family life

For two women I love

Marie Ponsot, poet, translator, teacher, stroke survivor, nonagenarian writer of acclaim who wrote for twenty-five years in obscurity, single mother of seven (six of them boys!), lifelong Catholic, writer of my all-time favorite poem “Among Women” and co-author of one of my all-time favorite childhood books, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, died a few […]

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Dad-verse

A two-poem salute to fathers on this Father’s Day 2019. With poems as wonderful as these, that’s as good as twenty-one guns.   This excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” belongs in the wild, in air cleaned fresh by summer rain. But with no countryside excursion possible, I taped the poem to the edge […]

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Debbie (Downer) does Mother’s Day

It’s a good thing I passed by a playground before I found the cemetery I was on the hunt for. Because “Happy Mother’s Day, I see dead people” is twisted, even for a twisty elf like me.   But I do see dead people this Mother’s Day—my mother who died the week before Mother’s Day […]

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Gold to silver, doors to fences

My eighth grade year was the Bicentennial year, and to celebrate our class put on a play. Our ever-enthusiastic music teacher Mrs. Enright put together a musical revue of U.S. history. The only part of the play I remember was singing the give-me-your-tired-your-poor portion of Emma Lazarus’ “New Colossus.” I can still sing it today, […]

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Thanksgiving break

If I had any sense I’d be in the kitchen right now, chopping and endlessly washing mixing bowls and spatulas. Instead I’m sitting at the computer. I’ll pay for it tomorrow with panic and exhaustion, but meantime, here’s a few poems for Thanksgiving.   At the grocery store I left Czeslaw Milosz’s”Encounter” in an empty […]

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Letting go, holding back

      For My Daughter by Grace Paley I wanted to bring her a chalice or maybe a cup of love or cool water      I wanted to sit beside her as she rested after the long day     I wanted to adjure commend   admonish      saying don’t do that […]

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