I Pull Away from Screens like a Junkie, Reluctantly—

to wash the dog in October

tied to the sunny porch, drying out

barking as I go about filling buckets

to haul ten gallons of water

to five bickering chickens where I see

Brownie’s plucked feathers grew back

to yank blossom-end-rot tomatoes

off dwindling patio plants

before the others go bad too

to notice rusty hummers have moved on

and my troubled neighbor

must be drinking again by the sound of it

and my ear is still an echo chamber

hissing like a seashell I carry everywhere

an improvement over the usual sound

of distant heavy machinery in my head

as if men were shifting gears in me, moving dirt,

tearing up trees, pouring a concrete path through a forest

abandoning failed broken slabs

and bottles of yellow piss

on the shoulder of my wilderness

—the most anti-consumerist, purposeless

I’ve been in months, sitting here, scribbling this

watching the dog grow glossy

Raising Nightshades

All summer, every step into the greenhouse,

she trilled to her tomatoes, Hello, beautiful babies.  

Finally, finally, come cooler fall,

shaking her head, she noted they’d been over-watered,

reset the timer to water them less often.

Surveying damage with the shame of a busy mother,

she harvested all the red cracked globes, too embarrassed

to offer the moldered surplus to colleagues.

She threw them out to compost, set to save the rest.

Their radial crusted cracks possible harbors of mold and rot,

she carved their tops like jack-o-lantern lids lifted by the stem.

She blanched, slip-skinned and cored them,

crushed the slick remains, stuffed basil into the boiling pot,

and canned three quarts of spaghetti sauce.

Knowing damn well the alkaloids will make her knees ache,

she vowed to eat her harvest anyway, in salsas too.

She’s sung to these tomatoes grown of saved seed,

and rising stiffly with a groan from a low couch,

she’ll wonder, How could my babies do this to me?

Antidotes for Fear of Losing Him

When I imagine him

hopelessly cold

as I go to spoon him

or gone too many hours

found clutching midnight’s

kettlebell

or the hammer dropped

just out of reach where he fell

or incomprehensibly

slouched beneath

a splattered piñon canopy

beloved calloused finger

stuck in the holy gun

I swallow tears

in my throat like medicine

imagine his ghost

next to me

in the half warm bed

spooning me spooning

the wet-necked shell of him

a nest holding a nest holding a nest

or his broad ghost back

and thick ghost biceps—

a sieve—straining to lift me

off the floor

Death is Taking Care of Us All

The shrunken mouse

in the drive

once looked into Her soft eyes

and huffed.

At Her empty breast,

mosquitos dried up

in August.

Where are their thready bodies?

In the bellies of birds.

My blood too

in the bellies of birds.

Where are their singing bodies?

Busy with their lavish harvest of piñon?

Languishing in 5G dreams?

Either way, my suet brick—untouched

for weeks at 20 degrees.

You Understood

The children’s meeting hall where I teach

is painted pale pink.

A memory of Mr. Croutcher rises

sitting at his desk in a 6th grade classroom

every wall Pepto Bismol pink on his request.

Rumor had it he was gay, hence the pink

since people saw his car at Bobby’s

but this day he told us jails and asylums

are painted pink to calm the patients.

He boomed at me good naturedly

“Rachel, when I say, ‘Speak up,’

who is the subject of the sentence?”

I had a sense, a hunch, but my pink tongue and lips

had no words for it. Pink walls abandoned me.

“You understood!” he shouted, “You understood!”

Once I did, I never forgot.

Walking the Burn…

…my new collection, available from Middle Creek Publishing on March 1, 2025

“If the life lived is the burn, then these poems are paths through this charred landscape that allow us to not only see what is scarred and wounded, but also the astonishing beauty of how things—and people—heal.”

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush, All the Honey and The Unfolding

spontaneous circle

I walked into a spontaneous circle

started by a small girl, arms out, hands reaching

for the hands of unknown adults

heading for their cars

after the local food producers’ shindig

they made room for me, smiling

she spoke quietly, blessed the fire, the wind

the water, the food of this valley

looked at me, said, your turn

Pruning Nasturtiums

It hurts to rip them out

nasturtium vines, sweet blooms

green moons afloat on strings

smothering young lettuce

with shade, perfume

Hacked to the stem, I wait

They will come again, unspool

I will notice when

they are just right

potential Hydrogen

The calico Shubunkin goldfish hovered motionless

over water lily gravel.

Two days later, I touched his side with my finger.

He was not startled.

I promised myself to tend to him, listless child’s hand,

after a full night of sleep

and dreamed him as anglerfish, huge, blood red

with bulging eyes.

Come morning, I found him floating on his side,

a wilted quarter moon,

desperate, sucking the surface of the pond,

upper gill working

like a blinking eye. Why? Starvation?  Smaller

than the other

more aggressive fish, always last to eat,

if at all. Disease?

If so, I thought to scoop him out at once to save

the school, but, cautious,

read it could be simply water chemistry. Hard to believe.

Four days ago,

pH was perfect. I quickly fumbled out a test tube,

filled it,

dropped five drops and shook. It turned blue, a nine,

far too alkaline.

Shit Shit Shit. Was it decaying leaves? Maybe. Ammonia?

No. The drop in heat?

I turned on air stones, poured in the necessary powders,

feared over-correction,

my specialty, a wild swing toward acidity that could shock

and kill all four gorgeous fish,

more important to me now than dill, tomatoes, carrots,

beets, kale, basil,

merlot lettuce. I stirred the pond with a net

and prayerless prayer

measured pH once more, pleased it had already dropped

to seven. Balanced

on my knees on a six-inch board bridging the length

of the almond-shaped pond,

I set my fingernails upon the yellowed leaves of water lettuce

and trailing nasturtium

mimicking lily pads. Driven, I pinched off leaf after leaf,

each disintegrating,

fish-killing culprit. Then, in my peripheral vision, a swish!

The fish—what?—stood up,

so to speak, righted himself, whirled into the depths

from the brink.

I named him Lazarus. I am no Jesus walking on water,

healing the sick,

raising the dead. This was no miracle—simply the power,

the potential

of hydrogen and hope to orchestrate breath.

The Children’s Highway

they are calling it

as if a romantic name

and convenience

can ease the blight

of the long hard gash

the shock of shins

on white concrete

through a green belt

where my feet

prefer the parallel

sandy path

that breathes

and gives beneath me