A native Ohioan, marriage brought me to Connecticut.  After my two children were grown, I earned a degree in Writing and Literature from Vermont College.  The $500 House, my young adult novel, is ready for submission.  A second novel, The Makeover Party, is in progress.  Thanks to Jane’s Stories published poets workshop, I am putting together a chapbook, Woman with a Lantern Looking Out.  My poetry and prose have appeared in many literary journals, including Kalliope, Thema and Jane’s Stories, receiving over twenty awards.  One poem was dramatized as a video for CPTV, in conjunction with the CT Commission on the Arts and Wood Thrush Poets, to help open poetry to a wider audience.  An honorable mention was read on Art on the Air radio program.  Guernica, inspired by Picasso’s mural, won 3rd Place in the 2009 Writers-Editors Network International Writing Competition.  Though I would write just to write if it came right down to it.  

DOWNPOUR, 4 AM       

(One of my favorites & the one read on the radio)

When rainfall is this heavy

with no vision between water,

branches reach across back roads

for miles, and green creeps down

curbs as if getting ready

to cross.  Once in this gray light,

on the way to bring an attorney

my marriage, from these secretive

woods, a stag vaulted over

blacktop, then vanished into

morning.  And, oh, how I ached

to go with him, but even if

there were no appointments

to keep, I was afraid to

follow into that forest

where I’d gone as a child.

Grateful that he’d flung himself

over my day, I forgot

where I was going, what secrets

went with me.  By the side of the

road, I held my breath, wishing

for his wary grace--until I bent

my head to the steering wheel

and sobbed for that stag,

I suppose, and whatever else

vaults into morning.

BEFORE: NOTES TO MOTHER, AGE 73, AS SHE CONSIDERS SKY-DIVING 

Grieve before you yank the cord,

before you leap from the dark closet

of your childhood into lark-psalm.

This time, don’t hold your breath.

Really breathe in that opening shock

of air.  Leave in the plane’s belly

those drunken nights when your mother

waited with a razor.  Keep

your back to Youngstown, and leap,

leap into substantial air,

into that order supporting

phases of the moon and the stubborn

geraniums you plant--beyond the grief

that separates and binds us.

Overhead, the plane is diminishing,

diminished.  Now there’s only quiet,

the tips of your sneakers, and earth rushing

toward you.  Put on blue and yellow:

be joined by silk to sun and sky

as you scan Ohio roads

for the farmhouse you tended as a bride.

Right there, wrench from your heart

what makes you tired.  Just let it

fall.  Your bad leg won’t ache so much

during this leap more upwind

than anything you’ve ever known--

knowing I will lift my head

and start in singing.

AFTER (where I rearranged verses for clarity, found synonyms for the overuse of “leap” & worked on the ending.)

Leave in the plane’s belly

those drunken nights your mother

waited in the dark.  Grieve before

you soar from the stifling closet

of your childhood, into lark-psalm.

Keep your back to Youngstown and leap,

leap into substantial air.  This time,

don’t hold your breath.

Really breathe in that opening shock

of air.  Overhead, the plane’s diminishing.

Diminished.  Now there’s only

the flow of currents, the tips

of your sneakers, and earth

rushing toward you.  Put on

blue and yellow; be joined

by silk to sun and sky

as you scan Ohio roads for

that farmhouse you tended as a bride. 

Right there, wrench from your heart

what makes you tired.  Just let it

fall.  Your bad leg won’t ache

so much during this passage

more upwind than anything

you’ve ever known, setting me free

to lift my head three states away,  

and start in singing.

OUR GROUP:  What would I do without you?  You have given me the best of yourselves, treating my poetry with respect and skill.  Thanks to you, four fumbling poems are ready for submission.