katheryn-website/cynthia-poetry/src/data/poems.ts

// Poem data for Cynthia Trenshaw memorial site
// Source: Extracted from 'cynthia poetry to jeff' archive + Mortal Beings chapbook

export interface Poem {
  id: number;
  title: string;
  slug: string;
  sectionId: number;
  content: string;
  publication?: string;
  dedication?: string;
}

export interface Section {
  id: number;
  number: string;
  title: string;
  subtitle: string;
}

export interface Book {
  title: string;
  author: string;
  year: number;
  publisher: string;
  description: string;
  coverImage: string;
  amazonUrl?: string;
}

export const sections: Section[] = [
  { id: 1, number: 'I', title: 'At the Threshold', subtitle: 'Poems of Mortality & Accompaniment' },
  { id: 2, number: 'II', title: 'The Country of Memory', subtitle: 'Poems of Family & Remembrance' },
  { id: 3, number: 'III', title: 'Wild Things, Still Breathing', subtitle: 'Poems of Presence & Grace' },
];

export const books: Book[] = [
  {
    title: 'Meeting in the Margins',
    author: 'Cynthia Trenshaw',
    year: 2015,
    publisher: 'She Writes Press',
    description: 'An Invitation to Encounter the Invisible People Among Us. Winner of the IPPY Gold Medal.',
    coverImage: '/images/meeting-in-the-margins-cover.jpg',
    amazonUrl: 'https://www.amazon.com/Meeting-Margins-Invitation-Encounter-Invisible/dp/1631520792',
  },
  {
    title: 'Mortal Beings',
    author: 'Cynthia Trenshaw',
    year: 2019,
    publisher: 'Finishing Line Press',
    description: 'A poetry collection drawn from decades at the bedside of the dying.',
    coverImage: '/images/mortal-beings-cover.jpg',
    amazonUrl: 'https://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Beings-Cynthia-Trenshaw/dp/1635349427',
  },
];

export const poems: Poem[] = [
  {
    id: 1,
    title: 'Legerdemain',
    slug: 'legerdemain',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'Hospital Drive, UVA School of Medicine Journal, February 2017',
    content: `It's not the body
afterward
that fascinates me,
though I'll wash the corpse with herbs and fragrant oils,
and flower petals floating on the water.
I'll dress the cooling, stiffening limbs
and wish the body's soul
a gentle journey.
It's not the struggle
that compels me,
though I'll hear the body's tales
before the struggle ends:
I'll wonder at the left foot calloused so,
and hold the hand with jagged scar or
missing thumb;
I'll read the face inscribed with narratives,
and tiny crystal details
sparkling in the fading eyes.
I'll bring more morphine,
moisten pasty lips and tongue,
watch the belly rise and fail
to pull air past the gurgling sounds,
anticipate the inhale never followed
by another.
But all that isn't really why I've come.
I've kept the watch for Death a hundred times, yet
it arrives unseen while I still wait its coming.
And when I understand it's come, it's gone,
the sacred glue already vaporized,
life detached from flesh,
abandoned cells deflating,
blood settling to covert bruises,
leaving corn-silk colored skin and
frozen eyes.
Again.
I want to see the magic trick again,
just one more time,
so I can apprehend Death's sleight of hand.
I've come so close already
to spotting when the switch is made,
when is has changed to was
beneath the sheet.
And so I serve as midwife,
keep the vigil for the next one
(and the next), watching more intensely,
never blinking, hoping to reveal Death's artifice.
And I'd not appreciate
the irony
if that next death happens in my body,
to finally know the wizard's trick
but have no breath
to tell.`,
  },
  {
    id: 2,
    title: 'Once I Breathed',
    slug: 'once-i-breathed',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Once I breathed the exhalation 
    of a 30-ton gray whale,
    tiny molecules that reeked of krill 
and low-tide sulfur
sucked into my astonished lungs.

Once I breathed in smoke and ash, residue
    of wildfires consuming 
    half a million forest acres;
    of final filtered exhales
    from perished smokejumpers;
    of groans and dust of roofs collapsing;
    and the wails 
    of fleeing residents.

Once I inhaled the pong 
    of a homeless encampment
    constructed on a toxic waste heap.
    The stench stayed in my head for days
    but I went back
    to breathe it in again.

Once I breathed in some (perhaps more than my fair share) 
of the world's precious supply 
of the last breath of a friend 
who chose to die 
when the pain was unrelenting. 

Once I wanted the metallic tang of shrieking train brakes
    to be the final 
    molecules I ever breathed.

Mathematicians have estimated at 98.2%
the chances that at least one molecule in each of our inhales
    was first contained 
    in Et tu, Brute?
    or Forgive them, Father.
Knowing this, and near the end
of my calculated allotment 
of seven hundred million breaths,
I pay more attention now
to what I say: my legacy,
bequest of molecules
to those who may inhale from time to time
the fragrance of my life.`,
  },
  {
    id: 3,
    title: 'Off Bourbon Street',
    slug: 'off-bourbon-street',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Gray stone walls hold a thousand months of sultry tales.
Dusty handmade bricks are held together by a dozen decades 
of sweat and careful tuckpoint. 
French Quarter's signe distinctif is black wrought iron,
metal forged and conjured 
into curled black flowers and iron vines 
by spells that make those growing things 
immobile for your pleasure.

Behind a certain tall wrought gate,
deep in a back street often overlooked, 
the splash-and-echo of a hidden fountain beckons. 
Sound grows sharper with your curiosity,
street sounds dampened by the passageway
whose job it is to escort you 
from one existence to this other.

Earlier you thought you knew 
where you were headed, 
but The Quarter has a different plan 
tucked up her Creole sleeve. 
She has plucked you here to toy with you 
in a 	cumin 
chickory 
remoulade 
beignet
   	 delta-flow
saxophone
lace-garter 
rum and fruit and mint
swaying
mystic 
candle-flicker 
ritual coitus, 
deep inside that hidden fountained jardin. 

Then without a single word of bien merci or aréwar,
and certainly no désolé,
she'll toss you out again - bemused, confused,
amnesic and forever changed - 
onto the sunlit avenue
from which she lured you.`,
  },
  {
    id: 4,
    title: 'Asking',
    slug: 'asking',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `You didn't ask.
If you had, I would have lied.
And then, if you'd stood by me,
in time I would have cried,
confessed how scared I'd been,
and yet how thrilled,
how hard it was 
to keep my teenage secret
of the older men
who flattered me
and nuzzled me
and

	But you never asked.

Years later, when I asked you
and you lied,
I stood by you.
In time you cried,
and said, "You don't know
how hard it's been,
keeping this secret
all these years."

I said I'd go with you 
to Al-Anon,
we'd do an intervention.
Two days later you denied
our conversation 
ever happened.

	At least I had asked.`,
  },
  {
    id: 5,
    title: 'Chicago\'s Randolph Street Station',
    slug: 'chicagos-randolph-street-station',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Commuters mob the grottoed entrance 
to the interurban terminal,
part a veil of heady fragrance
raised by two-buck rose bouquets 
mounded on each concrete stair 
descending steeply from the street. 
Black-mineral redolence of printer's ink
alerts rushed patrons to the evening's Tribune;
each one slaps the vendor's palm with change,
he slaps the folded paper into practiced armpit,
neither relay racer breaks their rhythm.
Aroma of rotisserie chicken entices from a stall 
beside the deeply-shadowed platform,
mixes with stale beggar-scent,
and sweat, cologne, and aftershave
of boarding ticket-holders,
and optimistic ozone odor
snapping from electric lines that power
orange train cars, carrying commuters
slowly sliding homeward on the silver rails
of the Chicago, South Bend, and South Shore Line.`,
  },
  {
    id: 6,
    title: 'Eau de Street',
    slug: 'eau-de-street',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `A signature scent formulated 
beneath the squalid undersides of freeways,
discerned by cops and social workers, anyone
who's breathed among the homeless.

Organic odor, essence of unwashed,
of epidermal cells permeating clothing fibers,
mixed with city fumes and toxins,
fixed in place by sweat and other body fluids.

This aroma bears a mineral, metallic note 
like menstrual blood but not so wholesome,
a tincture of life infused on the streets, 
effused from pores of the destitute.

The fragrance clings inside my nose, lingers 
long after my hot shower, outlasts 
heavy-cycle laundering, seeps into my sleep:
haunting perfume of poverty and poisons.`,
  },
  {
    id: 7,
    title: 'Epilogue',
    slug: 'epilogue',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `He's home and coming up to bed.
So familiar his gait, the way
when he's especially tired or maybe 
had a second glass of wine with friends,
his left shoulder brushes the wallpaper
with every other step.
And there's the squeak in the ninth step
just below the landing
where the last three stairs 
turn up to the right and to our room.

I'm discomfited to have him find me
on his side of our bed, the side with the phone 
and the alarm clock. I almost slide over to mine,         
but he's already there, beside me, appraising me,
his elbow on my pillow,
his right hand propping up his head, 
his face no longer gaunt with pain.
I offer a silent apology
for moving to his side so soon. He grins.
It's okay, I hear. And, he reassures me,
I'm okay too.
He reaches out his left hand
to stroke my jaw line in his signature
gesture of endearment.

I smile, lean into his hand,
though now I'm the only one
on either side 
of our bed.`,
  },
  {
    id: 8,
    title: 'Hattie\'s Last Crossing',
    slug: 'hatties-last-crossing',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `In the middle of its scheduled run 
between two shores of the Salish Sea
the MV Walla Walla slowed then stopped
as Hattie's friends and family brought her to the stern.
She weighed about four pounds,
three quarts of volume
carried in a woven wicker box,
biodegradable.

Hattie's friends and family
joked about her bossiness and laughed
about her quirks, then said goodbye
and dropped her overboard.
The Mate, standing by attentively, cap removed respectfully,
gave a subtle signal to the wheelhouse high above.
The Captain loosed the basso-profundo of the vessel's horn 
three times across the waters of the Salish Sea,
leaving one vibrating space between each sounding.

Riptide of tears 
hit, as Hattie's friends and family reached 
for someone to embrace
while engines roared to life again, sent a roiling wake 
propelling Hattie further from the boat.
The mourners turned away, holding one another
or shoving hands in pockets, finding 
nothing else to do with them.

From the wheelhouse, through binoculars,
the Captain kept official watch until she sank.
His funereal duties now discharged,
he announced pro forma gratitude 
for patience of the passengers, and piloted the living, 
seven minutes late, to their intended terminal.`,
  },
  {
    id: 9,
    title: 'Piss',
    slug: 'piss',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'Hospital Drive, UVA School of Medicine Journal, February 2017',
    content: `He is 95, still strong, and wearing
diapers.  He reckons it a good day
when he stands before a toilet
with the seat up
and produces
any more than dribbles.

She is 93.  Her brain has corroded,
erasing all but little details
of her childhood in North Dakota,
and the Norwegian national anthem.
She wakes up shivering in soaked
ammonia-scented sheets and wonders
how that happened.

The two sit on their sun-porch, nodding off.
Their gray-muzzled cocker spaniel looks
from one face to the other, whines, then
squats and pees between their chairs.

An hour from now the man will decree, again,
that tomorrow the dog will be put down.

The man cannot piss a stream, 
cannot suicide,
nor euthanize his wife.
At least he can
kill
that damned 
incontinent 
dog.`,
  },
  {
    id: 10,
    title: 'Too Much To Lose',
    slug: 'too-much-to-lose',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'Soundings Review, Spring/Summer 2012',
    content: `On the dim side of her sunlit door
a metal stepstool scraped aside,
and she loosed the folded walker
wedged tight beneath the doorknob.

Deadbolt slid and doorknob turned
and darkness leaked toward me across her welcome mat.

In the space between the lower edge of door 
and the doorsill that defines her world,
a severed lizard tail was trapped,
a five-inch piece with yellow stripes.

I did not speak about the tail, nor mention
my unease in knowing it was caught beneath her door.

Over tea, the widow said she could not leave
this house and all it holds of antiques, storage boxes,
years of work and memories. I thought, And dust
and junk and smell of cats and age and fear.

As I left I heard the edge of door, the deadbolt, 
stepstool, walker all slide back in place.

Low on the siding of the yellow house, just above the weeds,
a tailless lizard clung, still but for her pulsing throat.
I thought, She'll grow another tail,
believing what I'd heard somewhere.

It's two days later now. I've come again, 
await the widow's rite of unsecuring. 
The door between her world and mine chafes open;
reluctantly I glance down at the doorsill. 

The tailless lizard lies, vacant-eyed and desiccating, 
beside the tail she could not leave behind.`,
  },
  {
    id: 11,
    title: 'Beware',
    slug: 'beware',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Just below the edge where dune grass
peers down sloping sand - just there,
in swaying grassy shadows -
a shallow concave cone is dug,
no bigger round than this year's plums.  

