Yours Was Not The Gift Of Tongues
Big sister, I was so proud of your gifts,
For you could paint in oils, watercolor.
So fair, you had many a young caller,
And many leaned from cars to offer lifts.
You lined up dates all night in hourly shifts.
Despite their number, cut the pie smaller,
You squeezed bars of gold out of each dollar.
Not the gift of tongues, yours the gift of thrifts.
Your landscape paintings did not ever last.
At fairs you offered them plus a discount,
On kisses and palm readings of your past.
During daily mass, the priests were aghast,
To see you use your rosary to count
Your weekend guests, and pencil in the rest.
Published in First Time, Sept/Oct 2004
Skokomish Snowbird
Hiking the Staircase
along the Skokomish River,
gnarled roots
proffer gentle footholds.
Up past the scruffles
of squirrels shedding
pine cone pods…
up past the sudden wallops
of grouse wings
in ruffled retreat…
up past overripe berries
hardened and shriveled,
past stinging nettles and beetles…
we ascend to Flapjack Lakes.
The higher lake
continually pours
itself into the belly
of the lower.
The mirrored shapes
of half-melted snow
reflected in the lakes
form the huge white wings
of a spirit-bird.
She returns
to nest atop
the ladled twin lakes
again and again
each winter.
May it always be so.
Published in Bellowing Ark
Old Companions
She looks a bit
out of place
in her dirndl skirt
and her shawl
fashioned from
a crazy quilt—
Her hair was meant,
I suppose,
to be tightly wound
into a bun
but tendrils
always escape,
poking out
like downy feathers
from a nest.
Every morning
she walks to the edge
of the estuary
and settles herself
in the grass
where the great blue heron nests.
Over the months,
he has grown accustomed
to her unobtrusive presence.
She collects bits
of driftwood
and feathers
from the shoreline
and weaves them
into a macramé,
reweaving the tattered
hoop of the world.
Published in Bellowing Ark