This is the year the dead come marching,

Not soldiers, accident victims,

strangers we cluck our tongues about

and then go back to eating, shopping,

making much of small things; no

now it's a parade of people ...

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I swallow around twigs,

try to ignore the nest

mistakenly built

in my belly,

 

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Once upon a time there was a woman who spent her life trying to keep a beach ball under water - a task given to her by a wicked witch when she was born. The witch warned her something terrible would happen to her mother if she were to allow the beach ball to raise above the water. The beach ball was very heavy. It was filled with the family grief. The woman didn’t know this, but she used all her energy to comply with the task. She was a rule-follower. Her hair, which was pitch black, and ... << MORE >>

I am nine-tenths up the side of a 25 foot rock in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in upper Minnesota, close to the Canadian boarder. It is late July. I am 53 years old. I have no idea if the weather is fair or foul since I am focused on one thing, and one thing only. I am stuck. Totally and completely stuck, stomach pressed against the unforgiving granite, left foot perched on a tiny outcropping of rock at an improbable angle to my body, at least two large stair levels in height above the right foot, which is currently flailing for a purchase. My hands are clamped for dear life on an overhang above.<< MORE >>

Having just come through winter myself
I notice
sooty sentinels of snow
darkening the curbs,
crab-apples pickled in the sidewalk slush,
derelicts
of trash and << MORE >>