Stay a while, and study quietly.
Appreciate the balance.
Not a grain of sand falls
to the apex of that perfect construct

'til an inattentive ant
trips over the round hole's edge.

The ant begins its frantic
futile climb up sliding sand grain boulders.
The six-legged ant lion, alerted,
raises head and shoulders
from the center of the cone. 
Two gray pincered arms
snatch the struggling guest
backward 
into the dining room.

It's over in a heartbeat.
A final sand grain settles into place
and motionless perfection is restored
to an empty shallow sand cone
just below the edge of dune grass.
Waiting.`,
  },
  {
    id: 12,
    title: 'Solar Eclipse',
    slug: 'solar-eclipse',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `With walking sticks and fervor we climb the tor,
toting babies, picnics, dogs, to see the show.
A thick haze hides the sun from Devon's moor,
holds the day in eerie gray-mist glow.
Slowly, birds go silent, heartbeats quicken,
pall descends, festive mood abates.
Is this the sun's eclipse? Can daylight thicken?
Daunted dogs whimper, heel, and wait.


Is this the death of light? Mutely I wail
and beg deliverance from lowering doom.
Vestigial reptile-brain groans. Forebrain fails,
impotent in night-dark day at noon.
In every superstitious cell I pray,
Make our sun and light return this day.`,
  },
  {
    id: 13,
    title: 'Permission',
    slug: 'permission',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Hands deep in soapy water
absently feeling for another fork
or spoon.
Staring out the kitchen window
mind pleasantly blank
before the sunny afternoon turns 
into family time and supper preparation.

Back door flies open.
Tommy bursts in, as always,
enthused, breathless, holding out a paper, 
some classroom note, or a permission slip.

Mom, there's this thing I want to do,
a great opportunity. 
He pauses to gauge the reaction.
I've got this chance to go somewhere,
where I can ask ANYthing and learn EVERYthing,
everything I've ever wanted 
to know! 
Please Mom, please can I go?

Face wet,
warm tears burst rainbow bubbles
in the sink.
Tommy dead three months,
yet here, permission slip in hand,
eager. Knowing what he's asking.

You know too.

There's one thing though, Mom.
He hesitates, makes eye contact.
If I go, I can't ever come back. 
But can I go, Mom?
Can I?

Edge of sink supporting belly,
breathing stopped,
hands still in soapy water.
Impossible to speak around a choke.
You know the answer.

And so you nod.
And he is truly gone.`,
  },
  {
    id: 14,
    title: 'Susan\'s Death With Dignity',
    slug: 'susans-death-with-dignity',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Strong poem dealing with a powerful subject. Ending with the bird song is an unexpected and stirring image.

Most of my suggestions are tied to tightening language. You already have many specific details that add a strong sense to the place.

The narrative flow is excellent, and the sense of anticlimactic results of the buildup is poignant. 

As I've noted, my final comment about the dog is probably just my own idiosyncratic perspective.

Susan's Death with Dignity 

My blouse was black, for grieving,
embroidered wildly, for celebration.	Nice illustration of the tone to be set for the event
The day was that way, too --
sun, then rain, and sun again,
woven together with a rising mist. Not sure about the change, but, as written, it's as though the rain and 
It looked promising for rainbows.          sun are between the mist.
"It looked" and "for" both slow the description quite a bit. "Promising rainbows" is probably shorter than you want. 
Swirling weather-promised rainbows.  Or?


Seven sat in circle by her wood stove:
Susan, too young and cancer-filled,
sitting in a rocker; her twenty-something son, 
four friends, a volunteer who had experience, 
and Ziggy, Susan's wheezy ancient dog.			Specific details are good

Goodbyes said and blessings given,
it was time. We placed our chairs
around her bed. In case the dying
took a while, she made one final
bathroom stop, then sat on her bed's edge.	Intriguing build up

Curious even now, Susan chose to know
the taste of these compounded drugs.
She took the bitter cup
without a masking flavor,
without a hesitation,		I'm wondering about making it a positive/negative rather than the other 
drank it in three swallows.	way around: with unmasked flavor/with no hesitation. The negative set up seems to interfere with the flow.

Her son, more grounded and transparent
than wise men thrice his age,
made her pillow comfortable, expressed his love,
held her hand, stroked the dog,
and wept his tender, quiet tears.  More excellent details

A silent awe-filled twenty minutes later,	The "later" is throwing the flow out of sync, I think--rearrange slightly?
After a silent awe-filled twenty minutes,		or???

Susan's sacred ember flickered and went out.	Replace "and" with a comma?
Some there said they saw	Cut the "there"--seems obvious
the moment that her spirit left.	Cut. Unneeded? 
I only saw her shallow breathing cease.	Maybe move the "only" to after the verb, keeping subj/verb tight and focusing the "only" on what was seen?
I saw only her shallow breathing cease.

What else is one to do then,
except to leave forget-me-nots
on her stilled chest, make the necessary calls,
agree to let her bright body
be rolled away on a gray gurney.	Nice word choices to set up contrasting elements

Outside, the day had chosen sunny.
I didn't notice any rainbows
but I did hear a spotted towhee sing.  heard?


This is probably just my own idiosyncracy, but I kept wondering about the fate of the dog.`,
  },
  {
    id: 15,
    title: 'Ellen and the Full Moon',
    slug: 'ellen-and-the-full-moon',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `The full moon always sets at dawn.
To grasp just how that happens, I need
an orange and a tennis ball,
a flashlight and an extra hand, 
and lots of time to work it out.

Last week Ellen died, gazing at the full moon's setting.

In her waning, she waxed fully vital.
To grasp how that is possible, I'd need 
a candle and a scrying ball, 
perhaps a theologian and an oracle, 
and lots of time to parse their explanations. 

With her life nearing its horizon Ellen radiated 
reverence for silence, awe, and endings.
She welcomed guests, and welcomed death as one of them
until at last, shining in her fullness, 
she set with her beloved moon, at dawn.`,
  },
  {
    id: 16,
    title: 'Wabi Sabi Warning',
    slug: 'wabi-sabi-warning',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `You cannot do this right.
There is no "right" to be done. 
I can't well articulate what's needed
and you have no way of guessing
and even if you guess right it will be wrong.
Because you cannot make me well again.

There's no such thing as perfect caring, 
never ideal service. Never will they find
brightly-colored-anatomy-book groupings
of everything inside this bag of skin.

It's a messy job, trying to care for a friend.
It's a wabi sabi time
full of flaws and degradation,
transience and uncertainty. 

If that's acceptable to you,
please stay with me, intrigued
by the unpredictability,
laughing with me in the dark humor.
Find with me unlikely beauty,
and light squeezing through the chinks.
Be awed with me by blinks
of unexpected insight 
we find in both of us.

But if you can't abide imperfection,
if you can't see the loveliness
in worn places, fissures, faded
fabric patched and darned 
and sometimes damned,
then it's best you bow out now
because that's the material
that needs tending to,
and I'm the wabi sabi one you'll tend
even though I won't know what
I want nor how I want it,
and neither one of us can ever
do it right.`,
  },
  {
    id: 17,
    title: 'Leaving My Mark',
    slug: 'leaving-my-mark',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'A Quiet Courage, January 2016',
    content: `As I recognize my shrinking span of days,
I'm not dismayed, much. 
I'm content with who I am, mostly, 
and what I've done, mostly. 
My name will not be mentioned in syllabi
of any academic courses,
nor known beyond the memories
of two next generations,
and that's okay, I guess.

Sometimes, though, I have an urge
to rub my jowls against the doorjambs
and table legs of hence,
depositing me-scented markers
for passersby to sense 
and wonder: who was that?`,
  },
  {
    id: 18,
    title: 'A Drop of Holy Silence',
    slug: 'a-drop-of-holy-silence',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Like a housewife coaxing flies out of her kitchen
Sister Lucy gently shooed the noisy day away,
urged this weary traveler in and shut the door.

I was welcomed, fed,
then had my fill of sleep. When daylight came
I woke enveloped in a mystic element 
like living dew or sacramental water: 
a drop of deep and holy silence.
Effortlessly I sank into it.
No need to dive, nor struggle to discern
mysterious instructions from Divinity,
nor work at keeping thoughts 
above a waterline. 

Not floating, 
not drowning, no effort to breathe
in that sphere of holy welcome
large enough to embrace me
small enough to be held in the palm of a nun's hand
solid enough to be carried in her pocket
as she went about her day
praying for me as she promised.`,
  },
  {
    id: 19,
    title: 'A Psalm of Deathing',
    slug: 'a-psalm-of-deathing',
    sectionId: 1,
    dedication: 'A caregiver\'s exegesis on Psalm 139',
    content: `O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.

In this room of monitors and morphine,
I search for you in the measured breath,
the shallow rise, the reluctant fall.

Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

The darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

I praise you, for we are fearfully
and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works—

this body that held a life,
these hands that blessed and bathed,
this heart that is learning to let go.

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Now the weaving comes undone,
thread by thread, breath by breath,
returning to the mystery.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me.

And here at the end of days,
I hold her hand and whisper:
You are known. You are held.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand.

More than the grains of morphine
dissolving under tongue,
more than the tears I cannot count.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me.

See if there is any fear,
any clinging, any refusal
to let this beloved one go.

And lead me in the way everlasting.
Lead her in the way everlasting.
Lead us both home.`,
  },
  {
    id: 20,
    title: 'Beggar at Rush Hour',
    slug: 'beggar-at-rush-hour',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `You may have heard of such things—
the doctor's words falling like stones
into the still pool of an ordinary day.

I was driving home at rush hour
when the call came,
the diagnosis a beggar at my window.

I gave it nothing. I had nothing to give.
I drove on through the green lights,
the red lights, the turning lane.

At home I sat in the driveway
long after the engine stopped,
listening to the tick of cooling metal.

The beggar stood at my window still,
patient as any streetcorner saint,
asking for what I could not give:

attention to this new world,
acknowledgment of this stranger life,
coins for the ferryman's palm.

Eventually I got out of the car.
Eventually I walked to the door.
Eventually I learned to look the beggar in the eye

and say: Yes, I see you.
Yes, I know you will not leave.
Yes, you may ride with me now.`,
  },
  {
    id: 21,
    title: 'Four Invisibilities',
    slug: 'four-invisibilities',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'The Main Street Rag, Fall 2016',
    content: `In hospitals the camouflage
is gowns, sheets, slippers,
dispensed alike to every
patient; names, dates, allergies,
and ailments in tiny code
on narrow wristbands.

In county jails the ruse
is cleverer - jumpsuits so blatantly stigmatic
that law-abiding citizens close their eyes
against the glare of neon orange guilt,
rendering the prisoners
no longer in evidence.

In a crumbling neighborhood
drapes are closed behind
cracked and unwashed windows,
shutting away from public view 
a cancer-ridden woman
who wants no interference
in her dying.

Downtown
the homeless ones
sip
from hidden bottles,
sleep
in plain brown wrappers.`,
  },
  {
    id: 22,
    title: 'Spirit Shawl',
    slug: 'spirit-shawl',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Sought out 
by one who needs to speak her history,
I emerge from pensive solitude 
wrapped in shawl of weightless and invisible
Spirit-woven threads.
As the woman gestures with her hand,
her fingers brush against
the unseen warp and weft
of calm, a fabric that
the shivering woman craves.
Mysteriously weaved,
serenity expands -  
it seems there is enough
of this diaphanous stuff
to shelter two.`,
  },
  {
    id: 23,
    title: 'Surrogate',
    slug: 'surrogate',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: ``,
  },
  {
    id: 24,
    title: 'Holy Hum',
    slug: 'holy-hum',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `"There is a vibration," say 
physicists, 
musicians, 
theologians,
"a vibration that runs through
everything that is."
I know they speak true.
I've heard it.
They speak 
of "energy of atoms,"
"music of the spheres," 
"the is-ness of God."
But I hear more,
and less.
I hear 
a holy hum 
in rich earthy humus,
in fallible struggling humans
who at our best are humble
and humane.
Even the darkest of times
vibrate with
hallowed humor.
When I need it most,
I hear
a throaty thunder, 
an up-roar of laughter
as Creation celebrates
Itself.
I hear 
a hum, a hymn,
a divine chuckle,
the holy hum of Being.`,
  },
  {
    id: 25,
    title: 'Theodora\'s Exit',
    slug: 'theodoras-exit',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `I admire your ability to write powerfully about this sort of experience that affected you deeply. I have a terrible time digging that deeply into myself. You've done this beautifully and in a way that allows the reader entrance into your experience and your emotions. Anyone who reads this will be grateful for your willingness to share.
												
												My main thought about the poem is that it could use some work on rhythm, in part because the poem starts out (first 3 lines) with a strong sense of rhythm. It's not a lock-step rhythm, but it's more like a heartbeat within the poem's structure, a heartbeat that isn't quite regular, which seems appropriate. 
												
