“Daughter Gesture” live on Medmic

My poem about my dear friend at her dying mother’s bedside has been re-printed in the excellent and moving online journal Medmic.

Daughter Gesture

They found the poem on the Intima website where it appeared earlier this year and asked permission to publish it in their journal. How exciting is that! Online magazines receive a lot of readership.

I especially love this poem because it shows how much small kindnesses mean. It is the intimate, personal moments that truly bind us forever. Thank you Sally and Lola! And the wonderful editors at Medmic. I know I will be stopping by this journal often.

3 Poems in “Intima’s” Spring/Summer Issue

Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine includes 3 of my nursing poems in its Spring/Summer 2023 issue. Since it is an online journal, readers can enjoy these and the other heart-felt writing by going to www.theintima.org. To find my poems specifically, click on Current Issue, then scroll down to Poetry. The poems are in alphabetic order and are titled, “Daughter Gesture,” “Drive,” and “The Softest Cloth.”

“Daughter Gesture” is about my dear friend Sally caring for her mother. “Drive” is about a caregiver for one of my patients letting him drive one final time at age 99. “The Softest Cloth,” is a tribute to my friend Sherry, the nurse who trained my in Hospice work. She was one of the kindest people I have ever known. Here is her poem:

The Softest Cloth

The day I shadowed you, learning

Home Hospice nursing, you warned me,

on the drive to his cabin, about the patient

dying of throat cancer whose disease

progressed upwards, disfiguring

his speech and features.

His door was unlocked. You entered

like a friend. Laid out supplies

as if for a morning shave.

His eyes spoke what his lips could not.

He loved you for seeing more than a wound.

I waited at the corner of his vision,

handing you irrigation solution, powders

to erase odor, a roll of the softest

packing cloth. You chatted about weather,

praised the beauty of his woodland acre

then scaled pain no number could ever

describe, increasing dosages meant

for dreaming. As goodbye, you smoothed

sheets over bones, then gently touched

his forehead, your fingers tracing shadows

of all a face can mean.

Poem in Chautauqua

My poem “Crossing Midnight” about hearing the orcas passing in the night, is now live in the ‘Chance Encounters’ issue of Chautauqua literary journal. You can read the entire inspiring issue by going to

https://chautauquajournal.wixsite.com/website. I wrote the first version of this poem last August for the annual poetry postcard fest. This is a beautiful journal geared toward opening minds and hearts and I am so thrilled to have my poem included.

Crossing Midnight

The Orcas are passing in more than a dream.

Their great night-and-moon bodies

rising from darkened seas to breach

and breathe. At this late hour

through open windows, we hear, not see,

them. So like ourselves, gasping

after the headlong dive, born from water

into another oxygen. Lungs

synchronized with tides.

Travelers, always a pod, elders surrounding

the precious young, their wake

etches fortunes on the shore

something my mother might have said,

is saying. The sound of a fountain. A horse

after a long gallop. A rough, rogue

surf, generated on an island

where the earth shook, waking lovers

from a nap, even as it grants us sleep,

this peaceful tribe crossing midnight beside us.

Poem in “I Sing the Salmon Home” Anthology

My poem “Salmon Bones” is included in the brand new anthology edited by Washington Poet Laureate Rena Priest. The purpose of “I Sing the Salmon Home” is to raise awareness about the importance of and threats to salmon in our state.

My poem is dedicated to Judy DuPuis, dear friend and fellow youth services librarian. She passed away a few years ago. When I worked in the libraries in Grays Harbor we often featured Judy and her husband Curtis as Native Storytellers, members of the Chehalis tribe. Judy’s storytelling skills were truly magical.

We hosted the DuPuis for several of our family campfire nights and I was thinking of one especially out at Stewart Park which has a little stream running through it. Judy told a story about the salmon and rivers and hunger and gratitude. I have described it here as best I recall. Even people just using the park and not realizing there was a library event were draw to her words.

I am so honored to have my poem included in this brilliant book. Copies are available from Empty Bowl Press and at local bookstores. Many readings are planned throughout Washington state during the coming months.

