Hope is the delusion of the oppressed.
It is buzzards watching, waiting in the trees,
laughing.
Hope
beliefs
April Is Poetry Month–3 poems for the first three days
I am a bit behind so decided to share three poems I wrote more than ten years ago about my favorite animal obsession, pumas. These poems were first published in my poetry memoir, On the Rim of Wonder, which is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
I
My neighbor walked out her door
found a puma lying in the lawn.
Puma rose, stretched, disappeared.
At night when I open my gate
I wonder if she lurks
behind the cedar trees,
Pounce ready.
My daughter dreams puma dreams:
a puma chases her up a tree.
There are no trees here big enough to climb.
A Zuni puma fetish guards my sleep.
I run with puma
Night wild
Free.
I scream and howl
Moonstruck
Bloodborn.
I hike the canyon,
stroll around my house,
look for puma tracks.
I see none.
I would rather die by puma
than in a car wreck.
II
I watch for eyes, blue changing to amber and back.
I put my palm, fingers stretched to measure, into the footprint.
Too small, bobcat.
No puma.
My thin body squeezes between the rocks,
climbing quietly down the cliff.
Watching, listening, searching.
No puma.
Pale amber rushes across my vision line.
My heart quakes.
I watch; I wait.
It is Isabella, a golden whir chasing rabbits.
No puma.
At sunrise, I walk the rim,
watching.
At sunset, I walk the rim,
waiting.
At night, I walk the rim,
dreaming.
No puma, not yet.
III
I want
to walk
with you
in my dreams
scream your screams
feel your blood
rushing
your heartbeat
mine
soft golden fur
wound in my hair
your amber eyes
glowing
through my brown
death defying
together walking
moonlit
wild
free
Note: My puma obsession continues. This painting and several others of pumas hang in my house. I now have two puma Zuni fetishes. I hike in the mountains hoping to see one in the wild.
The Angel
Can you call yourself a creative writer if you have not written a word in months? I have a friend who promotes 20 minutes of writing per day, telling people to just write, forget quality, just write. Really?! I care about quality. Perhaps too much? I make sure to read quality writing 99.99% of the time. Is this just words I am writing here or is it quality or garbage? You tell me!
One thing I can do is read. I’m good at reading. And singing. And gardening. I talk to plants; that’s why they grow for me. I truly care. They bring me peace and joy.
In the last two months, I’ve read three collections of short stories, two by Anthony Doerr and one by Gayle Jones. Normally, I am not a short story reader, but here I am reading these. Talk about different. It’s almost like these two famous writers inhabit different planets. Doerr’s stories seem intensely emotional, often a bit fantastical and heart wrenching with a lush, descriptive, poetic style even though Doerr is not a published poet. Jones is a published poet, yet her stories are blunt, conversational, often first person and sometimes short–one page short.
In many, a character is telling his or her (most of the stories are her) story about where they are, some experience, somebody they knew, what they did or said. In one story the narrator says she’s an angel, explains where she’s been, whom she’s known, and ends up by asking readers if they’ve seen her near the Seine. I doubt anyone mistakes me for an angel.
Note: Book 13 for 2025 is “Butter”, Gayle Jones. A collection of short stories.
Two Poems for International Women’s Day
I.
Why
and
What
draws me
to
witches
herbal secrets
moonlight
night riding
ancient ruins
and
archaic codes.
It is the Goddess blood I carry,
remembrance of a past
when women ruled
when peace reigned
and ALL were healed.
II.
Woman, wondrous, wild
daughter of the moon,
mysterious, magnificent
fierce secret keeper
guardian of the universal key.
Note: These poems were originally published in my book of poetry, “On the Rim of Wonder”, available online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Sunday Poem
This morning snow capped mountains
brought me joy.
In afternoon I
strolled through gardens,
lunched with daughter near gurgling streams.
Flowers smiled at me,
A bamboo forest beckoned.
Nature’s beauty overcame negativity, despair.
We will
Endure
Overcome.
Book Two for 2025: “Memory Wall Stories”, Anthony Doerr
While wandering around in the library, I found this book. His two more recent novels, ” All the Light We Cannot See” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land” remain two of the most touching and fascinating novels I have ever read so decided to try what he started with, short stories. These stories do not disappoint.
