SHE – Five Oaks Press, out of print

SHE, a quintet of wind-swept poems is a compact memoir tracing the steps of a diffident child as she becomes a confident woman who simultaneously follows the rules and pushes the boundaries. She chooses a man who deals in the “uncommon currencies” of bear hugs and laughter, recalls the rumbly-tumbly of her now adult children, shoulders an array of civic duties, accepts—bewildered—widowhood. Love comes again, almost stealthily, then rooted like the trees, she celebrates. The fifth poem, a prayer, leads the reader toward the future, acknowledging fear and affirming joy. Lucky reader.

~ Paula Bevington, Attorney, civic and business leader, Atlanta.

Song of the Sump Pump
Joshua, Rebecca, and Judith, our children

I miss the song of the sump pump in the lowest corner
of the basement , and field-mice droppings under the kitchen sink,

I miss each of you jumping off the top of the refrigerator
into Dad’s arms, giggling the whole way,

I miss his bedtime stories of the Tweedie-Dum-Dinkums—
how he’d sometimes fall asleep in your beds before you did,

I miss him spending hours at the kitchen table helping Judith
organize her math notebook,

Joshua throwing up all over the kitchen in the middle
of his eleventh birthday party,

Rebecca swimming year-round – her collection
of chlorine-shredded bathing suits on the bathroom floor,

I miss Oreo the flopped-eared rabbit who’d burrow
into box springs and hide,

Snookums the white rabbit with pink eyes and a huge goiter—
which no doubt accounted for his ill temper,

I miss the kitchen walls yellow, then blue,

the rust-red door into the dining room,

morning sunshine in the nursery

I miss standing in each of your bedrooms
after you left for college— matrix of abandoned clothes,

mismatched sneakers, papers and notebooks askew,
team soccer and swimming trophies, your odor on the pillow.

Coda
Oh Lord
let me be calm
silent as the dusk of a pine forest
let me lose fear
comfort the cedar waxwings
gorging on cotoneaster berries
too drunk to fly
crashing into our windows
yellow bodies and red wing tips
stilled on the ground
give my old dog Joe
surcease as he tries to stand.

Oh Lord
of births and beheadings
(for if you are there,
you must be God of both)
put your thumb on the scales
of new stars
and fresh air to breathe
let my daughter’s daughter
about to be born
run barefoot in summer rain
bits of fresh cut grass
sticking between her toes.