothers, your story too, without the peril. Bold hearts learn to swim with trouble. At 12, your Yankee mother sent you to join the school walk out of Southern Segregation. You were happy to buck the system, happy for new friends. Fraternizing with these kids fattened a fringe - cushioned the mean gibes of local cliches and clans. You linked arms, to carry a fine truth dancing between you: Life is unkind, life is a mission, life is a mercy. Your mother was sixteen when the H-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Did New England air shake with wails that ricocheted across the night from Nippon to Narragansett? The sirens and howls, the hungry ghosts when they nipped the Nipponese. At sixte

What the Muses Leave Behind

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