Category: Poetry

Poppies along a wall A cistern where birds Might dip their wings Your key is all that’s left. Once skies alight with birds before clouds tight with dust shadowed towns. Nothing left but stones and broken homes. children beneath...

Poppies along a wall, a cistern too, birds dip their wings. Your key is all that’s left. Once you saw skies alight with birds but clouds tight with dust scarred the town. Nothing’s left but stones and broken homes. Beneath dust...

threat of loss spills like a splash of oil on a hot pan. Burned in a flash yet pain lasts long as memory brushes the skin.

Our canoe cuts smoothly through the water, our bent paddles propelling us forward. I’m in the bow, my husband in the stern, so I can’t see his face when he tells me how proud he is of me, of the battle I wage daily against my...

My husband roasts the fish whole, lemon slices arranged around the pan, and the meal comes out in courses the way we used to do it before we had a child: first a garlicky Caesar salad with homemade croutons, then avgolemono, a...

In the dim dusky light, their huge white bodies glide gracefully across the mirrorglass surface of the lake— one adult in front and one in back, with three adolescents in a row between them, gray and barely visible, the sun...

Passing sod fields on the way to school had me dreaming to fence it in with white boards, a square of grassy pasture for my not-yet horses. I’d play Legos with my brother in the basement and claim all the green plates perfect...

I’ve heard homesteaders talk about raising their children learning the life cycle, knowing where their food comes from, giving thanks for the animal’s sacrifice. But as I watch my three year-old stroke the feathers of a dead...

After my brother died, I started seeing Sandhill Cranes— or I started noticing them. They’d fly over my house, stand in a field as I drove past, or I’d hear their call on the wind. I don’t know which comes first— the thoughts of...

My aging parents feed all the birds the turkeys the deer the squirrels the rabbits. Dutifully filling the feeders and when that is not enough—sheet pans, pouring out cracked corn or birdseed. Today while swimming with my boys at...