Oct.
25
2023
My poem, “Colours of Memory,” is in the 2023 Issue #15 of the wonderful Canadian journal “The Fieldstone Review.” This magazine is published by the English Graduate Department of the University of Saskatchewan. Since it is an online publication, the entire issue can be read by going to Https://thefieldstonereview.ca.
The theme is Reversals and my poem is about a ‘psychic trick’ a fellow fortune teller taught me about how to find lost items using a ‘golden thread’ that the mind unwinds until the missing object is located. But, alas, this method never worked for me – which is the point of the poem and its ‘reversal.’ Partly it is the color – when I went to imagine an unspooling thread I got all sorts of shades but never that one. However, my colored filaments did inspire worthwhile memories….
Sep.
25
2023
I am so fortunate to have two of my poems included in the Wild Crone Wisdom Anthology released this Fall 2023 by Wild Librarian Press. My friend Linda Strever also has one of her beautiful Agnes poems in this book.
My first poem is called “The Art of Chickens” and honors my paternal Grandmother Veronica Mokosh who raised chickens and sold eggs on a little farm in the hills of Wheeling, West Virginia. She was a loving person despite terrible hardships and was completely in tune with Earth and innocent living things. I have always felt so blessed she was my grandma.
My second poem about a relic I found on the beach north of Cape George where erosion has eaten away a cliffside and debris from a long ago landfill has fallen under the spell of the Salish sea. I discovered an old spoon there one day with its bowl twisted as if looking backwards. My other grandmother collected spoons.
Aug.
07
2023
Two of my poems appear in Volume 10, the 2023 issue of Clockhouse Review, the literary journal of the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference of Goddard College. One is about love and the other about fashion and color. Both are true stories. The journal is beautiful and contains fiction, non-fiction and even drama selections besides poetry.
The first poem tells the story of my first boyfriend, Lester, based on a single incident that all these years later, I remember well. The other is about the many nuances of black. This occasion also really happened. I had dressed to go somewhere and my young adult daughter pointed out that my blacks didn’t match. I never knew until then that blacks could clash!!!
Tuna Sandwiches
I thought we were poor until the Saturday
my new boyfriend’s mother invited me
to go with their family to the beach. I was
fourteen, her son sixteen. We were so shy,
meeting at a Catholic school dance,
we moved together without touching.
He had gentle eyes; didn’t talk much
into my chatter. It was a month before
our sweaty hands met in a dark theater,
the intensity of nearness the film’s only plot.
That Saturday, his mother gave me a can
of tuna and a loaf of white bread and told me
to make ten sandwiches. I blushed for her,
her face stiff and dry-eyed, and mashed the tuna
thin, spread a bit between bargain slices.
I don’t remember what we did that day
although we probably played softball,
the family’s favorite pastime. And that boy
probably found me a heart-shaped shell.
I do still recall the chipped Formica
of the kitchen counter, and how the bread
sprang back with the pressure of my knife.
His mother testing me, wanting for her son
respect as much as love, unable to mask
her envy for the bliss of my first crush.
Jul.
28
2023
My poem about my dear friend at her dying mother’s bedside has been re-printed in the excellent and moving online journal Medmic.
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.
May.
30
2023
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.
May.
23
2023
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.
Mar.
30
2023
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.
Feb.
24
2023
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.
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.