A Little Poem For Heidi

It's comforting to know 
that half way across the world
your teakettle energy
still boils over like a pot that's too full,
that you're still laughing
with the desperate glee
of a gardener with too many zucchini.

The Mother Web

Playing Solitaire 
on a dusty morning in Romania,
winning because I played it so much 
as an only child,
the silence echoing me 
sounding like my mother.
Even here, I must fight off 
the grasping fingers of heredity,
the legacy of trivialities 
as dusty as the jars 
of grayish green peas 
in the Cernavoda shops.
It's easier here to reject 
her need for a good daughter
as if it were a job description 
that came with being born...
easier to learn from your gift
of seeing over the rooftops.

Rude Awakening

phone rang
snow stopped
so have the words
fantasy over
business calls
people re-appear
the world awakens at noon

you'll stay buried under
the snowy sheets of my imagination
a memory too shy to appear.

The Colour of Nourishment

I've set out
a bunch of dried hot peppers
and a bowl of apples
hoping the color of nourishment
will heal the emptiness I feel
in this foreign kitchen.
Mugs of tea to keep warm
and to help me remember
who I am and why I've come
so far away from home.
Sewing a shirt I don't really need
and writing letters to my daughters
knowing they'll be too busy to read them.
Knitting the days together
so they move along faster
towards Spring.

No Time

I'm trying to crowd
as much as possible
Into the second half of my life.
Piling up sweet sounds,
strong words,
pungent smells,
layer upon layer of sensation.

I have no time.

You tell me there's all the time
in the universe...
millennium left after I die

But I need to write
one last poem
to describe the short yellow hairs
on your belly
and the damp red leaves
that cover the dying vines
in my back garden.