Mornings with Grandma

Watercolor image for the children's book of poetry, Mornings with Grandma.

Between Lime and Rust (from the journal)

Snow light moves

through the wood

in the warm evening.

Practicing for later.  11-3-12

Making a valley through the cloud,

the sun decided to join our day.

We all breathe the light.  11-3-12

Too cold for wren to sit still

on the maple trunk.

A burst of feathers in the light.  11-6-12

This maple’s last leaves

are yellow, holding on

like lost fog.  11-6-12

Many feet move through

the early woods—

deer feet stepping high.  11-6-12

The only red left now in the southern

wood is the reflection in the window—

my red sweater.  11-7-12

Redbird flies under

blue jay’s shout.

A cold wind.  11-7-12

Most of morning light

comes from honeysuckle’s

new yellow leaves.  11-8-12

Brown wood, gray sky

softened by lingering orange leaves

moving one by one

in the early winter wind.  11-8-12

Leaf by leaf

the wood lets the sun

in for its winter rest.  11-11-12

Is it the same woodpecker

I chased off the house

last week?  He gives me

the same dirty look.  11-11-12

The shelf of yellow holds

light caught from a watery sun.

Brown oak leaves nose their way through.  11-12-12

A thousand points of counterpoint

between lime and rust—

myrtle’s autumn song

plays on our grateful eyes.  11-12-12

Orange and yellow,

not any orange and yellow,

but November’s orange and yellow

wet with rain.  11-13-12

Deep in the rain-damp wood,

hickory’s last golden leaves

waving goodbye.  11-13-12

The gray clouds moved down to see today,

to see honeysuckle’s brilliant

lime light.  11-13-12

Redbird comes to see if

the person in the window is still me.

It is.  I’m watching winter from the window

and her part is still red.  11-14-12

The sun is in the middle of the wood.

How can that be?  I’m in the middle of the wood.

Does the light breathe?  It does.

It breathes the sweet morning breeze.  11-14-12

Honeysuckle’s yellow leaves

take up the forest call.

Above, dogwood’s single rusty note.  11-14-12

Honeysuckle doesn’t mind the

gray morning sun.

She’s her own yellow.  11-20-12

Blue jay in the morning.

Loud enough

for himself.  11-21-12

Cold air.

The high sun

moves through

still leaves.  11-21-12

Falling orange oak leaves

catch the sun

all the way down.  11-21-12

No help for it.

Against the red orange leaves,

it’s a violet sky.  11-21-12

A backlit woods.

Tall black trunks

ground the shimmering eye.  11-22-13

A quiet girl reading on the couch—

the aardwolf and all the others

capture all her breath, her reading breath.

Quietly.  11-22-12

A flood of blue—

morning clouds,

morning sky.

Yellow honeysuckle’s breath

brought close to my face.

Left red—the last berries.  11-24-12

Anna Hubbard

Unmoved by the winter wind—
a memory.   Moving light resting on her

eyes, on her hands, her moving hands.  11-24-12

Broken up and scattered—

winter light, sparkling

in the hollies, the inkberries,

on my eyelashes.  11-26-12

11540 Blix Street, North Hollywood

The place of memories is gone.

The chimney, the roof,

the narrow place where she sat between

the sink and the stove.

The sink gone, too, the woman

washing the dishes, the light from

the window falling down her wrinkled face.

The window gone, too.

All gone.  11-26-12

Chimney

My grandfather said it would never come down

in an earthquake and it never did, not in any

of the earthquakes.  It was the bulldozer

that brought it down, brought it down easily.  11-26-12

My Dark Room

Chain link fence on three sides, like a prison, 

my bedroom painted dark brown,

the windows too high to see out of,

a closet packed with discarded toys,

but in the near corner,

a desk, my desk, my typewriter, an anchor to

a future I couldn’t see, not ever.

And on my desk, a Japanese painted porcelain pig,

free from a bank on the other side of the

salted valley, round and full of promise and pennies,

the only light in my dark room.  11-26-12

Lime and rust.

The only warmth

under a gray, grizzled sky.  11-27-12

Thinned by cold,

honeysuckles hold

the last of summer’s light.  11-27-12

The same color as winter wood,

squirrel shivers her tail just before her leap,

her leap through gray air

as quiet as the rain.  11-27-12

Morning light.