Poem in the Winter Online Issue of Juniper

My poem “Bee’s Tongue” written recently from a Hospice nursing memory is up on the beautiful online magazine Juniper: Http://Juniperpoetry.com. It is a Canadian publication edited by the amazing Lisa Young. Please go to the website to see the lovely foxglove illustration and accompanies my poem and to read the other beautiful and touching work.

Bee’s Tongue

I walked a hallway twice a week

those months of autumn. And each time,

I passed the framed photo of a honeybee

on the lip of a foxglove

her long filament of seldom seen tongue

thinner than thread, curved

like the frond of an early spring fern.

And each visit, someone

pointed it out as if we both saw it,

that blurry vision, for the first time

distraction from what waited

in the hospice room ahead.

I once asked a friend, a botanist,

how to locate the heart of a flower,

focus of life force, antiphon

of time. Anatomy of beauty

not hers to explain. And once I felt

the pulse within a fir, my hand

flat against its rough, vibrating bark.

I put my fingers to my own wrist

to assure a different tempo,

the tree much slower in its somber knell.

And maybe this encounter proved

that the low vegetable thrum

is everywhere, undetected except

by the tongue of a bee, in the hall

that is prelude to silence.

“The Beads of War” in Vita Poetica

When a world event as powerful as the invasion of Ukraine by Russia occurs, it seems important to respond. One of the first things this terrible act called to mind for me was the Cold War terror I had experienced as a child in the 1950s. And the Cold War’s symbol for me was the Rosary, a chain of prayer beads we used to pray, especially for peace. My family knelt and spoke those beads every night in those mid-50s years. The other thing I remembered was the refugee Hungarian family our parish sponsored after Russia marched into Hungary. One of their children, Judith, was in my class at school. She sat beside me and I helped her learn English. We also prayed the rosary together. This poem is one way I have made Ukraine personal:

The Beads of War

by Joanne M. Clarkson

I was raised on the rosary, fear
a design of prayer, one Our Father,
ten Hail Marys, given to children.
To Judith, child of Hungarian
refugees adopted by our parish 
in 1957. She and I kneeling
on the schoolroom floor, 
praying against the threat of skies 
exploding. Russia the known devil. 
I taught her my words. 
We worked numbers together. 
Her rosary with its creamy white beads 
was made of milkweed, field flower 
used to bring back butterflies. 
She showed me a little curved scar 
at the base of her thumb.
Last night I dreamed of Judith, 
ghost within the terror of Ukraine. 
Two old women lost to each other
fingering the sacred beads of war.

My Writing in We’Moon 2023

I am so pleased and grateful to say that I have 4 pieces in the 2023 edition of the We’Moon desk calendar. The theme is ‘Silver Lining,’ and the art is exquisite! My writings include “Canoe” for the week of March 4, “Clay and Silver” for the week of June 6, “The Art of Satin” for the week of August 19 and “Portals” for the week of September 18. I have read this publication for almost 20 years and have had work in it for the past 10. This very useful book includes horoscopes, phases of the moon, endless inspiration and more. It is available at Phoenix Rising metaphysical bookstore in Port Townsend, at Radiance in Olympia and many more locations as well. A great gift to give yourself and your besties for the Holidays and New Year.

Poem about ‘loss’ in pacificREVIEW 2022

Last spring I read a news article about how the Shriners’ organization had donated Barbie dolls with prosthetic legs to girls who also had artificial limbs. This caused me to wonder how I would feel if I was a little girl and received such a gift. I wrote a poem about it, incorporating the fairytale about the tin soldier without a leg who fell in love with a ballerina whom he mistakenly thought was also missing a leg. I needed to write the poem and I wondered if it would find a home in print since the subject matter was unusual. When I saw that pacificREVIEW, the literary magazine at San Diego State University, was asking for writing on the theme of ‘loss’ I sent this and several other poems. They accepted “The Left Leg” and it just appeared in their annual print edition. The cover reads: “Atlantis and other lost places” and the material included does indeed cover a wide range of losses, many dealing with some aspect of death. As a child I loved my dolls; they enacted many life scenarios for me. I think my poems do this now.