												With the fourth line, the poem goes into a prose-like rhythm that doesn't quite hit my ear right after those first three lines. Consider the difference between "After just a moment's pause" to something such as "With just a brief pause to affirm..." and compare it to the first three lines. That's not quite it, but...it's just the stresses that make the difference. On the other hand, you're moving in time to event, so one could argue that the sudden switch to a line that begins with a stress suits the poem.
												
												I'm not saying that the poem has to follow a rhythm; I am saying that when a voice and rhythm make such a strong beginning, it seems awkward to let it go (to me). That might be what you want.
												
												Theodora's Exit
												  
												She died at mid-day by her own hand,
												in a method both lethal and legal,  The rhythm and sounds of this line are great; the more of
												both gentle and quick.			this that you can do, the better
												After just a moment's pause
												affirming her decision,
												she swallowed 
												the bitter half-cup
												eagerly.
												
												With just a brief pause to affirm 
												this decision, she drank from the cup
												both freely and gladly.
												
												
												
												In days before she died 
												friends queued up to say goodbye. 
												For some that meant so long; 
												for others it held the older meaning: rhythm?
												for others, an older meaning:
												God be with you.
												
												On the eve of her death
												the night sky was busy:
												the moon was full, eclipsed by earth, 
												attended by stray meteorites 
												that flared and fast expired.
												
												I get a little confused as to time with these last two stanzas. Evening seems to come before noon? 
												
												Her final noon was bright but hazy 
												as was I, beside her deathbed: seems a little off on rhythm, but not much
												acutely aware, but unclear 
												how to decrypt what I'd witnessed, 
												how to interpret
												the writhing in my belly. Powerful last line
												
												So with all that said, the poem is probably just fine the way it is. When a poem is powerful, I tend to fiddle on details that probably don't need fiddled.`,
  },
  {
    id: 26,
    title: 'Bereft',
    slug: 'bereft',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `At the water's edge, waves churn sand and stones
in ceaseless rhythmic promise-and-reveal
a game of chance conducted by a salty croupier.
I trawl, head down, hands clasped behind
my angled back
flawless beach-trove hunting form
curling wave extends his hand, claims it;
the slurry clears, the promised stone is gone
a curling wave extends his hand to cover and
is not what has been had and lost,
but what was longed for and never held at all.
It's part of it?
leaving my sharp longing for not the simply
lost but the promise never grasped at all.`,
  },
  {
    id: 27,
    title: 'Sitting Vigil',
    slug: 'sitting-vigil',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `No more doing now,
sitting with a dying one.
Only be-ing here.
She is quietly undoing
everything.
Letting go of
everything.
Allowing the contents of
her carefully packed luggage
to now be disarranged,
discarded.
She experiments inside herself
by wadding up a neatly folded memory.
By loosening the ties
that have secured her to a future.
By unfastening her expectation
that this journey would look
different than it does.
Can she manage this with skill enough
that undoing will not
shred her soul in pain?
Can she, without flinching,
tug at the adhesive
that has fused her self
together all these years?
He was a trucker
and a cook,
a heavyweight,
her husband.
An unlikely one
to keep the vigil
gently, to leave to her
what inner doing must be done.
Yet hour after hour he sits
comfortably at her side,
as if they were out for a drive,
passing the miles in their well-used camper,
passing the time in their well-worn silence,
As if together they were noticing the passing scene,
confirming with a glance
that the other notices as well,
touching sometimes, sharing everything
as if by telepathy.
This dying is an inadvertent journey,
at the end of which they'll part.
Perhaps forever.
Who really knows?
But now they are together
as long as her itinerary will allow.
If she needs something, he brings it.
He does not hover anxiously,
asking what her wants are
(something, anything to do
to make him feel a part of it).
He understands the asking would draw her back
from her hesitating steps
toward the border
for which he has, as yet,
no passport.
And she must go.
It is time.
So he waits,
keeping the vigil
and his silence,
and comes as close to
doing this right
as any person can.`,
  },
  {
    id: 28,
    title: 'Mercy by Proxy',
    slug: 'mercy-by-proxy',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Clutching her ancient toy poodle,
Sue wailed, "I just can't do it!"
His eyes were crusty, 
his breathing was ragged,
his feeble body trembled relentlessly. 
But nudging Pepper over the edge
was more than she could manage. 
"I just can't play God. I love him too much!"
Silently she handed me a house key.

Next morning Sue kissed Pepper
and left for work at the usual time. 
A half hour later I carried him to my car, 
cradled him while his vet 
with a swift needle of mercy 
ended his life.

When Sue returned from work
her key was under the mat.
There was no welcoming bark
behind the door. Inside,
Pepper's bed and bowl were gone.
And Pepper was no longer sick.`,
  },
  {
    id: 29,
    title: 'Recall Notice',
    slug: 'recall-notice',
    sectionId: 1,
    publication: 'Snapdragon Journal, Sept 2017',
    content: `A doctor shows me 
lab reports, 
spells out words I've never heard 
and numbers meaningless to me. 
She illustrates with diagrams 
how somewhere in my inner coils 
something's gone awry.

Do charted numbers 
and manufactured words 
mean anything at all? 
If not, then why do I remember
only vaguely 
who I was before them, 
and whose is this obscure to-do list?

I had plans for autumn. 
I'd smiled, imagining myself 
determinedly 
inching toward my goals, 
leaving a hyphenated snail trail 
glistening behind me 
through the months of summer.

Now my plans for summer are
to curl inward, 
to hang out with spirally friends 
sheltering from sunlight, 
clinging under damp dark flower pots 
and pondering questions way too big 
for gastropodous brains -  
brains that don't remember much 
beyond the needs of now 
and how to make a shiny hyphen 
on a moonlit garden path.`,
  },
  {
    id: 30,
    title: 'The Full Moon Always Sets at Dawn',
    slug: 'the-full-moon-always-sets-at-dawn',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `To wrap my mind around this fact I need
a flashlight and an orange and a tennis ball,
and lots of time to work it out.
The full-sphered sun sets and rises, sets and rises,
west and east, west and east, predictably, while the moon,
swelling and deflating in a complicated pattern,
seems to carom in slow monthly motion
between those same horizons.
Ellen died facing the setting full moon.
With no time left to find the ideal guru,
she bequeathed her own wisdom
to friends who gathered round her deathing bed.
Surrendering her quest for spiritual perfection,
she grew certain in her soul.
Letting go of living, she came fully alive.
To wrap my mind around these facts'd need a shaman and an oracle and theologian,
and lots of time to work it out.
Instead, I'll follow Ellen's guidance,
yield to waxing/waning rhythms,
remembering she was full and glowing as she sank
below her life's horizon
with her beloved moon
at dawn.`,
  },
  {
    id: 31,
    title: 'Howls Restrain\'d by Decorum',
    slug: 'howls-restraind-by-decorum',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Walt Whitman, song of myself, 8

"What would the neighbors think?"
Code phrase. 
Air our family breathes.
Even unexpressed,
the philosophy fills our space,
a sponge
with absorbent holes 
waiting to be filled
with judgment
pity
condemnation.

Restraint 
taught early at my cribside:
hold in the sound,
dam up the tears,
turn wails to silent breath.
Good, good, that's it.
Remember to scan the space.
Who is present?
Who within earshot?
Who might report a breach
of etiquette to another?
You may not 
ever express
unbridled emotion.
Decorum, child, good manners,
breeding, deportment.
For your own good. 
For our family.
What the others think 
about us
what the others say
about us
matters above all else.

And so that howl 
that lives in me
just between my gut
and navel
never rises
beyond my diaphragm
never causes 
embarrassment
never ruffles the civility,
fictitious though it be,
that keeps my family
safe from judgment
safe from the integrity
they've learned 
to fear.`,
  },
  {
    id: 32,
    title: 'How Long',
    slug: 'how-long',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `\\

HOW LONG?
	(Italicized lines extracted and paraphrased from Psalm 13)

How long, O Lord,
will You hide Your face from me?

A neurosurgeon, finished
with his delicate grim work,
gave us his report: our son would die
from the bullet wound
in his brain.
"The thinking part," the surgeon said.
I imagine caring 
for a gifted teenage vegetable.
How long, O Lord,
must I wrestle with my thoughts?
"How long?" I asked the doctor.
He said he didn't know,
and I had to probe again, 
"How long?" Finally he said
it wouldn't be a year,
probably not months.

How long, O Lord,
must I, day after day
have sorrow in my heart?

      *   *   *

How long, O Lord?
Give light to my eyes.

A doctor in emergency has completed
her examination of my husband.
"His bowel is perforated,
and he's dying."
She orders heavy morphine.
Soon I'll be a young widow.
I ask her "How long?"
"You'd better call your children.
Now." She moves us
to a private room.

O Lord, will you forget me forever?

       *   *   *

How long, O Lord,
before this illness triumphs?

Today, three decades later,
I ask the specialist attending me,
"How long?"
But, once again,
medicine can give me
just an educated guess.
No answer at all 
for my most important questions:
Will I have said and done 
everything I intended?
How does one let go of life? 
What lies beyond it?
How do I face this journey
serenely,
not knowing
how long?

O Lord!
         
Look on me and answer:
how long, O Lord my God,
will You hide Your face from me?`,
  },
  {
    id: 33,
    title: 'Injured Rabbit',
    slug: 'injured-rabbit',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `From my window I watch him
hunched in unmowed grasses.
He sucks dewdrops, nibbles tender parts of stalks,
turns gradually, three-hundred-sixty degrees, 
his damaged left leg dragging as he rotates,
his eyes and radar ears alert for swoosh or shadow 
of harrier or hawk, until he tires, 
grows motionless, and dozes.

My phone rings. It's my friend with damaged 
heart and shadow growing in his lung.
His three-hundred-sixty degrees 
used to have a longer radius but now 
he nibbles from the nearby fridge
spoonfuls of cold mac and cheese.
Calls friends, sits, and dozes.

Half an hour later, I check back on the rabbit.
I can barely spot where he had been.`,
  },
  {
    id: 34,
    title: 'Downtown San Francisco',
    slug: 'downtown-san-francisco',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `My, goodness, I just fell into this poem like I fall into place when coming home from a long trip. So much I've talked about, written about, and dreamed about stuff, stuff, stuff. I agree with this. In fact, my travels to garage sales and thrift stores have become tarnished by the sheer volume of stuff involved. I don't enjoy it much although it inspires me to come home and throw stuff away.

As to the poem, I like the way the details pile up...like stuff. I quickly get the sense of being overwhelmed. I shan't have a lot to say ... although I've already prattled a lot.

10:39 AM, March 22, 2001, Downtown San Francisco Great details to place the poem

An ordinary delivery guy- I'm a little overwhelmed by commas in this first stanza. Use dashes here and there?
black chinos, beige polo shirt, baseball cap-
hops down from his ordinary delivery truck 
boxy, white, company name on side, 
jammed full of stuff. I wonder about breaking the line after "side" and letting the line stand on its own. I like the "chock-full" in the next stanza, so how about "jammed" here?

Cellphone pinned between shoulder and ear 
the guy propels his chock-full two-wheeled cart, (Is it a cart or a dolly? Is he pushing or pulling? I'm having a bit of a visual problem--that may well just be me)
jaywalks diagonally across Fifth Street traffic Great details
to a store that sells lots of stuff. For some reason I want a bit more about the store. Could be something as simple as "department store." Everything else is very detailed...

Watching him, I suddenly feel nauseous, (Great debates rage over nauseous vs. nauseated. Technically (especially if you're an English teacher), nauseous means "causing nausea" and nauseated means feeling queasy. People are always swapping the two, but an editor is apt to know the difference. The other day when I overdid work, I suddenly became too dizzy to stand and I felt queasy. I told Wayne I felt nauseous and then I got so busy correcting myself and fussing over my bad grammar that I forgot to feel nauseated.
want to escape this day, this street,
need to be far from this man with his cart I like this language--sounds almost Mother Goosey
and his truck full of boxes of stuff.

This one particular ordinary moment
explodes its contents absurdly: 
jam-packed truck, raucous traffic, oblivious man, A part of me thinks that breaking the line after "oblivious" and putting "man" on the line with the stuff would have a suggestion of "man" as meaning people in general. I know that's old-fashioned, but in this case, it's specific and yet...not.
and the stuff, the stuff, the stuff. How about ending with an ellipsis?

Good poem. I don't think we can overdo our "stuff" complaints.`,
  },
  {
    id: 35,
    title: 'Etiquette',
    slug: 'etiquette',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `You never knew, back then, how useful it would be,
that etiquette your mother tried to teach you
to help you get along in your future.

Even if you never gained a mastery
of which fork's used for shrimp cocktail
or where dessert spoons go,

some politeness has served you well. 
A humble "Yes, Ma'am" or "No, Sir" well-placed
had earned you leniency at school.

