Mercy was your favorite word

      Elizabeth Bayley Seton , age 20, about 1794 She only lived to age 47, but during that short life she raised 5 children, was a wife, mother, widow, educator, convert to Catholicism, and founder of my religious community. She was a great letter writer; in fact , she wrote marginal notes in her Bible and

Far away honk some geese in their flight

Burning Tree     by Sharon Lynn Wallace   Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs.  Unfortunately, the group who composed it and performed it are not anywhere to be found anymore, even on YouTube!  But I do have the lyrics: The Burning Tree   Group:   Different Shoes     Album Title: One Size Feets All

Riff on chapped knuckles

Here’s a poem that appears in my book  Pick It Up and Read : Riff on Chapped Knuckles   Oily skin , subjected to decades decanters of witch hazel finally turned to parchment. Suddenly after oceans of dishwater, brillo pads erasing charred sugar, wake up to papery palms, chapped knuckles.   Rougher than brass, worse

Spiderweb of black cracks

  Here’s a poem I wrote about five years ago.  It appears in my book  Reconnaissance: An Active and Personal Devil It has been reported by the New York Times…that as technology increases, more and more people are coming to believe in an active and personal devil. – Miller Williams   The door was wood,

Ginger Root

Here is a wonderful poem by Monique-Adelle Callahan: Gingerly I have made nothing of myself. I have gone on this long, spilling water into half-full cisterns, proceeding with caution along a road somewhere where blue rivers and white streams run along through a damp echoing forest and the smell of wood burns out from a

Dancing All Alone

Here’s a poem by the American poet Theodore Roethke: The Dance I tried to fling my shadow at the moon, The while my blood leaped with a wordless song. Though dancing needs a master, I had none To teach my toes to listen to my tongue. But what I learned there, dancing all alone, Was

faintly littered with bits and strokes of light

Here’s another favorite poem , by Richard Wilbur:     A Hole in the Floor   by Richard Wilbur for Rene Magritte   The carpenter’s made a hole In the parlor floor, and I’m standing Staring down into it now At four o’clock in the evening, As Schliemann stood when his shovel Knocked on the crowns

The Broody Hen

I wrote this poem about six years ago; it appears in my book Reconnaissance. The Broody Hen   “You can identify a broody hen by her Zen-like gaze and deep, wary settling into the nest.”   Mother Earth News         Born with her back to sin, oblivious to turbulence, the Buff Orpington’s gone

Solve Me a Mystery

              Litany of the ten Detectives     Spenser, for your love of Susan your witty repartee with Hawk,      solve me a mystery. Wallander, for your pursuit of predators, of human traffickers,   solve me a mystery. Harry Bosch, for your battles with  politicos, your beer drinking meditations on your