the rest of the Paint chip poems

Copper Cloud

Dying sun catches,

lingering on the fog bank

setting worlds aflame.

Periwinkle Dream

Called “Joy of the Ground”

flower petals make my bed

as I dream, waking.

Snipped Chive

My father always insisted

on using what the garden gave,

Rosemary from a busted barrel

leaves from the Bay tree that overhangs

and brushes my window on windy nights,

cobblers made from mixed bramble berries.

I remember him showing me how to make

his breakfast of champions

(which was, in no uncertain terms, not pizza.)

A flour tortilla, so unlike anything

his Italian Mama would have used,

butter the skillet,

Mom only buys Irish butter now,

grass fed cows, you know.

Crack an egg, and beat it with a chopstick

then add cheese, the good stuff, mozzarella,

sausage, already cooked, the grease saved for later

a little milk but only--just there, that.

Let it pool in the tortilla, and in the moment you cover

the steaming pan, add water, let it hiss

and turn down the firebright heat.

Then slip it out, crackling, Dad’s hands on mine

onto a plate, folded, the yellow-white

oozing out the sides,

and on top of it,

snipped chives from the window box

This is what home is.

New York City Winter

1909, December.

The snow is grey under our

rag-wrapped feet

boots more hole and newsprint

than anything else.

But we march, anyway,

sisters besides sisters

even if our hair, eyes,

skin, mother tongue,

do not match,

our spirits do.

We are the fervent girls,

the Union daughters,

walking the picketline with hand-lettered signs

and no coats, fingers stiff with ice.

But we are tinder,

burst into flame,

and turning to ash.

The cold and hunger weigh

down on us,

The bosses and union leaders  look

down on us,

what can girls do

to change the world?

What can they do but bleed,

freeze on the picket line?

But we remember our oath

and the words in so many languages

promised us:

this is the Golden Medine,

the new Promised Land.

In America, there is a better life,

even if our boots are filled with snow

even if the winter wind steals our breath.

We have voices, here, and our lives mean something,

they must mean something.

In America, they do not let you burn

Cathedral Morning

The pale rose of dawn

filters through art-glass windows

figures of Saints and the Madonna and Child

centuries old and still

glorious.

This is not my church, but still the spirit

of Welcome, of a Holy Father’s arms

is here,  an ocean away from home.

Tile, cool, glossy with age

echoes back my footsteps,

as silent as a child in wonder can make them,

staring at  niches filled with relics

and ivory-colored statues, features worn away

by prayerful fingers.

There is a peace here,

in a little known cathedral,

somewhere in Italy, nothing famous

only a few parishioners here this early

in the morning.

Sacred has no limits,

spreading beyond old, solid doors

like the sun’s thin morning light.

I follow.

Canyon Hush

If someone shouts “ echo”

One more time

So help me,

I will leave you here

to bake like clay

in the Utah sun,

and you can get your own way back

forget about the ice cream

forget your feet

just look

and hush.

It took thousands of years to

carve this out

so you can wait a minute.

Norwegian Night

There are four secret passages

in the Canadian ambassadorial mansion

in Norway.
I know, because I found three of them
poking around in pantries and libraries

late in the night--

A jetlagged five-year old

should never be underestimated

in the best of times.
I held the cookie tin in my lap
with my new best friend

and we watched the sun

turn the ink-sky grey

and rose.

Ballroom Slippers

Mudspattered and roadworn

they are still lovely.

The gold embroidery,

catching in the candleflicker

and the mossy grey leather

suple as beechbark,

are tarnished by the dust

of walking miles for this night.

Her skirts twitch up, floating

as she floats, finding her heartbeat

with the trilling of the oboe d’more

and the swell of strings.

She is not the most beautiful,

no belle of the ball,

not in a hand me down gown

and old slippers

but still she dances, and still she is

beautiful.

Lark Wing

“Hope is the thing with Feathers”

I read that poem over and over,

making sense of it in a new way

each time.

Hope is a bird, that much

I pieced together without prompting.

And you never could reach out and touch one,

so it fit.

The birds were always on the other side of glass

a promise cut off. I reached for that hope

but you can’t own it,

open the cage door and it flies away.

And I thought, yes, this

is true.

Hope was like the sparrows my cat caught,

toyed with, let live just long enough for the light

in their eyes to die.

Hope was like the bushtits, tiny and frail

brought down by January wind.

