if i could choose now

i’d rather be this black cat

hiding in the grass

kitties and feathers

and a small dose of promise

to end the school year

for the first time in years

the weight of the school year’s end

feels more like a feather

than a thousand pounds

 

knowing i won’t see these students again

has little impact on my broken soul

as our summer dreams and summer lives

are burned by bad luck

 

what a failure this year has been

mismanaged, misled, misinformed

with their apathy leaking through

every crack in my broken lessons

 

yet i face bigger burdens

ones all too familiar, trying to tease

what’s left of my youth (and its salary)

right out from under me

 

and so the school year ends

with gray skies, sick kitties, flooded basements,

lost jobs, grieving husbands, debilitating surgeries,

disenfranchised daughters, and dreams lost.

 

maybe it’s more a bird than a feather,

this end-of-year weight,

this end-of-year wait,

this last chance to make things right.

Mother’s Day bike ride

to try to wash away clouds

that darken our days

home to fresh pancakes

vegan, made by my daughters

who brighten my life

city parks have paths

and twilit dandelions

well worth weeknight walks

i’ll take these cracked paths

over all suburban hell

for my city life

a park without paths

what’s found on suburban walk

(streets that go nowhere)

while waiting for drugs

and our last inkling of hope

after surgery

solution? make pies

because the rhubarb is fresh

sour and sweet

just like today’s sun

that came in late, not too hot

gold-baked perfection

cats are expensive

but at least they cuddle cutely

to brighten my day

the quartered cork luck

that i stole for ice cream joy

is haunting me now

because i’ve known poor

six-dollars-an-hour poor

and i’m done with it

i want Cliff House lunch

with doily-defined ketchup

and wealth we lived by

i want the incline

without the vicious mountain

and only my friend

i want my freedom

my thirteen-year-old best friend

and no poverty

enough rain to fill this pot

came storming into Denver today, taking us too far from sun

(we’re blue-sky people whose buds bloom bright

with early-evening rays you’ve tried to take from us)

in between storms, i capture this shot:

the muddy pot, the glistening leaves, the desire to be dry,

to feel anything but tears on my cheeks.

but as the sun sets, the rain returns, its early-May news as cold as April showers,

and i can’t bring myself to tilt the pot, to shake the quaking aspen,

to be anywhere but here in this twilit moment, drying these drops.

almost made it here

we’ll blow these candles free

remembering you