Listening to Manic Depression
I hide behind my shades
eat salade nicoise in the sun

Take in a woman spilling out
of her red cowgirl
dress – her boots up to her
dimpled knees

She sings Jimi's song slow
Bipolar - the frenetic notes
in my family anthem

One that probably began
on an Ethiopian plain
when god/… Read full post »

An area is more than its landscape, more than its buildings, more than numbers in a survey.  The people are dynamic, are changing their enviroments, are creating.  

Yesterday the family and I went downtown to Colorado Springs.  I love to watch people and enjoy conversations with strang… Read full post »

I

Wolf spiders hop between the knuckles
of a thirsty Chinese Elm

Her hair is perched on her head like a well-oiled cat
in this blue-holy-hour-chapel-quiet
Sleep the murmuring noon bees

Little children are dying somewhere
as sky tallow melts over red rocks
The keys to the garden are out of reach

Our leaders,… Read full post »

The Rockies are a forbidding place of boulders, wrinkled as elephant skin, but motionless.  Something seemingly intractable resides here in this landscape.

 Weather Moving

Yet, the water of the Tarryall river is flowing, speckled by light.  Snow has fallen on a dry… Read full post »

Golgotha

tulips orange bright tongues
as flames above the apostles' heads
somewhere he is dying
far away in time and space

no one will save him
not this high desert scrub
that gives no indication
pale green becoming of aspen leaf
and yucca, some grass blades
the high sun in its
own crucifixion

later a judas… Read full post »

Moon in Palmer Lake, photo by Lucy Simpson, 2011

I move through the water with easy strokes of arms and legs. I spin from butterfly to backstroke and back again for an hour, while my children play in the shallows of the YMCA pool. It is like moving through weighted… Read full post »

In the foothills of the Rockies, early spring has come.  The brown of the grass has a subtle shade of green.  The yucca leaves seem greener and the days are warm, even hot.  Here, winter, could still raise a paw in the form of a snowstorm.  We are never truly free… Read full post »

A spent yucca bloom holds shining black seeds.  The seeds wait to be blown or knocked out, to find soil and water.

Moon in its cradle of pine boughs - that color of blue tinged gold and purple.  There is a music with this shade.  Dusk is a sad-sweet… Read full post »

Photograph by Lillyundfreya on Wikipedia

“Humans are not proud of their ancestors and , rarely invite them round to dinner.” Douglas Adams

They Come Round for Dinner

They never bring a thing,
no flowers or wine, not even berries,
only the dirt already on them.

They come visit a… Read full post »

Colorado has these periods of freeze and thaw.  Some winter days can be in the fifties, while others are in the teens.  Monument rock is made from the sediment of the ancient sea that once covered this area.  Water still plays a role here, freezing, melting and boring holes in the… Read full post »

Before I Loved You

Where was joy,
if not in the basket
I brought you home in,
your face pinched red
like a cartoon character,
an emaciated Mr. Magoo?

Your full head of gold hair,
I should be so lucky
to have you so pretty,
so well formed
between my hip bones.

I grieve to have you out of me.
I bleed for a/… Read full post »

“The merrow then went down to the strand. The sea was lying calm and smooth, just heaving and glittering in the sun, and she thought she heard a faint sweet singing, inviting her to come down..” Thomas Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, vol. 2… Read full post »

Night in the Tiny House on the Busy Road

  Read full post »

In 1913 Pollyanna was published, a somewhat syrupy book about an optimistic orphan child.  Eleanor H. Porter was the author, who gained wealth and fame as a writer of such tales.  Her tales were not critically acclaimed, but they were well loved.  Think Dickens without the surrealist e… Read full post »

My area of Colorado has seen a lot of snow lately.  Despite taking a trek on foot with children and man yesterday, we've been, for the most part, sitting by the fire, watching tv and playing Dungeons and Dragons.  Part of the problem when we go out is that snow, invariably,… Read full post »

Anywhere is beautiful and what looks dry and dead, isn't necessarily as it seems.  Looking closely with my camera has shown me this.  Everytime I get depressed about being in an arid, somewhat dull environment, I head out with my camera and see what is beautiful.  The camera has taught… Read full post »

I had been filling out the paperwork for twenty minutes, a cramp in my right hand, when I came to the section about family psychiatric history.
I meticulously went down the rows of disorders, having to circle way too many of them.  After alcoholism, which my family has a long and painful… Read full post »

This is my second head, which is better than the first.  I can only hope that I will keep getting better.  Read full post »

I have been away for a long while.  My husband got an excellent job offer in Colorado and we are settling in, under the shadow of Pike's Peak.  Here is a Seattle poem that I have revised.

 Number 53

Our driver crinkles his brown paper sack
His cola hisses. He finishes… Read full post »

Listening to her sing Manic Depression
I hide behind my shades
Eat salade nicoise
Take in a woman spilling out
Of her red cowgirl
Dress – her boots up to her 
Dimpled knees
She is well made
Tan, blond and behind her own shades
Singing Jimi's song slow
So I can hear the lyrics and chords
And think abo/… Read full post »

dessicated rose - curling back from hidden pollen

reading the lines - tracing the blue veins

   

water bead on a dead leaf - paling parchment  in the sun forge

   

California Poppy - ubiquitous by roadsides - peeling its orange - st… Read full post »

Now that the sculpture is finished, I see many anatomical errrors.  The left eye is two far over.  The socket is not shaped correctly.  The whole left side was in the dark half of my cave-like apartment.   This was a face from my imagination.  Tomorrow, I start sculpting my f… Read full post »

“Whenever she heard the Witch's voice she unloosed her plaits and let her hair fall down out of the window about twenty yards below, and the old Witch climbed up by it.” Lang, Andrew, ed. “Rapunzel.” The Red Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1966.

it… Read full post »