Elizabeth

Math Genius

If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.

Phil Pastoret

Graffito

GRAFFITO

Three distinct letters, 
discrete as whispers
yet stark as sunrise,
stain this park’s 
concrete wall. 

S insinuates 
the dark entrance,
secret from those
passwordless,
but once in, one
snakes along this
sinuous passage

toward E, 
which sighs
like a wind-filled
cavern 
in the fold of a word
so bare 
it exposes the language of pores 
opening like stomata 
along nerve-laden skin,
of tongues probing  
tasting  moistening  unveiling
revealing the voracious 
pulse and press of pelvis  
belly  
even neck, bared 
for the thin membrane of skin,
primordial as sound rising 
from ancestral marrow
formed of molten rock and sky-filled sea

before X marks the space 
within and between.

Thank you to the editors of HOT FLASHES: sexy little stories and poems for first publishing this poem.

Fame

Fame puts you there where things are hollow.

John Lennon to David Bowie before Bowie’s mega-fame

Sweetness

Your heart is the size of an ocean;
Go find yourself in its hidden depths.
Find sweetness in your own heart,
then you may find the sweetness in every heart.

~ Rumi~

Neighbors

When a neighbor wrote this on the sidewalk in 2020, I felt it in grey…

yet, in 2023, I feel the optimism that my neighbor’s color choice conveys. I continue hoping “BETTER” for so many more, in so many more ways that anyone might have imagined three years ago.

Touch

TOUCH

hands awaken 
stars in skin
till our palms
press peace
deep as breath

yet this snow-blind 
animal need for touch
shared by grooming apes
and dogs sleeping entwined
is rarely about sex 

but instead our primal need to know 
we are not stones tossed out to sea
as we breathe the same air
molecules shared
in this brief habitation of skin

Thank you to the editors of 5AM for first publishing this poem.

Forgiveness

Peace & Joy!

May this season and 2023 bring you all the Love, Peace, Happiness, Resilience and immeasurable Beauty that Life offers.

Longest Night

In many traditions, this long night marks the end of the solar year, the final day of increasing dark. Tomorrow our days will lengthen and a new year begins, not by calendar, but by the sun’s time.

Here’s to the cycles and the richness of dark, the silence of snow and opportunities to reflect, to sleep, and once more emerge into increasing light.

May this year bring peace, more love, more ease and safety for all. HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Will doing this

…bring you joy?