And now, when memory fails,
or caregivers speak too fast,
ask questions you can't understand,

you've fallen back again on etiquette to fill 
the mental potholes left by dementia.
A smile and "Thank you," seem to suffice.`,
  },
  {
    id: 36,
    title: 'Three Unfinished Books',
    slug: 'three-unfinished-books',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `A fond smile rises as I touch
the first book,
the poetry collection
he gave me on our second date.
That lone gesture overcame my tally
of his minuses: blue-collar heritage,
halfway to bald at twenty-two,
both pinky fingers and his nose misshaped
by football and jujitsu.
POETRY he brought me!
His hand inscribed the frontispiece
with intuition, hope, and trepidation.
I never read the whole book, but caressed it
through three decades like a comforting plush toy
reminding me, in tough times,
He brought me poetry!
The second book, propped next to the poetry,
is a paperback bought in anticipation
of our trip to France, our plans
for tasting wines and cheeses in Provence.
But his unexpected diagnosis
came two days before his new passport.
His three-month prognosis
voided our airline tickets.
A metal-framed adjustable bed
touched down in our dining room.
Instead of walking vineyard rows
we turned the pages of that book;
we read out loud, laughed some, more often cried
for this was now the only way'd ever see the Rhone Valley.
We stopped reading on page ninety-one.
The third book leans against the bookcase wall,
propped upright by the other two.
Another gift, a purchase delegated by him.
He handed it to me on Christmas Day,
four days before he died.
He knew that I loved feathers, though he didn't understand
their symbolism for me: love notes from God.
He gave me a book on FEATHERS!
I could not bear to open it that day,
could not have read it anyway
through salty haze.
When finally I peeked inside, two weeks later,
a wail as wide as Provence,
as unexpected as God's love notes,
as heartbreaking as poetry,
soared up to find him,
touch him,
thank him.
When I could breathe again,
fragments of that wretched wail descended,
muted but not silenced,
to lodge inside
the unread portions of three books.`,
  },
  {
    id: 37,
    title: 'Sharp Stone in My Hand',
    slug: 'sharp-stone-in-my-hand',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Challenging poem to read. Good emotional tension. 
However, for me, the language/sounds/line lengths are very loose/prosy. The poetic aspect isn't resonating with the tension of the concept.
This is a VERY subjective opinion, of course, and it's based on the fact that I have a bias toward tight language. I find, for instance, Walt Whitman to be a bit of a verbal rambler, so that gives you an idea of how out-of-sync I am.
Anyway, most of my suggestions are aimed at satisfying this personal bias of mine.

SHARP STONE IN MY HAND  

He was my son, thirteen, my eldest child.  Strong opening details, and the past tense immediately creates tension.
He was in the wrong place 
at the wrong time in a city 	I'm wondering about shorter lines to fit tension
where everyone owned a gun
or two 
or three.

He was my son, thirteen, my eldest child.
He was in the wrong place
at the wrong time
in a city 
where everyone
owned a gun
or two
or three.

Surgeons removed the bullet
from his precocious brain
but couldn't repair its functions
nor restore his potential.

After three days, (maybe split line?)
he died 
on New Year's Eve.

Time made it possible for me    (cut?)
to breathe again. 
But oh, the pain.   (cut period?) 
It was  (cut?) as if I were required (forced?) to hold tightly  clench?       Prosy.
to (cut?) a sharp hand-sized rock, 
that cut 
and cut 
and cut 
into my flesh. (stanza break?)
It took years for the hateful rock  shorten this
Years wore the hateful rock
down to a keepsake
less sharp, 
not lacerating my palm.


to be worn down to a keepsake 
I would hold forever. 
The stone was not released
but it ceased 
lacerating my palm.

Today I opened a box of memorabilia
and cut? before I could flinch away
I saw the cut? clippings, news reports 
with the all coroner's (line break?)
raw details.  all the? or cut?
How about a reference to sharpening?

How about linking the details and sharpening of the stone?

...
raw details
honing that rock
to razor my hand anew.
I bleed grief
again.


And oh, that rock is freshly jagged now! 
The story razors my hand anew
and I bleed my grief
all over again.

You'll probably wince at these suggested cuts and chops. Years and years ago, someone once told me to make my writing as good as could be before any editor saw it because once an editor found one little change, s/he would go berserk with changes. Anyway, it looks sort of like this (not the berserk, the poem): 


He was my son, thirteen, my eldest child.
He was in the wrong place
at the wrong time
in a city 
where everyone
owned a gun
or two
or three.

Surgeons removed the bullet
from his precocious brain
but couldn't repair its functions
nor restore his potential.

After three days,
he died 
on New Year's Eve.

Time made breathing
possible again. 
But oh, the pain
as if I were forced to clench
a sharp hand-sized rock, 
that cut 
and cut 
and cut 
into my flesh.

Years wore the hateful rock
down to a keepsake
less sharp, 
not lacerating my palm.

Today I opened a box of memorabilia.
Before I could flinch away
I saw clippings, news reports, 	
the coroner's 
raw details
all honing that rock
to razor my hand anew.
I bleed grief
again.`,
  },
  {
    id: 38,
    title: 'Thoughts and Prayers for Uvalde',
    slug: 'thoughts-and-prayers-for-uvalde',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `Most of you were 10 years old,
give or take.
Now, to nineteen of you,
no more years or months
or days will be given.
And no more can be taken from you.
The merciless one
who locked himself 
in your tiny classroom with you,
made his bullets fly at you,
rip through you
at 40 rounds a minute.
Each bullet could have reached
the distance of three football fields,
but he chose to fire 
close to the carnage.
Your teaching team tried
to shield you, 
and died trying.

Now public figures 
reload the gunman's rifle
with "thoughts and prayers"
as mindlessly as he
loaded it with assault rifle ammo.
Politicians spray your shredded bodies
with "thoughts and prayers,"
the same lame phrase they think
will comfort your traumatized 
classmates who survived 
but will never recover,
the same lame phrase they think
will actually mean something 
to your horrified, grieving parents.

Empty, hollow thoughts,
impersonal prayers:
are the mikes on,
are the cameras still rolling?
"Thoughts and prayers."
"Thoughts and prayers."`,
  },
  {
    id: 39,
    title: 'Legal Niceties',
    slug: 'legal-niceties',
    sectionId: 1,
    content: `(Gary, Indiana, December 28, 1975)
The night was stunned to silence.
Front porch Christmas lights
blinked uncertainly.
He crumpled in the pot-holed street,
on frigid, unforgiving pavement.
His wire-rimmed student glasses
contorted on his face.
Blood streamed from his skull
but froze before it could run, run,
run away from
the bullet
hole.
The Jury of Defendant
townsfolk who themselves
protected home and hearth with guns,
deliberated. Not Guilty
Of Second Degree Murder
said the natives of a county
that espoused
Shoot first, ask questions
later.
now,
and here's the question:
How is the Accused not guilty?
He pulled the trigger of his handgun
four times, pointed at my child.
My son, thirteen and guilty
of being out past curfew hour
in an armed and fearful city,
is definitely dead.
So I ask again: How is the shooter Not
Guilty?
The prosecutor, young,
ambitious, reached for Murder
In The Second,
and not the lesser charge, Manslaughter.
The jury wouldn't go that far,
and so the man went free.
Not Guilty.
Perhaps the prosecution's choice of words't really matter after all:
Defendant hadn't executed
even manslaughter,
if the one slaughtered
was just a
boy.`,
  },
  {
    id: 40,
    title: 'Prism',
    slug: 'prism',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `A beveled edge of mirror snags
    a sunray, throws it, breaks it
    into crayon colors on my wall.
    
    I want
    to explore the colors. 
    I want 
    to learn their language.
    I want
    to be one of them. 
    
    As the family's closet mystic
    my young mind was sure 
    the fractured light 
    was made of holy stuff
    though I'd been taught to be 
    contemptuous of anything called "holy" 
    and anyone who used that word.
    
    I want
    to dive into the colors.
    I want 
    to feel them stroke my naked skin.
    I want
    to swim in color, breathe it without drowning. 
    
    But how? Where is a mentor 
    who can whisper "holy" in my ear
    before I plunge, 
    be waiting for me when I rise
    dripping and elated?
    
    Earth slowly spun, 
    the mystical straight rainbow 
    crept along my wall 
    and faded solemnly.
    I was daunted
    by forbidden holiness
    so I, too, crept away, 
    ashamed of my emergent yearning 
    as if they'd caught me in a corner
    touching myself down there.`,
  },
  {
    id: 41,
    title: 'Grandson',
    slug: 'grandson',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `We've not met in three years. He was ten then.
I've not changed much. He has.
He's six feet tall, not yet through puberty,
I'm stooped, white-haired, and long past menopause.
We have a week to spend together, 
his first so far from home.
What kind of person 
lives behind those lovely dark-fringed eyes?
What kind of person
studies him and wonders?
Will we judge each other? By whose standards?

Last night I named the diagnosis, told my grandson
of chronic subtle atrophies 
that make my muscles older than my years.
He heard in silence, had no questions for me, 
perhaps surprised he's old enough 
to be confided in like that.

Morning dawns, Northwest gray and wet again,
rainforest and Pacific Coast ahead.
We hear the boom and sough of surf before we see it, 
smell salty kelp and fainter scent
of granite being pulverized to sand.
A low dune lies between us and Rialto Beach.
Joseph picks his way through hulking driftwood, takes the lead, 
silently assessing what I can and cannot do.
And then an impasse: huge gray storm-tossed trees 
piled haphazardly across our path with no way past them.
He hesitates, surveys options, decides.

He plants his feet securely on two trunks, 
extends his hand to mine.  Our eyes connect before our hands do. 
I find no judgment on his face, he finds no shame on mine.
Nothing now but touch of palm to palm,
an open portal, uterus of genealogy:
in him my lineage extends to who he'll be;
the heritage in his becoming salutes the woman who emerged
from all who came before.

Strong and proud, he helps me cross the barrier. 
The moment closes: a womb finished with its work.
Waves crash before us, foam and spume surround us
in amniotic blessing.`,
  },
  {
    id: 42,
    title: 'Raven\'s Gift',
    slug: 'ravens-gift',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `In the southeast corner of New Mexico
two nights' hard December freeze
left the critters of the Living Desert    
Zoo free of visitors, except for me.
I stood before the cage marked "Raven."

A disarray of corvid toys
speckled the floor of his enclosure:
a ping pong ball, marbles, buttons, a box
with straw for stashing treasures in,
later to be dug out for his pleasure.

I spoke to Raven, expressing my regard,
my admiration of his clever kind.
He cocked his sleek head rightward, flew
from his perch and strutted toward me
with his cocky Raven gait. 

He sized me up, considering,
then turned around, sorted through
his things, came back carrying 
a shiny bauble in his beak, 
dropped it just inside the fencing. 

A gift for me! Thrilled, I reached
two fingers through the chicken-wire. 
His beak drew blood
before I even touched the glass-clear offering.
Wound in mouth, sucking pain, I felt betrayed.

Raven cocked his sleek head leftward,
considering, as only Ravens can.
Picking up the shiny bead, he poked his beak
through wire fence and dropped the prize
on my side of our boundary line.

Warily, I reached again, retrieved
the piece -- of ice! -- chipped from water bowl,
now given for the healing of my Raven wound.
We stared intently, he and I, each as certain as 
the other that I had just received 

ravenitiation into his clan.`,
  },
  {
    id: 43,
    title: 'Escape',
    slug: 'escape',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `While the grownups napped and dreamed
their Sunday dreams of rest and silence,
I slipped out the back door

into the Indiana afternoon,
past the garden and the chicken coop,
toward the back forty and beyond.

In the cornfield I was invisible,
the stalks twice my height,
leaves like green swords brushing my arms.

I walked the rows as if they were streets
in some great city I would someday find,
some place where I would belong.

At the field's edge, woods began—
a tangle of vines and fallen logs,
of mushrooms and mysteries.

I had no destination. That was the point.
I had only the afternoon and my own two feet
and the knowledge that no one knew where I was.

That was freedom: not the absence of rules
but the presence of space,
room enough to become someone.

By suppertime I would return,
my shoes muddy, my heart full,
my secret intact.

The grownups never asked where I had been.
Perhaps they knew. Perhaps they too
had once escaped into a summer afternoon

and remembered that particular sweetness:
how good it felt to be lost,
how necessary to find your own way home.`,
  },
  {
    id: 44,
    title: 'Grandma Delilah',
    slug: 'grandma-delilah',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `But I must not stay in my own story too long.
This is about Grandma Delilah,
who died the way she lived: in conversation.

Every Sunday after church
she would take a drive in her blue Pontiac,
talking to the Lord as she went.

Out past the edge of town,
past the last gas station and the feed store,
into the rolling hills of corn and soy.

"Lord," she would say, "look at that sky.
You outdid yourself today."
And she would drive a little farther.

"Lord, I'm worried about Marvin's back.
You know how he works too hard.
Maybe you could ease up on him a little."

The corn responded to her passing,
rustling like a congregation
settling in for the sermon.

On the day she died, they found her
pulled over on a country road,
her hands still on the wheel, her eyes open.

Looking, I imagine, at something beautiful.
Perhaps the Lord had finally said:
"Delilah, look at THIS sky.

I outdid myself today.
Why don't you come see it closer?"
And she had said yes, as she always did.

The engine was still running.
The radio was playing hymns.
The corn in the fields stood at attention.`,
  },
  {
    id: 45,
    title: 'Grandfather Disappears',
    slug: 'grandfather-disappears',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Grandfather has been lost to memory
for three years now, a boat
slipped from its mooring.

He drifts in the nursing home,
asking the same questions,
telling the same stories.

Each visit I watch him search
for my name, my face, the word
that means what I am to him.

Sometimes it surfaces—"Granddaughter!"—
and his whole face lights up
with the joy of recognition.

But more often now the word won't come.
He holds my hand and pats it,
saying, "Good, good. So good."

I have learned to be content with this.
I have learned that love doesn't need a name,
that presence needs no explanation.

Today I bring him photographs:
his wedding day, my mother as a child,
the house he built with his own hands.

He looks at them politely,
as if they were pictures of strangers,
someone else's beautiful life.

Then he turns to me and smiles.
"I don't know who these people are," he says,
"but I'm glad you came to visit."

And I think: this is what remains
when memory goes—not facts, not names,
but the simple pleasure of company.

The comfort of a hand to hold.
The knowledge, deeper than words,
that someone loves you.

He has forgotten everything
except how to be kind.
Maybe that is enough. Maybe that is everything.`,
  },
  {
    id: 46,
    title: 'Between Now and Then',
    slug: 'between-now-and-then',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `The moments between
Then and Now
are strung together,
a long chain of biography.

I was there
at every second of my life
even in the dream times
or under anesthesia.

Of course I can't recall it all -
that would require unreeling
the whole chain,
reliving the story.

Yet I'm curious          like to glimpse     
about the tiny instants 
when Now is not quite ended,
not added yet to Then,

like when a horse is running
and, I'm told, there is a nanosecond 
when all four feet are off the ground. 

That space is where God plays.


Bardos`,
  },
  {
    id: 47,
    title: 'Photo of Elsa\'s First Step',
    slug: 'photo-of-elsas-first-step',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `The shutter clicked precisely when
his hands reach out to her,
palms splayed wide, allowing choice,
promising protection.
Her tiny hands prepare to fall,
prepare to grab,
want to stay outflung,
don't know which they're called to do.

Notice their eyes:
his level with her height,
directing confidence at hers;
hers intensely estimating
how far from here is there,
how far from up is down.

And then the feet,
his poised to act;
hers teetering, ambivalent,
unsure how to make them do
what it is she has in mind.

Destiny's brink,
preserved with a click.


He's in the tool shed,
busy sharpening a hoe.
He's strong and lumbering;
twice a day his massive hands
pull white streams from each cow's teats.
Dark suspenders, wide as his fearsome razor strop,
hold up his denim pants.

She's in the chicken yard,
aproned, thin and quiet, composed
as tightly as the wispy gray bun
coiled at her neck.
She's spreading poultry feed and speaks
the sing-song guttural words
only she and chickens understand.

Thunderclouds approach,
graying half the Indiana sky
and growling toward the farm.
My timing has to be precise now.
Three apples in my pockets, and a book.

Stay out of sight behind the honeysuckle
for a few more breaths.
A bolt of lightning stabs a field,
urgent thunder curses.
Grandfather leaves the tool shed.
Grandmother closes the coop gate.
The first fat drops splash
on hard-packed path, and
now!
I make my getaway,
slip between huge once-red doors,
up the creaky worn-smooth ladder
to the cobwebbed hay loft,
dusty-sweet, mysterious. Mine.

I rearrange the straw, and settle in
to read, to eat my sour-apple rations,
to shiver at the throbbing deluge
on the ancient metal roof,
to wonder when they'll wonder where I've gone,
to start to shape my tale of how I came to be
stranded in this beloved barn
in a too-brief Midwest summer rainstorm.`,
  },
  {
    id: 48,
    title: 'Distance Midwifery',
    slug: 'distance-midwifery',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `A siren in the tower groans
from the rural city hall –
a town crier fretting, "All
is not well, not well at all."
Rising/falling waves
of labor pain, the siren wails
the need somewhere for human
skills and succor.
Smaller, higher sirens echo –
volunteers responding to the call.
My heart goes too, with curiosity
and fear and blessings
for the birth of karmic legacies
in unseen lives.`,
  },
  {
    id: 49,
    title: 'Anything Else to Declare?',
    slug: 'anything-else-to-declare',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `"Declare all articles that you have acquired" [Customs Declaration Form]

Did you ever watch a swallow feed her nestlings?
Did you ever let a wave carry you to shore?
Did you ever sip sweet nectar from a columbine's crown?

Did you ever hear a newborn babe's first cry?
Did you ever expose the crystals in a fractured geode?
Did you ever shiver at the red-winged blackbird's flute?

Did you ever sniff vanilla in ponderosa bark?
Did you ever scuff beach sand into song?
Did you ever snuff a candle with bare fingertips?

Did you ever inhale ozone from a thunderstorm?
Did you ever sit in awe beside a final earthly exhale?
Did you ever kneel upon a prie-dieu of forest moss?

	Pilgrim returning home,
	which priceless souvenirs will you declare 
	at the border of your lifetime?

PHOTO OF ELSA'S FIRST STEP

The shutter clicked precisely when
his hands reach out to her,
palms splayed wide, allowing choice,
promising protection.
Her tiny hands prepare to fall,
prepare to grab, 
want to stay outflung,
don't know which they're called to do. 

Notice their eyes:
his level with her height, 
directing confidence at hers;
hers intensely estimating
how far from here is there,
how far from up is down.

And then the feet,
his poised to act;
hers teetering, ambivalent, 
unsure how to make them do 
what it is she has in mind.

Destiny's brink,
preserved with a click.


ESCAPE

He's in the tool shed, 
busy sharpening a hoe.
He's strong and lumbering; 
twice a day his massive hands
pull white streams from each cow's teats.
Dark suspenders, wide as his fearsome razor strop,
hold up his denim pants.

She's in the chicken yard, 
aproned, thin and quiet, composed
as tightly as the wispy gray bun 
coiled at her neck.
She's spreading poultry feed and speaks
the sing-song guttural words
only she and chickens understand.

Thunderclouds approach,
graying half the Indiana sky 
and growling toward the farm.
My timing has to be precise now.
Three apples in my pockets, and a book. 

Stay out of sight behind the honeysuckle
for a few more breaths.  
A bolt of lightning stabs a field, 
urgent thunder curses.
Grandfather leaves the tool shed.
Grandmother closes the coop gate. 
The first fat drops splash 
on hard-packed path, and
now! 
I make my getaway,
slip between huge once-red doors,
up the creaky worn-smooth ladder 
to the cobwebbed hay loft, 
dusty-sweet, mysterious. Mine.

I rearrange the straw, and settle in
to read, to eat my sour-apple rations,
to shiver at the throbbing deluge
on the ancient metal roof,
to wonder when they'll wonder where I've gone,
to start to shape my tale of how I came to be
stranded in this beloved barn
in a too-brief Midwest summer rainstorm.
DISTANCE MIDWIFERY

A siren in the tower groans
from the rural city hall - 
a town crier fretting, "All
is not well, not well at all."
Rising/falling waves
of labor pain, the siren wails
the need somewhere for human
skills and succor.
Smaller, higher sirens echo -
volunteers responding to the call.
My heart goes too, with curiosity
and fear and blessings
for the birth of karmic legacies 
in unseen lives.`,
  },
  {
    id: 50,
    title: 'Inheritance',
    slug: 'inheritance',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `(for Betty, who
me in my fiftieth year)
Good luck,
she says,
whispering into her phone.
Good luck.
It's ninety-two, and tired,
and searching for the other words.
It's said already,
I love you,
and, with a sigh,
Oh, how I miss you!
And yet there's more she aches
to say with words
too full to speak.
Tucked into her voice,
Like Mom-notes in a lunchbox
(stashed between the sandwich and the napkin)
I hear the words she wants to say,
A benediction mantra:
Good luck,
she says
[If only I could touch your face].
Good luck.
[I love you as
my daughter.]
With voice determined, strong,
Good luck.
[Make your choices wisely;
may your life be whole.]
Good luck,
tearful, catching in her throat.
[May you reach my age content,
and with some joy.]
Good luck,
a whisper now.
[This may be the final time
we hear each others
voices.]
With every fiber of her being,
praying, begging,
she bequeaths to me
the litany's amen,
a groan:
Oh-h . . . yes-s . . .
good luck!
Good bye.`,
  },
  {
    id: 51,
    title: 'One Line of Her Diary',
    slug: 'one-line-of-her-diary',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `A Line from her Diary

I can hardly bear to read
about the tedium
of how many loads of laundry
scrubbed, wrung, hung, folded

or how many linoleum corners polished
or windows shined
or children indoctrinated                     
into socially approved behavior.

Early on she used five-year diaries,
one-fifth of a small page
for the same date of each year.
Small space to record
so much uncelebrated work.

What were her thoughts,
her wishes, her desires?                  I want to get to know my mother
Later on she switched
to single-year diaries,
but the humdrum stayed the same
in that stack of books I was bequeathed.

Flipping through the monotony
of her labors, what she made for supper,
then her social engagements,
then bits of gossip, hints of stories,
only once did I catch
an interesting line. 

It followed
a brief description of a dinner party she hosted, 
what she wore, what she prepared to feed her guests,
and my reticent father
once again
didn't help her, nor even help her keep
the conversation going.

"I could have strangled him,"
she wrote. Wow!
So many stories stored                 
in those five words 
that, in all those years of all those diaries
never before had made it to the surface
of her repetitive lists of chores.`,
  },
  {
    id: 52,
    title: 'Loving Mother Anyway',
    slug: 'loving-mother-anyway',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Joyfully she coddled, nourished, patiently evolved us 
from single-cell simplicity to complicated sentience.
Now we believe we are the very reason she exists.
We crow our brilliance to her heavens as we scar her skies 
with contrails and chlorofluorocarbon.
We lacerate her skin, we suck her riches dry
and kill each other when we feel deprived.

Tired, she whispers now. I grow so tired of them.
Soon, she says, very soon I'll shake these parasites 
from my exhausted body. They will fall up 
through holes ripped in my shawl. They'll vaporize 
in empty darkness, and I will not take them back.

Anxiously I watch her growing discontent.
I wonder: could I love her well enough 
to make her change her plans?
Our science says too late for that.
But do I cherish the bounty 
and the beauty of her life enough
to love her anyway, as she destroys humanity
so she can heal herself?`,
  },
  {
    id: 53,
    title: 'Slippery Slope',
    slug: 'slippery-slope',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `The hill would've been perfect 
    if it hadn't been so steep. 
         The snow would've been ideal 
	  if the surface hadn't become pebbly ice.
	       It would've been a great brave run
		if that frozen upright twig hadn't snagged 
    the crossbar of my sled.

		        	My bloodied face 
       	     shredded palms 
        	          and torn clothes 							        
        	                  would've been heroic                      
        	  		if there'd been anyone there to notice.

I would've been home in time for dinner 
if I weren't crying, scared, helpless 
to retrieve my waylaid sled 
and find our way 
in the falling 
dark.`,
  },
  {
    id: 54,
    title: 'Starting from Scratch',
    slug: 'starting-from-scratch',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Thoughts on Starting from Scratch
After a night cooped
in the safety of their hutch,
six hens burst into dawn,
flap excitedly to dew-damp ground,
then subside into contented murmurs
and three-clawed excavations
for grubs to break their fast.
It's a delicate childhood art,
this building a drip castle
at the edge of a great lake
scratching up a handful
of just the right proportions
of sand and water,
letting the slurry drip
through pudgy fingers [then dry] into
filigreed castles where surely
a princess lives.
Every morning, before the ground fog
has lifted from the fields and
spider webs, Grandfather trudges
up the hill to fetch blackberries
for our breakfast. Arms raked
from thorn attacks, he returns,
small bucket filled with berries
harvested with sweat, blood, and tenacity
for our simmering oatmeal.
Toddler curls up beside me on the couch,
lays an arm across my lap.
Scratch, Mommy.
And I gently drag my nails
up and down the delighted arm.
Eight years from now he'll sit beside me,
start a story, and move his forearm
hopefully in range of our ritual of pleasure.
As a teen he'll be more cool, flop onto the floor
at my feet, casually place a lanky arm in reach.
We both know he'll go on talking
to keep me gently sweeping fingernails
across his peach fuzz forearm.
mosquito itch
poison ivy, oak's creation from a word
Unmeasured little hill of flour on the counter,
indentation in the center; egg cracked expertly,
its contents dropped into a teacup, then
a half eggshell of milk
whisked with a fork
into the egg. Teacup emptied
into waiting flour hollow,
worked with long arthritic fingers
till, before my eyes,
Grandmother has conjured
dough to join the hen
that scratched for grubs this morning
now simmering for dinner
chicken noodle soup.`,
  },
  {
    id: 55,
    title: 'The Hands Were Folded',
    slug: 'the-hands-were-folded',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Wrought iron gate easily swings
Onto Welsh church walkway
To where I'm told I'll meet the
Whose legendary tales I've heard ad
Infinitum.
Wooden doors, then,
Into St. Peter's sanctuary;
Candles,
Ancient smells, pews, altar,
Darkness,
Statues, but no
Among them. But I feel I
Down the aisle and
Forward.
To the right, massive, gray and
Five centuries after it was
Crafted,
I find the tomb of Sir Rhys ap
Thomas,
My forebear and hero of his
Time,
His stony effigy, horizontal,
Impassive,
Supported by a frieze of
Surrounded by his armor and the
In his coat of
Arms.
For all of his political
Intrigue,
Promises and
Betrayals,
Mistresses and bastard
Offspring,
For all his tournaments and fearsome
Battles,
His monarch-granted lands and
Castles,
It's unsettling to see Sir Rhys ap
Murderously powerful
Folded in cold granite
Prayer,
Absolutely still above his crumbled
Corpse.`,
  },
  {
    id: 56,
    title: 'NOW You Want to Talk',
    slug: 'now-you-want-to-talk',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Okay, so just as I think I know your general range of topics and interests, you surprise me. Not only with the poem but also with the font (is that connected). 
However, I hear your voice and your narrative style is strong in this poem.
You do have a lot of abstractions within the conversational poem, but I think it works. I'm not sure how it would do if more initial details were involved to cover some of the first stanza generalities. For instance, a line of what sort of morning conversations might be included: plans for the day, how well sleep went, any good dreams...I don't know. 
The other one might be details of provocation, especially if absurdity were included. What sort of minimum provocation? Perking gulps of coffeepot, a tossing/sliding motion of a flapjack flip? 
As I say, I don't know that you need them. "Morning" and "hard-on" are specific.
Not a lot of suggestions beyond that. The rest of the poem has a lot of concrete details...great last line.


NOW You Want To Talk?  Nice title

He wouldn't engage in conversations 
early in the morning,
though he could get a hard-on
with minimum provocation.

While watching talking heads
on the evening news,
news of my day annoyed him. I sort of wonder how he shows annoyance; how is "annoyed different from wanting sex?
He might be distracted, How does this differ or connect with being annoyed?
of course, by sex -
in bed, or on the floor
during a commercial break - 
either was okay.

My musing out loud was allowed Nice sounds
while he was driving - it helped
to keep him awake during long trips.
But of course sex could be managed then, too,
sometimes to the amusement
of truckers seated high enough to notice
and salute us with an air-horn blast. A little frightening as far as safety on the road is concerned, but this specific anecdote is good for building into the next stanza

On a table, in the bathtub,
in the woods beneath an oak tree,
anywhere at all, given ten minutes
(no time for sharing thoughts)
and a horizontal support 
(or not - there was that time 
when I was on a ladder, painting a wall). This stanza is well detailed and has been set up well by the first part of the poem

So now he's dead, his ashes This is an abrupt shift, but it works well with the tone/style of the poem, I think
buried on a hillside (does he remember
when we did it on the hillside 
by that little creek in Michigan?). Nice tongue-in-cheek addition
I've evolved, matured, far unlike
the one he married.  These two lines are abstract in ways that don't fit as well with the rest of the poem. The narrator hasn't been set up, and this brings up more questions than it answers. In the first part of the poem, the narrator seems compliant, but I just don't know what the "evolved, matured" entails. I'd be inclined to cut this, create a stanza break and go directly to the turn (But sometimes...).

But sometimes in my dreams now, 
there he is, as he was,
and except? now he finally wants to talk
and I just want to fuck. Good last line.`,
  },
  {
    id: 57,
    title: 'Where the Voice Comes From',
    slug: 'where-the-voice-comes-from',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `"Pro-JEC-tion!"

It was a shouted whisper, a whispered shout.
It came from far away but seemed to come
from right next to my ear.
It was our high school drama coach,
sitting in the upper row of bleachers
across the gymnasium from the stage,
telling me in her theatrical way,
"I can't HEAR you up here!"

"Pro-JEC-tion!"

How did she DO that whispering-shouting thing,
from way up/over there?
She was deadly serious
about any kind of stagecraft.

Our play was a success – SRO the second night!
Our drama coach came away with a huge bouquet of flowers,
and we thespians came away having learned her secret:
when our words emerge all the way from our diaphragms,
we are no longer afraid to say them.

After decades of public speaking
I still hear her voice
from the top row of bleachers
prompting the diaphragm in me:
"Pro-JEC-tion!"`,
  },
  {
    id: 58,
    title: 'Norrie Leaves Home',
    slug: 'norrie-leaves-home',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `Tiptoeing from the front door, I peeked into the dawn-dark room. My nose sensed what my eyes would confirm as soon as I flipped on the light: Noreen Frances woke up wet again today. The blankets, the sheets, the bed, her baby blue flannel pajamas with the silver stars on them, all were soaked with urine. Her diaper fairly quivered from the strain of holding more than it was ever designed to absorb. She rubbed her eyes and yawned broadly.
Where did all that pee come from, Norrie?
I asked.
Dunno,
she said. Like a typical two-year-old, she expected me to have my own answers.
Norrie and I toddled into the bathroom. She stood beside her special toilet seat. While I knelt, wrestling with the sodden diaper now at her ankles, she peed on my hands
warm, yellow, totally unexpected pee. We stared at each other in astonishment, then laughed because, well. . . what else could we do?
After I cleaned and dried her and the floor and me, I helped her pull on elastic-waist denim pants. Then I tried to get her arms into her shirt, but she kept her elbows straight, wouldn't look to see where the armholes were, didn't want to help. When we put on her shoes she cooperated, chanting with me,
Toe in, heel down; good job, Noreen Francis!
When it was time to put on her sweater she said,
the whole time.
Norrie said,
a lot, and by that she meant,
I hurt,
I don't like that.
Sometimes when she said,
she meant,
This juice tastes sour
Your hands are cold
or, often,
I don't want to.
She had discovered that
got more attention than other words.
Norrie didn't have a large vocabulary, yet sometimes she startled me with full sentences. Mostly, though, she said,
It't wanna,
Don't DO that,
and, with surprising authority,
Noreen Francis had a strong will. When it flared, I tried to remember that we had only a short time to be together. Too soon she wouldn't need my care any more, wouldn't frustrate and delight me in the ways only she could. I tried to see her through
grandmother-eyes
: I wished for her to know what it felt like to be utterly cherished.
But I was not her grandmother. I was not even related to her. I was a paid caregiver. And perhaps, in a way, that made this day easier. She sat on a stool at the kitchen counter while I fixed her favorite breakfast of scrambled eggs and catsup and toast. She ate most of it with her fingers, and got catsup on her nose.
Then the two men arrived. Their shoulders were tense, their smiles were false. They hugged and kissed Noreen Frances. Norrie said,
and wet her pants. After I had gotten her dry and dressed again, the two men stood on either side of her and guided her toward the door. They had gathered up a few bags of her belongings, and they took her away, to live in another place: more safe, more sterile, with others more like her.
For Norrie wasn't two years old. She was eighty-four. Alzheimer's Disease had claimed all of her brain except for a toddler's allotment of memories and words; it had left her a little bit of curiosity, a lot of fear, some delight, and her tenacious will.
Ten years of the disease had erased the stunt pilot, the air traffic controller, the wife, the mother, the dog breeder and trainer; it had taken away the fisherwoman, the seamstress, the tennis champ, and even the loving grandmother. It had left her with no way to understand who she was, or where she was, or what was happening to her. Alzheimer's had stolen from her elder's body all but a child's chunk of mind, and left none of a child's potential. She and her husband, Phil --
his dementia less advanced than hers
had lived together in their home for 30 years. He agreed that it was hard to keep up with the work it required, but he wasn't sure he wanted to leave the house. Nevertheless, this was the day it would happen.
So those two men, those strangers who were their sons, escorted her out into the morning.
she yelled from the sidewalk, confused and afraid. Phil, looking terrified, followed them.
she said, and resisted them with all her considerable strength and her rigid arms.
she wailed, as they bent her stiffened body into the back seat of a car and fastened the seat belt around her.
I heard, faintly, as they all drove off.
I locked the front door of Norrie's and Phil's house and walked to my car. For several minutes hot tears slid down the steering wheel where I lay my head. Eventually there was nothing left to do but blow my nose, shout,
over and over again, and drive away to my next client.`,
  },
  {
    id: 59,
    title: 'Tracks I\'ve Left Behind',
    slug: 'tracks-ive-left-behind',
    sectionId: 2,
    content: `The Tracks I've Left Behind
There is no path – the path is made by walking - Antonio Machado

Footprints left in lakeshore sand
were early washed away by waves.
Tracks I left in Midwest snow
were melted long ago.
Shoe-tread marks I left in mud
near hidden people living rough
were trampled as the unhoused came and went.
were swept away with my apologies.
Imprints left in carpet nap
of aisles that led to consecrated altars
were vacuumed up by diligent custodians.

Tracks I've left in homes when I've forgotten
to remove my shoes at doorways

All the markings of my passage,
all the making of my path from there to here,
all evidence of my becoming
is now just fragile intimation,
and I am left near journey's end
to marvel at the who of me - exactly
who I'm meant to be -
at this end of the path
that had no handbook at the start
and leaves little trace behind.`,
  },
  {
    id: 60,
    title: 'The Skier and the Jay',
    slug: 'the-skier-and-the-jay',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `This is the day of blue distances,
of sunlight glancing off the distant trees
and dazzling the eyes with snow-shine.

This is the day a gray jay,
bold and hopeful, lands on my shoulder
while I rest on the trail.

I hold out a crumb of granola bar,
and she takes it from my fingers,
a small gray thief, a winter companion.

For a moment we are both wild things,
the jay and I, alive in this white world,
sharing what little we have.

Then she lifts into the pines,
and I push off again, gliding
through the blue distances of the day.`,
  },
  {
    id: 61,
    title: 'Morning Prayer',
    slug: 'morning-prayer',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `I wake into a new day,
surprised again to find myself here,
still breathing, still curious.

Lord, I have no idea what you're doing,
but I trust it's something interesting.
Count me in.`,
  },
  {
    id: 62,
    title: 'Yellow Cat',
    slug: 'yellow-cat',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Without a breeze to ruffle them
the grassy weeds move, just there.
He is crouched, leonine
in his suburban jungle, 
each slowmo muscle
of his trembling flanks focused
on a single goal.
    The mouse, her movements
slight and fussy, 
sniffs the ground 
but not the air 
that carries musk
of danger.

Too late, or perfectly, depending
on which side one is rooting for,
a flash of yellow fur explodes
then rises - string of rodent tail, 
two tiny paws, and blood
drooping/twitching/dripping 
from the feline mouth.
    I cannot cringe away.
So exquisite the choreography, 
the coupling of guile and innocence, 
it would insult both cat and mouse,
and nature that designed them,
if I fled before the final 
gulp.`,
  },
  {
    id: 63,
    title: 'Bay Tree Invitation',
    slug: 'bay-tree-invitation',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `If this poem had come to me while I was editing one of the magazines I've worked on, I would accept it as is. I very much liked this poem. I wonder if it might go at Snowy Egret? 

In other words, take any/all of my comments as general "maybe" suggestions given mostly because when a poem is working then I like to coax out perfection (from my perspective).

Bay Tree Invitation

Eight feet up its trunk 
all (cut?) the bay tree's branches spread out,(Cut? need a comma?) 
then curve up to form a hidden chalice
filled with several seasons'-worth of fallen leaves. 

Last time I climbed a tree was thirty years ago, 
coaxing down a weeping child who'd followed his wily cat. (This is a very long line and seems to follow conventional reasoning (syntax) rather than poetic reasoning--consider below?)
Now mystery calls, compelling as tears, 
and I impulsively must answer. (need? Could just show it happening)

Last time I climbed a tree was thirty years ago,
coaxing down a weeping child
who'd followed his wily cat.
Now mystery calls, compelling as tears.


A sandy slope behind the trunk helps me reach The description isn't helping me see this. A "behind" suggests an "in front," and I have no idea how one designates a tree front. I'm also not quite sure what "just close enough" signifies because I don't know what it's close enough to. A branch? A trunk handhold?
just close enough to climb into the tree. Example of possible change below.

