A Field of Winter Grass

after the photograph by Peter Sheffler
“Winter Field Grasses, Far Away Point, Maryland”


To be still in the middle of chaos,
singular in the midst of multiplicity
a line in a series of lines. To be a note
in a chorus, a voice in the marsh
a reed in a tangle of stalks.
To be woven in a field of complexity
yet still a thread, an arrow, a direction.
To be an intention, a clear heart,
hidden blade, the crisscross
of here and there, a slender
reaching strand of light, an intersection
of possibility, the dance of detail,
piece of the weave, pattern of everything,
a field of winter grass.

Billy

“Your cat is a person in a fur suit,” my former neighbor Jamie told me. His name is Billy, but she called him William. I never knew where he went at night until I discovered he was sleeping with her. They watched TV together and she told me he had a favorite show: “Sex in the City.” “He likes to watch himself in the mirror,” she said. When she moved out he waited at her door for months. He likes beautiful women. He loved my last roommate and would sleep entwined in her arms. Last week as I walked to my car, another neighbor whom I do not know stopped me and asked, “Are you with Billy?” I wondered how this girl knew his name as he does not wear a collar. She said, she had heard I did some healing work and asked if she could come by. I found out that Billy has been calling to her from the bushes below her second story window. She comes when he calls to her and she calls down to him. Then they have a conversation. Like Romeo and Juliet. Her name is Sapphire. She texts me to ask about Billy. And I send her pictures of Billy. I try not be jealous. He is a cat, after all. One day I will ask him his secret.


summer serenade
my cat sings to my neighbor
I do not wait up



“Billy” appeared in “Eclipse Moon: 2017 Southern California Haiku Study Group Anthology”
edited by William Scott Galasso with Deborah P Kolodji

Grateful Conversations

Everything we have we’re given
in love to use in love, in grace.
There is nothing we alone have written.

We are but a conversation
of light. Through this exchange we trace
everything we have. We’re given

sour and sweet, lemon, raisin
and grain to bind them into place—
There is nothing we alone have written.

We eat cakes but have forgotten
their origin. We have erased
everything. We have; we’re given.

We look. We laugh. We love. We listen.
We welcome gifts we embrace.
Yet there is nothing we alone have written.

Watch sunset turn to a ribbon.
Remember honey and its taste.
Everything we have we’re given.
There is nothing we alone have written.



“Grateful Conversations” appeared in 2018 in “Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology”
edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford