Welcome
Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you find my work inspiring. I’m in love with language, science, and the natural world. I began writing poetry and stories when I was 10. I’ve spent the last 25 years in higher education as a faculty member, strategic communications director, editor, and science writer. Welcome to my world!
She Always Loved the Sun and Sea
My sister floats on warm waves in Hawaiian seas, lingering
in the gently lapping water, all night haunts whited out
by the tropical sun, no fears of hurt by alien beings
calling to her through the radio, no voices that only shout.
My sister is swimming in the Pacific, she now is calm
too, all anger and demons settled down, sedated
for the first time in a very long time, this water, a balm
that washes over her, through her — she is sated.
My sister is disappearing from the shoreline, a bright
buoy so far out to sea that its sight fades to memory,
a question mark, was she really there, a slight
body rising and falling between white froth and sky?
The ocean has taken her ashes, what tooth and bone
remain, mingle with sand, shell, coral: her new home. Read more poems
in the gently lapping water, all night haunts whited out
by the tropical sun, no fears of hurt by alien beings
calling to her through the radio, no voices that only shout.
My sister is swimming in the Pacific, she now is calm
too, all anger and demons settled down, sedated
for the first time in a very long time, this water, a balm
that washes over her, through her — she is sated.
My sister is disappearing from the shoreline, a bright
buoy so far out to sea that its sight fades to memory,
a question mark, was she really there, a slight
body rising and falling between white froth and sky?
The ocean has taken her ashes, what tooth and bone
remain, mingle with sand, shell, coral: her new home. Read more poems
Remembering, unremembering, re-remembering —
the daily thrum of ancestors under the Italian sun,
to water, to wine; to worship the undefinable divine
in an age of despotism and dirt, miracles and mercy.
We are tourists here on the Tyrrhenian Sea, a bumble
bee’s glance from Vesuvius where the mountain
once roiled and roared, pouring forth a Roman wrath
so complete that an entire civilization went silent in a gasp.
We are strangers to quiet contemplation
amid the rumble of traffic, seabird shriek, the bells
of Sorrento marking out time in precise interval.
Our own march on time is a mirage of city and complicity.
Water, salt, blood, ash, bone and memory — we, too,
are relics, and also forebears of story buried far beneath,
story yet to come, the mystery of sleep, the revival of
waking in radiance, boats coming to harbor, fish in their keep.
We return, together and separate, to our worlds of modernity
with the sea, the sky, love’s sweet tooth biting ever so delicately. Italian Reunion Read more poems
the daily thrum of ancestors under the Italian sun,
to water, to wine; to worship the undefinable divine
in an age of despotism and dirt, miracles and mercy.
We are tourists here on the Tyrrhenian Sea, a bumble
bee’s glance from Vesuvius where the mountain
once roiled and roared, pouring forth a Roman wrath
so complete that an entire civilization went silent in a gasp.
We are strangers to quiet contemplation
amid the rumble of traffic, seabird shriek, the bells
of Sorrento marking out time in precise interval.
Our own march on time is a mirage of city and complicity.
Water, salt, blood, ash, bone and memory — we, too,
are relics, and also forebears of story buried far beneath,
story yet to come, the mystery of sleep, the revival of
waking in radiance, boats coming to harbor, fish in their keep.
We return, together and separate, to our worlds of modernity
with the sea, the sky, love’s sweet tooth biting ever so delicately. Italian Reunion Read more poems