Home again, home again

Back from visiting my daughter; glad to be with her and glad to be home.

While catching up on my messages, I found a link to a new Western Mass blog, and that led to another link, and that led to another link...most of them focused on poetry and arts.

Funny how we make choices without even realizing, at the time, that they are choices. When I was twelve, I thought I'd grow up to be a poet. Instead, I'm a community organizer who writes poetry.

All the new links I discovered have inspired me to share two poems.

Opal is sleeping
in an abandoned building
still has electricity praise god
who knows for how long.
She borrows a pan from the office
to boil water on her hotplate
to wash her hair.

I notice her cutting is getting worse
arms crisscrossed like her life
but she keeps me laughing.
"Don't even have a dollar
for a library card so I pretend to read."
She is twenty-four.
"See you tomorrow at the rally,"
she says, slamming my car door.

Everything’s damp this morning:
The crib, the bread, the floors:
It rained more hard at 6 a.m.
than ever I’ve seen before
& a fishhead keeps appearing
that my cats set free
from the next door Spanish garbage.
Thrown over the porch, it surfaces
Under the t.v.