“Tundra plants are fragile. Please stay on paths.”
– sign at summit of Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park
We drive up where the summer meets the snow,
where tundra grows in view of mountain peaks.
The cold is shocking, from a sky so blue,
as unexpected as the wind that rakes
the scrim of summer off this August day.
My husband of two weeks is being kind,
and all those walking by us cannot see
his mercy is capricious, like the wind.
I have to find a way to grow like these,
the tender plants that tremble at our feet,
adapted to the bitter without cease,
yet blooming in their season, proud and mute.
Our tourists’ feet go where we will not hear
the warning meant to save us from despair.
Published in The Formalist, vol. 12, no. 1, 2001
After retiring from a column-writing gig lasting eleven years and yielding over 300 personal essays, I find I still have something to say. My thoughts range far and wide, and occasionally deep, on subjects including being an Iowan who misses Colorado; surviving marital violence; raising an amazing daughter and an equally amazing son; being justifiably angry about the world “these days;” writing poetry and plays; wondering if I’ll get Alzheimer’s like my mom and her two brothers; wanting to write about my twin granddaughters without sounding all Hallmark-y; fixing OCD-ish food; making sense of pants that come in shorts / crops / ankle-grazing / bootcut; being a librarian in public, academic, archival, and medical libraries; waiting 46 years to attend my high school reunion; having a gorgeous garden I can’t take care of; seeing a shaman; loving good men despite all the bad ones; and trying to wrest a little joy from life despite an 11-year-and-counting chronic migraine.