American Sentences: May 25, 08

Memorial Day weekend. Sunshine and rain. The combination that keeps the air cool, clean, refreshing. I need the time away to reflect. It's been a busy past week what with grants to complete, projects to wind down, people who are leaving us to say good-bye to. And, also, taking time to plan for summer--that I make the most of it before we begin again. I'd like to go to London with my youngest daughter and she's arranged to take time off. We're flying to London end of July and will travel for two weeks before arriving in Oxford for the Roundtable on Women in Politics and the Professions--a dialogue on the barriers.

American Sentences: May 15, 08

This morning if I stop to fold the Pendleton
wool blankets from where I fell asleep
on the couch, reading interviews
with poet Li-Young Lee,

I'll miss the falling of the pink
petals, and not indulge
in how the blossoms drift down,
wander far from the source,

accumulate like sachet in empty drawers,
and tint the dark earth,
this yard with map coordinates, a place,
my spot, our home and terra firma, for now,

where my youngest, I imagine before moving in,
will ride her trike, dig worms, lift the cover
over beetles, expose sow bugs to the rain;
also frame of reference for eldest granddaughter

dancing to the Irish broadcast on Sunday afternoons
--I could go on: hammock strung between trees,
eagles overhead, the creek tumbling toward the future
down the ravine, where, perhaps, one day, ashes

will scatter in the wind to scant words of remembrance
and echo like birdsong in these branches.

American Sentences: May 6, 08

Avocations, essays by Sam Hamill, the one about Logan I
read falling asleep, seeps like saltwater and laps against the hull
of my mind, a song on the song of poets, and that line that applies to me,
"A man that abandons a friend who has learned with him
no longer has a share in speech," and "We must articulate
our lives because the very act of speaking defines ourselves."

American Sentences: May 4, 08

All the tasks wait for me at the garden gate:
deadhead
the pink blossoms,
separate
the wild sweet peas
growing like Bible tares
from rosemay, oregano and tarragon--
the herbs I planted when Chris left
for college;
email and return calls--days
blacked
out in calendar hours, a schedule
of arrivals and departures
that becomes
the emotional terrain
of family, the widening sphere
of planet earth that today looks tame
within its gated community
while in Iraq
where my son-in-law serves,
families have lost their pleasure domes
and gardens fill with weeds.

Poem of the Week: On Passing thru Morgantown, PA, by Sonia Sanchez

I saw you
vincent van
gogh perched
on those pennsylvania
cornfields communing
amid secret black
bird societies. yes.
i'm sure that was
you exploding your
fantastic delirium
while in the
distance
red indian
hills beckoned.

American Sentences: May 3, 08

Garden--giordino--spring spring spring sings in the branches
too early for

the yellow dandelions, still asleep in dew, yet the owl unfurls

her coo, the dove her wing to the romancing twitter of mating birds

diving to the sunspots--fleeing the shadows, the holy breath of trees.

American Sentences: May 2, 08

The tired song of last chances, adult rhino with hair on its ears.

Sweater sleeves, oil spots, soap bubbles and salt--be mindful how they blot.

American Sentences: May 1, 08

Three for sale signs, low 5's, postage stamp yards no children can play on.

Argument over the girls late last night; the daughter we cannot reach.