A sandy slope and a low limb link
with temptation, helping me climb 
up and into the tree.
Heady bay perfume persuades me 
to sit, to rest . . . 
perhaps to curl up on the bed of leaves . . . 
listen to the birds, feel the breeze . . . 
breathe deeply . . .  (I love the picture here even though I know from experience that I would encounter ants, beetles, spiders, ticks, chiggers...suspension of disbelief)
 
Wakened into sweet befuddlement, nice words
uncertain who I am, nor where, I bask - 
please, just a few more minutes - 
in this chalice of root-deep hospitality, lovely phrase
before I'm coaxed down by my obligations. I like the echo back to the coaxing of the second stanza.`,
  },
  {
    id: 64,
    title: 'Ant Lion',
    slug: 'ant-lion',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Just below the edge where dune grass
peers down sloping sand
just there,
in swaying grassy shadows
a shallow concave cone is dug,
no bigger round than this year's plums.
Stay a while, and study quietly.
Appreciate the balance.
Not a grain of sand falls
to the apex of that perfect construct
til an inattentive ant
trips over the round hole's edge.
The ant begins its frantic
futile climb up sliding sand grain boulders.
The six-legged ant lion, alerted,
raises head and shoulders
from the center of the cone.
Two gray pincered arms
snatch the struggling guest
into the dining room.
It's over in a heartbeat.
A final sand grain settles into place
and motionless perfection is restored
to an empty shallow sand cone
just below the edge of dune grass.
Waiting.`,
  },
  {
    id: 65,
    title: 'All-Night Laundromat',
    slug: 'all-night-laundromat',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Recent research says that
while we sleep
our brain cells shrink,
making room to let
the sap they swim in
wash away the toxins of the day.
Tonight I crawl between the sheets,
pull the covers up and
nuzzle in my pillow
balancing my brain like laundry baskets
filled with scraps of images and urges
soiled in hours among the wakeful:
memories splotched with joy or stained with bitterness,
intentions frayed around the edges,
well-worn thoughts and barely-used ideas,
pockets linted with exhaustion.
I sigh, curl arms and legs more fetally,
sink deeper in the laundry room of sleep,
begin to separate the braincell
undies from the jeans and cleaning rags,
whites apart from smudging colors,
mental fragiles sorted by themselves
in piles along the edges of my brain.
Then, when I let go to deepest sleep,
cerebral fluids start to slosh,
enigmatic, automatic, silent.
I'd never know that anything had happened
in the Laundromat of night,
except that when I wake I find
fresh dreams hung out to dry,
or left untethered, scattering
across the dawn.
Cynthia Trenshaw 2013 version`,
  },
  {
    id: 66,
    title: 'Molting',
    slug: 'molting',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Several times throughout her seasons
a snake withdraws,
her colors fading scale by scale.
Her outer shape grows numb and dry,
her eyes dull, pale and lifeless.
Vulnerable and weak,
uncertain this is not her death,
she must lie deathly still at first.
Then, restless, desperately she scrapes
against rough surfaces
to split and slowly disengage
her itchy too-small skin
from silky, sinuous
newly-decorated flesh
in which she slides away.
	
Eventually within her seasons
a woman comes to understand self-loss
and self-replenishment.
Giving up her essence serving others
could not have been a virtue, if all that remains 
is a fragile woman-husk, parchment-dry,
skittering over concrete in exhale of regret.

In the healing of her elder years,
a woman learns
to feed the needs and passions 
of her growing serpent self,
understands that sometimes
unconfinable abundance will itch 
until she scrapes against rough edges
of her world's adversity
then sends her ripened self
to serve without depletion.`,
  },
  {
    id: 67,
    title: 'Python Within',
    slug: 'python-within',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Nestled deep within the embryo of me
long before my mother sensed my flesh,
you slept, softly coiled in leathery shell,
to wait till I was birthed and grown.

In your emerging-time your hidden place 
slowly split. Still small, you slithered,
searching spaces in me,
issuing from time to time a silent summons,
easily dismissed as "just imagination."

Then came that night, that dream
that could not be ignored. We met. You,
grown immense, 
a golden smooth-scaled python; I,
afraid, in naked human flesh.
We coiled around each other, you 
with speed and strength to kill, and I,
astounded, struggling just to live.

When I woke, exhausted though utterly alive,
I knew your name: Pas-s-s-ion.
Now when you call, your twisting tongue 
insinuates between my ribs. My breathing stops.
I am transfixed, repulsed, yet eager 
for your sibilant command:
to split, to shed old confining skin,
to risk the dangers of the molt.
   
Always you are onerous, insistent, fierce.
Yet, in my elder years, when my supply of wisdom
is not sufficient for my needs, it is you
I crave. I crawl within your muscled coils 
and find my solace there.
Stern and soothing hiss, you whisper, now,
your other, ancient name: s-s-s-Sophia.`,
  },
  {
    id: 68,
    title: 'Reticent',
    slug: 'reticent',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Even as an infant she saw 
connections, patterns,
universal turnings
sun-wise or widdershins,
great four-dimensioned neon-colored 
spiderwebs of genesis.

No one taught her 
how to excavate a borehole through the Veil, 
how to touch a shoulder to discern 
what ails inside a belly, 
how to inhale murky darkness 
and breathe out limpid light. 
She simply knows.

As a child she understood,
from pointed silences,
these things weren't to be discussed.
Her only affirmation was her own.
As a teen she yearned to disappear,
else acquiesce to family 
who tracked neighbors' opinions,
else mutate for friends confused by her,
else yield to men who misinterpreted her depths.

Now she owns an urban condo, has a 9 to 5, 
blends in, keeps her powers sequestered.
Still, seekers sense their way to her 
with timid supplications.
They whisper "healer," "wise," "a crone."
She is compassionate, but wary.

Three centuries ago
the vicious fearful shouted "witch!"
That indictment echoes 
in her body's cells today.
Sometimes her neck still feels
the tightening hemp.`,
  },
  {
    id: 69,
    title: 'One Word',
    slug: 'one-word',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Every word I ever write arises in a banquet hall
where I have come to satisfy
the hunger I was born with.
That voracious appetite for God,
capital G,
places every thing enticing, strange, and terrifying
before me with divine affection:
rich smorgasbord with bucketsful of briny tears;
deep trays barely holding tremors of joy -
a gelatin that wants to wriggle over everything.
There are agonies of wanting more,
for even provender of God is
only briefly satisfying,
and though I should feel sated,
I'm empty when I push back from the table.
And so my search continues,
the banquet hall re-forms,
I'm reminded, once again,
the search itself is God,
capital G,
and the smorgasbord is God,
capital G,
and even I who come in hungry
capital G,
that one about whom
my every word is written.`,
  },
  {
    id: 70,
    title: 'Grace',
    slug: 'grace',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Sometimes,
unasked-for it seems,
answers descend
feeling like a down-filled duvet or
looking like a brilliant pyrotechnic shower.
I haven't realized that
I've been crying silently,
desperate 
for a solution or
a consolation or
some way out
of the swamp of chaos
where I'm mired.
And time after time I'm granted
a companion for the journey,
embodied or
intangible or
sometimes merely a thought
that points the way 
for my next few steps.
And I take in a deep breath
of gratefulness,
as I continue learning 
the meaning of grace.`,
  },
  {
    id: 71,
    title: 'Meeting the Poet',
    slug: 'meeting-the-poet',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `That ordinary childhood sunset
signaled nothing more than time
to brush the sand off knees and elbows,
to end my lakeshore play until tomorrow.
But when the pastel pinks and blues
to lilac, fuchsia, burgundy
reflected in the foaming Great Lake's waves,
a deva, deep and dormant since before my birth
wakened, squirmed inside me, shouted,
Let me out of here! I have to sing those colors!
Breathless and astonished, I set her free
and placed a pencil in her hand.
She couldn't name the colors,
nor find the song's right words
not yet
but I heard her hum a few notes
while she tried.
By nightfall it was understood'd be my lifelong second self.`,
  },
  {
    id: 72,
    title: 'Taskmistress of Tonglen',
    slug: 'taskmistress-of-tonglen',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `[Tonglen is a spiritual practice: inhale darkness and suffering; hold it briefly, trusting Love to change it; and breathe it out again as healing Light for all.]

You may sleep for now, the rising Full Moon whispers,
but later you'll have work to do.

Near the mid-point of the night
she shines me out of sleep and blankets.

Though I protest, she will have none of it -
she tosses me a cloak of restlessness.

She's more demanding in her fullness 
than when there's less of her. I concede, begin my work.

While she rearranges salty seas and blood,
in her bright light I inhale pain beyond my ken.

While she's busy tugging out the tide, 
I pace and exhale Light bearing comfort to the suffering.

At dawn she'll slip beyond the west horizon,
perhaps recruiting others to the task of intercession.

Her impact circulates around our globe.
Mine . . . who can say? I only do what I know how.`,
  },
  {
    id: 73,
    title: 'Temple of Healing',
    slug: 'temple-of-healing',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `The Temple of Healing

	[Since the 4th century BCE pilgrims sought the temples of Asclepius 
	to be cured of their ills. They lay on the floor through the night,
	sometimes among large snakes that were part of the healing rituals.]

A feral goat with other-worldly eyes
is reflected in a muddy Cretan puddle 
as she sips up last night's rain. 
She has a broken left hind leg;
its useless hoof absurdly hangs
from a sack of skin 
stretched by years of dangling
as she's climbed, three-legged, 
among the island's hills.    
She sips again the precious water, 
warily watching my approach,
prepared to protect her claim 
as guardian of this site. 

Under Grecian sun 
I've struggled two hours 
climbing Lissos Gorge 
to reach the ruins 
of this temple of Asclepius,
god of healing, 
friend of snakes and dreams.

I drop my backpack onto a dusty stone
and heave a sigh of disappointment. 
This place is smaller, more dilapidated
than the monument I'd imagined.

Yet, at one end of the temple
a partial floor remains,
black and white tesserae, 
still-beautiful mosaic images
of animals and geometric shapes,
and spirals all along the border.
Silently I ask permission 
to enter the ancient space, 
then lie on that hallowed floor
to breathe in the residue
of bygone healing rituals.
I imagine Serpents of Asclepius
slithering across my body, 
sinuously seeking 
the cause of my debility, whispering
in my ear what they discover.	
Perhaps they hiss 
to the feral goat as well,
for from her corner vantage point
she drops a single word 
into my seeking mind:
scapegoat.

And now I understand
her injured body in this broken temple.
She is the wounded healer
with broken leg and dangling hoof, 
who carries pilgrims' pain and brokenness
up into the hills, deposits them
in an ancient hidden high place 
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.`,
  },
  {
    id: 74,
    title: 'The Call',
    slug: 'the-call',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `SPIRITUAL MEMOIR - The Calling

Prologue
	[Retreat essay   ???]


Chapter One
	gated community
	Sunday School - Unitarian - age 10
	Mary Lynne   [rosary poem??]
	sequin rosary - hidden in storage space
	Jay - emissary from parents - "you know about Trinity?"
		later - I find poem "If I of little faith might but once glimpse" - hidden away in  a desk, like my sequinned rosary had been hidden

	Jay dies (I just turned 14 - he was almost 21)
	Presbyterian Youth - age 14-16  "tell me about Jesus, about your spirituality (they handed me books) 
		activities
			Chicago "hippies"
			Eustace

	Send for "Father Smith Instructs Jackson" - hide them under my mattress like pornography

Chapter Two

	3 kids - study Catholicism  -  continue with "Father Smith Instructs Jackson" - followed by young Jesuit priest
	Baptism - Father John 
	Vatican 2 - create Sunday School in New Buffalo
	Meet Jim - Henri Nouwen "Reaching Out"

Chapter Three
	Retreats - annual Credos
	ethics class research - abortion - permission to write my own theology
	Mothers Day sermon

Chapter Four
	Masters Degree - books by theologians - I now have credentials in theology
	The search has just begun
	street work
	
	


	

Go to the Limits of Your Longing
	Written by Rainer Maria Rilke   Book of Hours, I 59
	Translated by Joanna Macy 

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
	You, sent out beyond your recall,
	go to the limits of your longing.
	Embody me.
	Flare up like a flame
	and make big shadows I can move in.
	Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
	Just keep going. No feeling is final.
	Don't let yourself lose me.
	Nearby is the country they call life.
	You will know it by its seriousness.
	Give me your hand.`,
  },
  {
    id: 75,
    title: 'Theology of Pending',
    slug: 'theology-of-pending',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `[For Franz Wright, author of God's Silence ]

You describe God
as a sacred intimate
yet counsel veneration 
of a distant mystic deity.
Captive in your poetic opposites I am
bait wriggling from a line
wishing and dreading 
to be swallowed; I am
a blown-glass ornament 
dangling on a decorated tree
hoping not to drop 
and shatter; I am
egg yolk halfway between 
shell and skillet 
wondering 
just how hot it is down there.
You leave me hovering 
between apostasy 
and adoration,
holding my breath 
so I needn't choose,
knowing
I will need 
to breathe again.`,
  },
  {
    id: 76,
    title: 'Prayer to the Scarlet Sun',
    slug: 'prayer-to-the-scarlet-sun',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `On my bedroom carpet and on the closet doors
patches of muted morning sunlight 
throb an alarming red.
This week's every molecule is murky,
hazed by the savage wildfires 
on the Cascade mountains' other side.

On that inferno side
families are evacuated,
reluctantly abandon homes, 
their personal museums of memorabilia,
to a gluttony of flame.

Ashes fly westward to land 
on my side of the mountains -
small gray supplications settling
on my flower pots and windowsills:
	Help us!
	Pray for us!
	Pray for my home,
	pray for the smoke jumpers,
		sweating, choking, dying in the flames,
	pray for the hundreds of thousands of trees
		that used to breathe for us here.

But prayer is far too sanitized a pledge
for the murky ache that duplicates
the air on both sides of the mountains.
Any god that I might pray to
is obliterated by the smoke and ash.
So I send my supplications
to the sun that's red for me,
the sun those refugees can't even see
as they flee their homes,
fight back flames
and despair.

On this, the safe side of the mountains,
I tell that surreal scarlet sun 
I won't pretend to empathize - 
that's far too painful.
But please, please let them know,
on the other side of the mountains,
that I hear them,
and I touch the ashes reverently
for all the suffering they contain.`,
  },
  {
    id: 77,
    title: 'Recital',
    slug: 'recital',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Aging: the breakdown
of the body
and its constituent parts.
Should I 
	ignore each degradation,
	stiffen my upper lip,
	soldier on,
	pretend otherwise?

Or may I be fascinated,
	make lyrics of my wobbles, aches,
	and latest lab reports;
	compare my melodies with peers'
	as they add their emerging scores
	to the repertoire?

Why should these be sung differently
from the other canticles we share with tea:
	marriages and birthdays,
	jobs and creativity,
	expectations and disappointments,
	poetry and books and speculations?

Can we not appreciate
	wonder and intrigue,
	fear and choices,
	pathos and dark humor,
	all unique compositions
		of a good organs recital?`,
  },
  {
    id: 78,
    title: 'What She Knows',
    slug: 'what-she-knows',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Even as an infant she saw 
connections, patterns,
universal turnings
sun-wise or widdershins,
great four-dimensioned neon-colored 
spiderwebs of genesis.

No one taught her 
how to excavate a borehole through the Veil, 
how to touch a shoulder to discern 
what ails inside a belly, 
how to inhale murky darkness 
and breathe out limpid light. 
She simply knows.

As a child she understood,
from pointed silences,
these things weren't to be discussed.
Her only affirmation was her own.
As a teen she yearned to disappear,
else acquiesce to family 
who tracked neighbors' opinions,
else mutate for friends confused by her,
else yield to men who misinterpreted her depths.

Now she owns an urban condo, has a 9 to 5, 
blends in, keeps her powers sequestered.
Still, seekers sense their way to her 
with timid supplications.
They whisper "healer," "wise," "a crone."
She is compassionate, but wary.

Three centuries ago
the vicious fearful shouted "witch!"
That indictment echoes 
in her body's cells today.
Sometimes her neck still feels
the tightening hemp.`,
  },
  {
    id: 79,
    title: 'Seeking Solace from an Elder',
    slug: 'seeking-solace-from-an-elder',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Like a housewife coaxing flies out of her kitchen
Betty gently shooed the noisy day away,
urged this weary traveler in
and shut the door.
She welcomed me, fed me,
listened to me
late into the night
before I surrendered
to my fill of blissful sleep.

When daylight came I woke
in a mystical sphere of holy welcome
large enough to embrace me
small enough to be held
in the palm of Betty's hand
or held in her pocket
as she went about her day
humming
and praying for me as she promised.

In Betty's library
exactly the right books
seemed to reach off her shelves
and open to exactly the right insights
to enrich my day.
As the sun began to set
I was surrounded
by gentle classical music
and aromas of baking bread
and hearty vegetable soup.
Betty invited me to her kitchen table,
fed me well, and sent me off again
to my warm bed with feather duvet
and handmade quilt.
Early in the morning I would leave
this spiritual home,
blessed on my way by a beloved elder
who knew exactly what was needed
to renew my spirit
and prepare me to return
to the home from which I came.`,
  },
  {
    id: 80,
    title: 'Morning Grief',
    slug: 'morning-grief',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Leaving sleep, my first conscious while
is steeped in mourning,
knowing I must leave behind
the warmth, the holding
of the nighttime nest I shaped
and only just perfected.
I grieve the pause in dreamtime
restoration of my cells and psyche.
I resist abandoning
sites of beauty and of labyrinthine lostness,
of unexpected change, locations for
adventures where I am
clever, fearless, and can fly.
I yearn after the companions, already dimming,
ones I thought I knew
and ones I'd never met before
and ones who were amalgams
from biography and future.
But the sun is risen: houselights up,
performance finished,
stage props stored away.
The me-shaped space must be returned
to straightened sheets and blankets,
and mourning folded
into a day begun.`,
  },
  {
    id: 81,
    title: 'Three Word-Poems for Coniston',
    slug: 'three-word-poems-for-coniston',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Parsing Melancholia
	[In Hippocratic medicine, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile in the blood]

black-bile diluted
	more translucent now	
	
	odd emotion
	not depression
	maybe murky curiosity

solemn hunger    
thirst of questions
frog songs from a humid bog
	wistful dissonance of yearning
surrender-sighs in autumn's brilliant fall
vibrations on the thickest strings
as horsehair slides with carnal drawl
relentless salt
	sometimes no saltiness at all

grim gray lump that thrives by sucking
	color from a day
	decomposing forest green
	chimeral lilac longing-scent        
		pallid periwinkle dreams
			that wonder who is dreaming 
and whether
dreamers can be loved by God    
or anyone

shivering snowball skirting hell
	can't get warm
but understands the luxury
		of not yet having crossed the Styx


Mystical

A word drifts in, 
passes through our conversation.
Nonchalant, barely noticed, 
it settles with the syllables
puddling around our feet.

When one of us grows curious about that word 
floating in the widening pool
of our deliberation,
mystical is fished out, dripping,
shivering a little, held up for scrutiny
and definition. 

"It's divinity that's hidden in a symbol," I offer,
thinking of art and trees and ritual.
"The mystical is sensed, not with eyes but with the gut,"
another says.
"Holy paradox," suggests another.
A quiet friend submits, "The mystical evokes 
an awe that is not fear."
And finally, the first who spoke the word says,
"I recognize the mystical 
when I am summoned to my knees 
to touch my forehead to the ground."

The pondered word, shining now and full of life,
is placed back in our conversation's growing pool,
and every other word we've spoken
is blessed by mystical's return.
Prayerful Punctuation
 
"Please pray for my friend who was out bicycling when she was struck by a car, sustained a spinal injury and is in a comma [sic]." Prayer chain request, August 2013.

Dear Unknown Cyclist:

Word of your dilemma 
has come to me.

I imagine you lying, 
curled in a comma, 
unconscious in your coma
in your hospital bed.

I worry that they won't let you 
remain in a comma.
Maybe they'll insist your
broken spine be straight,
a rigid exclamation point,
preventing you from floating 
in the comforting curve
of a fetal comma.

And how, dear unknown cyclist,
how shall I pray for you?

Do you have any thoughts?

If your spine can never again
form a comma
would you rather remain
in a coma?
Or would you rather grab an asterisk rising
to whatever world comes after this one?

Is there a possible
best outcome?

I hold you in a complicated
question mark,
and I remain 
your unknown friend,
Cynthia`,
  },
  {
    id: 82,
    title: 'Weedling',
    slug: 'weedling',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Writing poetry requires "weedling."

You haven't heard of "weedling"? 
Neither has your dictionary.
It's a word I just made up 
while editing a poem.

Weedling is a combination of whittling -
	paring away all but the essence -
and weeding -
	pulling out all but the best words.

Inevitably, weedling also contains
	a little wheedling - begging for inspiration -
	and a lot of whingeing - complaining -
	and a pinch of whimpering - the sound
of frustration that emerges just before
the perfect word is found.`,
  },
  {
    id: 83,
    title: 'Wry on Rye',
    slug: 'wry-on-rye',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `The little café's patrons,
Saturday morning regulars,
linger in the booths, read the news,
drink drip coffee,
share familiar space.
Mercifully
the loud-mouthed man just left
with his beleaguered wife,
and café noise returns
to its organic hum and clink,
aromas re-emerge from hiding.
A collective sigh
decompresses tension in the eatery.

The only waitress -- young, efficient,
private -- records an order
correctly in her mind,
doesn't need to write it down.
She waits
while customers decide, then reconsider,
reverting finally (she knew they would)
to what they chose at first.
Skillfully she serves me
and two dozen other patrons.
She waits,
but doesn't linger.

Later, when she brings my check
I crook my finger,
indicating that I want
to whisper to her:
"Do you ever smile?"
"Not often," she replies,
and bites her lower lip
as she moves on
to new arrivals 
at the table by the door.`,
  },
  {
    id: 84,
    title: 'Street Signs',
    slug: 'street-signs',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Stop. Yield. School Zone.
Speed Limit. Clear signs 
in a strange city. Address uncertain, 
hope I've got it right.
Good sense of direction,
inner compass part of my DNA.
But the sign posts memorializing
presidents, honoring states and heroes,
and a numbering system that stops abruptly,
then picks up again three blocks later -
nothing resembles the destination
on the scrap of paper in my hand.

I pull over to the curb
into the shade of a huge sycamore tree.
Soon I smile as very old memories
surface. I close my eyes and feel
those clear rules for behavior:
Stop. Yield. Slow for school.
Speed Limit. All bold signs, easy to understand.
[But mixed messages about who I am
and what my destination should be.]
That inner compass served me well then, too,
a wordless intuition about where to turn, 
when to pay attention or ignore the signs,
how to be my truest self. Even though
the route I chose was circuitous,
it got me to where - and who -  I wanted to be.

So now, if I go one more block north,
then turn right, regardless of whether 
the street signs agree, I know
I'll end up where I'm supposed to be.`,
  },
  {
    id: 85,
    title: 'Poppy Petals Haiku',
    slug: 'poppy-petals-haiku',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `([Early version:]
Fringed poppy petals
comb morning sunlight, lazy
warm touch of pleasure.)


The next-to-last version had "lazy / strokes of pleasuring."
And then I changed two words around, and ka-CHING!


Fringed poppy petals
comb morning light in strokes of
lazy pleasuring. [slow]

even better:

Fringed poppy petals
comb morning light in strokes
of slow pleasuring.`,
  },
  {
    id: 86,
    title: 'Inequity',
    slug: 'inequity',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `How many people might live here?
Three stories high, the building has the footprint
of a football field: fifty thousand square feet.
Times three.
Huge shiny white and orange structure,
silver metal trim.
Glossy, glassy, classy.
Climate controlled, the sign says.
Now leasing, it says,
above the contact number
for the leasing agent.
But don't plan on moving in here soon.
This is not a people shelter.
It's to shelter people's stuff.
Not just any stuff,
but stuff that doesn't fit
within their houses
no longer huge enough,
too stuffed.`,
  },
  {
    id: 87,
    title: 'Yellow Tulip',
    slug: 'yellow-tulip',
    sectionId: 3,
    content: `Just one yellow tulip stands in the small vase
on the windowsill of this hospice room.
Someone brought it—I don't remember who.

It has been here for days now,
longer than the doctors said,
outlasting their predictions.

Each morning I check: still here.
Still yellow. Still reaching
toward the gray February light.

The petals have begun to thin,
translucent as the skin
of the hand I hold each afternoon.

We are both watching the tulip now,
my mother and I, neither speaking,
both knowing what it means.

When it finally drops its petals—
six small yellow prayers
released onto the windowsill—

she closes her eyes and smiles.
"There," she says. "Now I can go."
As if she had been waiting for permission.

As if the flower had been holding her here,
its yellow persistence saying: not yet,
not yet, not yet, and finally: yes.`,
  },
];

// Helper functions

export function getPoemBySlug(slug: string): Poem | undefined {
  return poems.find((p) => p.slug === slug);
}

export function getPoemsForSection(sectionId: number): Poem[] {
  return poems.filter((p) => p.sectionId === sectionId);
}

export function getSectionById(id: number): Section | undefined {
  return sections.find((s) => s.id === id);
}

export function getAdjacentPoems(slug: string): { prev: Poem | null; next: Poem | null } {
  const index = poems.findIndex((p) => p.slug === slug);
  if (index === -1) return { prev: null, next: null };
  return {
    prev: index > 0 ? poems[index - 1] : null,
    next: index < poems.length - 1 ? poems[index + 1] : null,
  };
}

export function getAllPoems(): Poem[] {
  return poems;
}