The Seine at Vernonnet

Another of my poems, "The Seine at Vernonnet," appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Halcyon Days Magazine.

Along with the poem "Amandier en fleurs," in the Fall 2018 issue of Birdland Journal, and short prose pieces "Bonnard in the Alps" and "Studio with Mimosa" in The Ekphrastic Review (April 29 and May 11, 2019, respectively), this reflects my life-long love of artist Pierre Bonnard and the inspiration he offers.

Here, I write about the Bonnard

greens and oranges and 

moments of that rapturous blue 

I could drown in,

sometimes with a little boat.

image:  Pierre Bonnard, La risée sur la rivière, Christie's (but alas, not this Christie's!)

The Blessing of the Animals

My poem "The Blessing of the Animals" was just published in the Spring 2020 issue of Halcyon Days Magazine.

Here are a few lines from it:

And I see people coming up the path outside 

the ruddy brick church in the reverential sunlight, 

bringing their spaniels, their dim-sighted 

old Airedale terriers; one child and her father 

carrying between them a brown rabbit in a cage.

image:  Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Writing Spaces

Word cloud from WordItOut.Com

Writing Spaces

My all-time favorite type face, discovered in my letterpress days.

Writing Exercise with Three Puppies

Try making a story or poem of this.  Even a novel, if you've time.  (And which of us doesn't, these days?!)

I'm reminded of my strange poem, "Class Exercise with Dachsund," which must have come from some similar stimulus that I can't now remember.




image:  Paul Gauguin, Still Life with Three Puppies

Writing Spaces

It is a time of being lured outside by light, birdsong, and tender shoots—all that is new and full of promises not yet articulated.  But still my writing space is here just on the threshold, looking out, letting the light come seeping in,  
letting my thoughts venture along that path then back inside, rummaging drawers and old notebooks, playing magpie, filching whatever bright chancy things happen along. 



image:  Henri Le Sidaner, Petite porte de Trianon

Daily Comforts

daily comforts

watching the small birds come to the feeder

feeling the warmth of the heated beanbag

behind my neck, its soft flannel

finding the spells in words, in images:

tables set in a woodland, purple artichokes

held forward like an offering in both hands

envisioning a generosity of flowers

in the big-bellied Italian pot, a wedding gift

and then the birds again, and nine-grain toast

and all those things that say "morning," and 

"mine," and how immeasurably grateful I am

The Hope Chest

Just published in the Spring 2020 Issue of Birdland Journal, my short story "The Hope Chest."

This story talks about what hope means when the whole concept of hope is almost impossible to imagine, let alone to own.  Hope comes only in radiant small glimpses.

"It isn't hopeless," Jay insisted once more, when he came back.  "Think of the millions of seeds in the desert, dormant until rain; in permafrost, germinating after almost 32,000 years.  The miracles of Arctic lupine, sacred lotus, Judean date palm.  The ancient pollen of red spruce.  Pollen grains and spores in prehistoric sediments.  Pollen can last essentially forever, in the right conditions—360 million years, we know, give or take a couple."

When Jay had gone, she went out to the patio, lay on her back, amazed by the intricate clouds, the light across the sky.  The silhouettes of the old trees, inked on the horizon, the dusk collecting in the dusky hollow where the old grandfather pine had been, there still in memory and heart's ease.

And yet hope does come, in the end . . . 

image:  123RF

When Bluejay Stole the Moon

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first moon walk, last July, I wrote a story taking off from what little I remembered of watching that historic moment on TV in Santa Fe.  (Coconut cake!)  And in discussions with friends about where they were, what they remember, I learned that we all seem to remember most vividly the little things that happened to us personally that day, what we were focused on in our personal orbs, and that the moon (as usual, despite the unusual circumstances) cast only a very little light on what was going on with individual relationships and dreams and fears.

The story, which turned into something I named "When Bluejay Stole the Moon," has just been published by The Woven Tale Press, in its Spring 2020 issue.  (Also available in print.)

Much of the fun of writing it was sending myself back to Santa Fe the way it was in summer 1969, noting things in our general culture like Dr. Pepper, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, Abbey Road, and making alum crystals, but especially reveling in what was special about that particular place, then.  It was also fun to live those days as someone else than who I was, and to invent a family of friends I would have loved to spend time with, with horses and a house I would have been thrilled to visit.

"Jodi felt closer to the possibility of religion somehow at the Freys' house, among their carved kachinas, painted Guatemalan saints, and little Burmese Buddha keeping watch without judgment from a recessed wall niche.  Their graceful adobe house was in the older part of town, where there were artists' studios and the acequia and corrals, as well as restaurants like El Farol and The Three Cities of Spain—not like the soulless modern neighborhood where Jodi and her parents lived, little boxy yards enclosed by ugly cinderblock walls and planted with twiggy trees, no bosky shade, lofty cathedrals of rustling leaves and dappled light."

 "They rode bareback across their rambling property and along the trail through the neighbors', all the way to the far stand of cottonwoods and back.  Anya draped herself over Conejo's broad withers, the variegated browns of his namesake rabbit, the Eastern cottontail, her hands wrapped in his silky mane. Jodi rode awkwardly upright, bouncing more than she wanted, unable to grip Sibu's warm chestnut flanks tightly enough with her unpracticed thighs and knees, but glorying, especially when they cantered down the long, sandy arroyo bed, imagining herself Theseus's bride, Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, proud warrior bright with scorn."

image:  Susan Seddon Boulet

Writing Spaces: Catamaran

I am a grateful fan of Catamaran Literary Reader, and have been made to feel like an established part of the Santa Cruz writing community because of their journal launches, their presence at Bookshop Santa Cruz and local art galleries, and their inspirational summer writing conference on the Monterey coast.

On Friday night I read from my short story "Moroccan Spices" at the launch of the latest Catamaran—Vol. 8, Issue 1: Spring 2020, Issue 28—a ride to add to one on quite another catamaran, that into the blue waters off the sacred Place of Refuge on the Big Island of Hawai'i, some twenty-five years ago.

Moroccan Spices

I am delighted to have my short story "Moroccan Spices" included in the new (Spring 2020) issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.

The title is an allusion to "the skewers Jane had threaded lovingly with perfect Red Flame grapes grown by organic farmers in Sonoma or Rohnert Park, and Nieman Ranch pork, humanely raised, marinated in spices overnight—a blend of cumin and paprika, ginger, cloves, and just a smidgen of cayenne" and to the lure of far-off places, to travel and great dreams of bright, brave places and ways of being.  To something Sarah, our middle-aged heroine, sets off on a belated quest to find and claim as her own—"with her rations of Moroccan pork-and-grape skewers and a bottle of Aquafina determined to recapture the spontaneity she’d lost somewhere along the way, the feeling of having all the time in the world to track the moon to its lair out in the Pacific or farther oceans."

image:  Le Creuset, Moroccan Magic