The title of the book comes from the first of the stories. It is a combination of science fiction and paleontology. Via an operation to his head a young boy in South Africa possesses the memories of an old woman. Through her memories he learns of a her deceased husband’s interest in rocks and fossils. This allows him to make a discovery that changes lives. In the next story, due to the death of her parents, a young girl in Kansas has to move to Lithuania to live with her grandfather and makes a myth come true. The following story, “Village 113”, won the O. Henry Prize. It details what happens to one woman, a keeper of seeds for an entire village, when the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. Another story tells what happens to a couple in Wyoming when they desperately want a child but cannot conceive. The shortest of the stories, “The Demilitarized Zone”, is well about that–sort of. The final story, like several others, is about memory, in this case the memories of a Holocaust survivor, who like many who survive horrible events when others they know do not, wonders why her.
I liked these stories so much that I ordered his earlier collection of short stories, “The Shell Collector.” He has won the O. Henry Prize for short stories five times and the Pulitzer for “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2015. I keep wondering how he knows so much about so many places. His short stories and novels are set in countries all over the world. The research must never end.
Book 43 for 2024: “A Stranger in Olondria”, Sofia Samatar
As a person who diligently never fails to finish a book I start, it is difficult to admit that I have finally failed to finish a book. I made it to Book Five and quit. Having already happily read two of this author’s other books, this failure comes as a surprise.
In this fantasy novel, the narrator’s quest to find the body of an illiterate girl from his own country (he has wandered far in search) whose ghost haunts his dreams became less and less appealing. Not sure why because I generally like fantasy novels. This novel does raise some interesting questions:
-Are burial/cremation practices so sacred that one must follow what is considered sacred in one’s culture or risk exile?
-Where is home?
Book 36 for 2024: “The Storyteller of Marrakesh”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
A striking, foreign, young couple appear one evening in the Jeema of Marrakesh. The woman’s incredible beauty fascinates the observers. Suddenly, they disappear. Hassan, a traditional storyteller, invites those who observed the couple to tell what they saw and knew on that night as he presents his own stories to the crowd at the Jeema. His brother, Mustafa, has confessed to the crime of their disappearance, telling everyone he loved the woman whom he hardly knew. He is imprisoned for their disappearance. However, nearly everyone acknowledges that he had nothing to do with it. This novel presents all the different views of the couple, their disappearance, and what it means. Often observer stories contradict each other, raising the questions of what is truth, whose truth is factual, how can we know what is true and how do we define love. Hassan is determined in his quest which takes the reader through all these stories, Hassan and Mustafa’s childhood, the mysteries of the Sahara, and much more.
Book 27 for 2024: “The New Naturals”, Gabriel Bump
Rio, a young Black woman, and her husband, Gibraltar, academics living in Boston, become concerned and disillusioned with their current lives. She finds an abandoned restaurant on top of a hill in western Massachusetts. Heartbroken after the death of her newborn, she is determined to create a safe, new, underground society beneath the restaurant. She finds a benefactor and her dream begins to take place. Via word of mouth, others hear about this safe place for the “lost” and disillusioned and head there. These include two homeless men from Chicago, a successful, young journalist, and a former soccer player.
Can such a society work? What happens if they run out of money? Regardless, can the care individuals have for each other save them?
Note: Depending on what kind of novels you prefer, this may or may not be a book for you. Several of the characters have serious mental issues, some think it is ok to resort to violence to save what they believe in and find ways to justify their actions, some seem very, very “lost”.
Book 26 for 2024: “The Burgess Boys”, Elizabeth Strout
After winning the Pulitzer for her previous book, “Olive Kitteridge”, Strout continues her stories about people and families from a small town in Maine, the town of Shirley Falls. “The Burgess Boys” focuses on one family, the Burgesses. A freak accident which occurred when the children were under the age of ten has affected all their lives in one form or another. The boys, Jim and Bob–both lawyers, escaped to NYC as quickly as they could. Only their sister remained behind in Shirley Falls in the old family home which has become a rather dark and dismal place. Jim, a hyper successful, high powered attorney, has demeaned his younger brother Bob, a Legal Aid attorney, all their lives. The lifelong family dynamic is totally upended when the sister, Susan, calls them back for a family emergency after her teenage son commits a stupid, heinous act and gets himself in serious legal trouble.
Strout possesses a simple, straight forward, unique style of writing that seems perfect for telling family stories, illuminating human personal struggles, and illustrating the good and bad of modern life. If you have not read any of her work before, I suggest looking at the publication dates and reading them in order. The same characters keep reappearing and you learn about their lives as you go from book to book.
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