And I wondered, why call Hope a song bird,

something easily killed,

a lump of feathers and a tiny heart?

But they come back, too, see?

The wild ones, migrating home,

following the wind currents and the sun.

Maybe, some  desperate part of me said,

things would really get better, if I hung on.

The poem keeps going,

past what’s written on plaques, speaking of storms.

My own storm,

full of lightning cuts and salt spray,

seemed too much,

but in the end I still breathed,

birdsong echoing in my ears.

Hope might be the thing with feathers

that perches in the soul,

but the poem sits in my heart and mind,

tiny talons clinging, tangling themselves in wild hair.

Hope sings.

Sometimes the bird’s muted, far off,

but the tune has no end,

a hermit thrush’s backwards waterfall--

a chickadee calling her own name.

Hope is a songbird mama,

pulling out her own feathers to cushion my bones

scraped against each other,

nesting there until I am strong enough to stand.

Hope is the lark’s wings, beating the wind

like a heart against ribs

living.

Hope is the light of galaxies

not stuck in the sky but across a starling’s back

Hope is the thing with feathers,

the bird come home, returning to sing  

a song I cannot forget the words to.

Mountain Midnight

There is no such thing as silence

or total darkness

not here, snuggled into a bedroll

on Melissa Corey Peak.

I am the last awake

everyone else (over two hundred of us)

is worn from the day,

21st century children

walking into the past

shirts, skirts, shoes all  heavy with dust.

My eyes are fixed on the dome

above.

The sky is no flat thing

like back home,

a sheet tacked to the ceiling

grey with fog and light pollution,

no.

Here
it is darkness, lit up

blue-black silk reaching down

in all her speckled splendor,

past the horizon formed by hill and treeline,

below my body
so that I

so small and significant

am suspended
surrounded by the gleaming.

The wind, with the smell of cold

sings through our campsite,

sends the summer-dried sagebrush rattling,

and I shiver

shudder, but cannot bring myself

to shield my face

and stop looking at the stars.

Tempest’s teapot

I was the smallest in the 8th grade

4 feet, 10 inches of terrified.

Trapped in darkness--

Blinding, literal darkness,

scored with one slash of light

at the bottom of the door

--a bleeding wrist.

Like my body,

the closet was too small for the storm:

fear, sweat, tears, snot, salt on my tongue

as I bruised my fists on the door and begged

for help that I knew

was. not. coming.

Because it was Friday after school,

before spring break,

and half the class knew where I was.

They let the door lock with a click,

jackal laughter, and then all that was left was me.

Alone in the dark.

Trembling, I was a tornado, a hurricane,

of salt spray and the breath ripping

from my lungs.

I am going to die I don’t want to die.

Please someone please

Years later, I remember the door opening.

They told me it was only twenty minutes

but it felt like years,

like I had forgotten what light was

and warm and safe.

I had forgotten how

to breathe.

And I forget again, as, for an object lesson

the teacher shuts the door,

clicks off the light.

My ears ring with my rescuer’s words

“It must have been an accident.”

8 years and three inches later

I am still too small for this tempest.

East of the Sun

I heard a woman say,

“I won’t let my daughter read

fairy tales,”

And other chimed in with,

What do they teach, really

Cinderella let herself

be abused, had to be

rescued.

Belle married a kidnapper

gave up her dreams

Sleeping Beauty slept through

her own story.

I sat on my hands,

bit my tongue to hold in the words

red as blood, white as bone, black as ink.

Have you ever sat down with Grimm,

Calvino, Moe, Lang, Perrault in your lap

and read a fairy tale?

Look at these girls, women,

spanning centuries

passed down over fires

fire-filled themselves.

With names or without,

they last, beautiful as the moon

inside and out.

Isn’t that what these stories teach?

For a moment, close your eyes

hold the book in your hands,

fat cracking leather

cloth binding worn away

paper spine bent double,

and listen to the stories.

Older than ink, but younger

barely, than imagination.

Listen to the stories of

Perina, braving three rivers

blood, bile, and brine

for the sake of her own name

and oath.

Cinderwretch, breaking the cycle

of cruelty and letting herself

love fierce and free

and be loved again.

Gerda, who , seeing a frozen heart

melts it with the heat

of her tears,

half frozen herself.

Beauty, her own antagonist

but true to her word

as friendship blooms

like little-linda roses.

The Lass, who holds her own destiny

in her hands like a candle dripping wax

and walks, head high

East of the sun.