so here we are en route, our annual pilgrimage to the baja sur.
as you can see, we take the kids along with us, they sit right up front and they don't whine a bit! we arrived slightly worn out, a long many miles,

4539 to be exact...from pearl street to elias calles.
we have begun to settle down and have mucho work to do, we are care taking again this year, but unfortunately the place has not been very well taken care of by the last folks. the whale are abundant and as always a thrill to witness.

in december i was honored to have 2 poems published in the el calendario de todos santos, which is a great publication serving that baja sur area of mexico, which is where we live most of the winter, it's a monthly publication and very well done.

• 
  

white

why is it you call me white,
white girl?
not pale, or pink
not stucco, not ochre
no straw, nor dying leaf.
the color of an ash tree,
inside out.
the blossom of the squash.

white is the lace she tattered
and held many years later,
to her wet eyes
as she said goodbye to you.

white is the chair left sitting
alone
in the summer sun that called you
home.

white is the space that has no words
your mouth no longer needed.
the things in your hands left
for us to gather, to share,
to treasure
to hold against our noses

to smell the love of you.

• 
  

smooth stones

into my heart small pathways of
smooth stones are laid.
it is here i find an ancient and
familiar love, it mixes with
smaller shards
of red tiles and lost coins.
the path once thought of as solid
is now seen as pieces, and
fragments,
that glitter and hold themselves
together by the weight and
repetition of the ones
that went before me.

polished and left behind.

now i walk on the road out front
of my house and see the turquoise,
the mica,
the pieces that hold me up.
i walk slowly and almost forget
who i am
or where it is i might be going.

both of these are from the chapbook entitled dreams and ginger.

also in december are local weekly hometown paper here in montpelier, vermont called the bridge did an issue called literary review, in there i had a piece published, it also happens to be from that same chapbook.

• 
  

the pink and the yellow

fragrant roses stand in a vase in
the kitchen. almost too sweet.
i picked them for myself.
the pink and the yellow,
the sweetest.
you ask me this morning with salt
on your lips, on mine,
what if you had six months to live?
what if?

i tell you about a house on a
beach. a flight of stairs that
leads to a porch, to the sky.
underneath us we could build things
together. alone.
we could dance, and paint,
and write the words down on the
ocean-sprayed pages.

sometimes six months appears a
long time,
we would make it longer.
stretch the days into nights like
sweet taffy.
hold it between our teeth and
smile, and pull.
when it begins to grow cold we
would put on beautiful woolen
sweaters,
and socks with leather bottoms.
we would drink more tea.
not worry
about the other languages
we never learned.
not worry about the things
we no longer have.

the lawns that needed mowing,
the watering of all those fruits
and flowers.

i think now how the roses, in the
vase, in the kitchen were picked
before their time.
i think of them as chosen,
i dare to add, almost too sweet.
they did not have even
the six months
we hold so fragile.

as you can see we have been getting some snow.
it's very pretty, especially viewing it from between flannel sheets.
with the snow has come some very cold temperatures and icy walking. we are hoping to get out snowshoeing this weekend, we shall see.
this photo is looking out back to the garden shed.
i, for one, am okay with the holidays winding down, so much butta' (butter) (as we say up heyah, (here)) and a bit of ovah (over) eatin' in general...of course, no one is forced into this behavior, but...it just seems so 'right' in the moment(s).

...in the middle of a dark cold night
i remembered that when i was telling the 'pueblo man'
about my own once dodge dart,
the slant six with push button controls,
i called it flesh-tone.
we both looked at our own wrists,
searched and found a thing similar and smiled.
his dart was a station wagon,
blue grey dusty, like my eyes he said.
his were syrup; maple, warm, grade b.
i wanted to pour them onto the pancakes i hoped for later.
watch as each air bubble filled with the sweetness of him...

from a brief encounter in chimayo, new mexico, november 2008
where more than the earth is holy.