Blue Veil

  Silk blue veil covering the silver-shimmer
sequins of fish, she
dances her windy watery soft
shimmy.  Unhappy with her outfit,
she changes into something
brown, then foamy green, then a
bottomlessly deep black with
white lace and caps accented in wide stripes
of a metal riveted belt in two layers.
She wakes in the morning
yawning clouds in her sea gull
pajamas of Berkeley cloud
patches; dreamy and Tolkien,
magical as if she'd just left a night
in Middle Earth.  Matching
her lover's blissfull look with
clarity and calm;  two mirrors of
eternal blue.  At night she brings
out a velvet gown of midnight,
studded with rhinestone stars and
she flirts with the crescent watching
from above.

Tweed

Irregular tweed blue bay

Wrapped tonight in your evening peach shawl,

Dusk accents your lovely

Stony necklace with a shiny city bridge

clasp

Saturday Morning Sister Poem

Meet me at the intersection

                Of Me and You

How could we find each other

                Anywhere else?

And it’s important that we both

                Show up

For how could it otherwise be

                Than at the edge of You and Me

Full Moon Grasses

Full moon grasses

lit silver by sister orb’s

metal breath of night

only waves from

dark sky breezes

let luster peacock

off each thin blade

and so the wind

and the grass

and the sun and the moon,

and so they play

all night

as we sleep

Cottonwood Trees

By the cottonwood trees next to the railroad tracks

                Down a dirt road sits a tiny white house

Davenport on the porch with the built in smell of Grandpa’s

                Copenhagen

Blue and white striped overalls

Scruff beard and a white shock of thick hair

Harmonica

Jokes and laughter and fishing poles with worms

                Waiting

For a trek through the snake grass and cows to

                The river

Whatever fish came back to the white house

                Were a tribute to Grandpa’s patience with

                Tangled lines, snags, and baiting hook after hook

Stop at the red iron hand pump for water to clean our catches

                For Grandma to bread and fry

Served with sliced cucumbers from the garden

                Behind the outhouse with a crescent moon cutout

                                For light

Those cucumbers with vinegar, sugar, salt, and thin slices of

                Onion

Served on china, meals sometimes cooked on the

                Woodstove

Slices of vanilla ice cream in a cantaloupe bowl

Pinochle and pinions at the kitchen table at night

Sleeping in the double bed with two sisters

Trains rattling us to slumber

Waking to coffee scents with clinking teaspoons and

low voices in the kitchen

Pictures of dogs smoking cigars and playing

                Poker

The clock on the wall with the witch or

                The kids, indicating stormy or sunny playtime outside

Cousins

                Left-handed Ruth on my right handed side

                At Thanksgiving dinners

Stealing Dutch’s cigarettes

Hearing of Rip chasing the stick and it getting stuck in his throat

Wood pile smelling of railroad, that hot-sun creosote

Poncho the Chihuahua, Grandma’s dog

The cellar door outside

                Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz

Peppermint lozenges, pink, for us in a candy dish

                On the corner of the buffet that now rests

                In my living room, carrying the essence of

                Sweet memories

Harmonica playing

You Are My Sunshine

                Still makes me smile; causes a lump in my throat

Happy memories

Sixteen Year-Old summer days vacuuming and doing their laundry and

                Soaking in having them all to myself

Beautiful sepia Oval pictures of youth

                Young

Ed and Anna

In love 60 years

Worry

Even fresh from napping,

my mind picks up a thread

of worry and begins to

                stab and twirl

and knit and purl

                with its crafty needles.

Threading and fretting,

                Jabbing and wrapping,

Then we tat and mend

                Into a too-tight mess.

Turning it back and forth,

over and over again,

pulling and bunching

things much worse than they were.

The sewing machine comes out

with a bang and roars zig zag over

it forward and back

until its unrecognizably contorted

in a knot of my own creation.

I add my embellishments of ric-rak and beads

without any concern for structure,

pattern, and plan.

Cross-stitch on top of it all

Until I

Stop

Take a breath

Shake my head

And exhale

Undoing my worrisome

Handiwork

Loose threads; let me rest!

Somebody

Somebody out there is smiling as the wind whips her plain brown

hair around her oversized sunglasses.

The red Volkswagen, convertible top down, driven joyously by her beau

passes me, heading East

While my Westward pining heartbreak grieves my mother.

It’s my turn for this,

and soon I hope I can be headed back red convertible style

As is life’s way