The last leaves fall down through

the opened wood.  11-29-12

The Locking Place

"Ruby under the willow."  Pen and ink with watercolor, 10 x 6" 

Illustration from The Locking Place by Kathy Walden Kaplan and Kate Oliver.   This middle-grade novel will be coming out in January, 2013 from MAB Books. 

Vagaries of Choice (from the journal)

There are no words

for creeper’s fall color—

as rich now as the harvest moon.  10-2-12

Mint tea

the old memory—

Café Central in the rain,

like today.

Wet mocassins on my cold feet.  10-2-12

The long rain.

All the saucers are full,

all the spider webs frosted.  10-3-12

What’s a poem?

A breath full of morning mist

touched by crickets, all the little crickets.  10-3-12

The river runs through the cloud

sitting on the ground, on us,

the finest rain.  10-3-12

On a morning

between summer and fall

crickets go on about it.  10-4-12

Poke condensing to yellow and maroon,

creeper to rose,

the star tree to orange.

All smaller, one color at a time.  10-4-12

Issa Connection (for David Lanoue)

All the single moments

of one  man’s life

blown here—

dark brush marks on paper,

translated for my morning breath.  10-4-12

As pale as moonlight

bladdernut turns

toward sleep.  10-5-12

The old woman closed the door,

refused the book, shut the blinds.

Going slowly by herself, alone.

Let it be like a soap bubble breaking,

all the air free now,

free to be.  10-5-12

Winter came overnight,

cold, on a wind that rests here,

quietly in the rain.  10-7-12

Nothing moves in the wood—

the birds, the leaves, the air—

all are waiting for what comes next.  10-7-12

The old path wrapped in bark,

stiff now, from decisions,

supporting horizontal

vagaries of choice, for light,

with buds as flexible

as breath.   10-8-12

One red leaf

in the dogwood sapling

lights the dark wood.  10-8-12

Across the wood

orange leaves rise

like froth on a green wave.  10-9-12

One wren

in the quiet morning

speaks.  She speaks

about the cold.  10-9-12

A pile of papers

on the square table.

A book almost finished.  10-9-12

A shadow across the wood.

It’s squirrel up on the woodpile,

gaining ground.  10-10-12

Blue jay climbs the maple.

Orange leaves fall with

each step.  10-10-12

The wooded light

moves and doesn’t move

across autumn breath

not yet cold.  10-13-12

This morning light is different from all the others—

this light comes from honeysuckle’s yellow leaves,

from bladdernut’s yellow leaves,

from maple’s yellow leaves.

A new light with only yesterday’s woods

to reflect it.  10-15-12

Red on the salmon

flagstones—

three maple leaves.  10-15-12

Suddenly rain comes

out of a yellow-gray sky.

Everywhere in the woods

squirrels whip their tails.  10-15-12

Poke’s dried berries

float on yellow and maroon branches—

a color we wait all year for.  10-15-12

Star tree glows from inside.

It’s her inner orange

showing through.  10-15-12

It’s a special weight dogwood has,

her orange leaves holding the eye,

the heart.  10-15-12

Under the singing redbird

sassafras shows her

first yellow leaves.  10-17-12

Sunlight poppies ring the art building.

My pockets fill with their

thin brown seeds.  10-17-12

Who will know?

No one will know

when the snowbirds

invert, black for white.  10-17-12

From the far woods

hickory looks in—

green breathing to gold.  10-17-12

Herringboned between summer and fall,

between green and yellow—

the lost wild olive.  10-18-12

The yellow wood

comes closer wearing

blue jay in its lapel.  10-19-12

In the rain—

warmth,

yellow warmth, advancing.

Blue jay

in the bare hickory

tips her tail.  10-19-12

They threw down their shoes

those two little girls did,

running now down the path

with feet flying to the side,

the liquid giggles

coming down.  10-20-12

Curling forward slowly,

along the brown back,

the white tail in a spot of sun

is all I see of the deer, head down,

pawing up the partridge berry.  10-20-12

With the sun from behind,

hickory’s golden leaves

are all we can see.  10-20-12

That color,

that orange dogwood color,

and myrtle’s red

next to the cinnamon wren

smell like dusty maple leaves

curling up on the ground.  10-25-12

Yellow all the way to Baltimore,

the yellow road,

the yellow Eskimo, the bronze,

the stolen one.  10-25-12

Autumn.

The pink Sieboldii’s

open.  10-25-12

Where was I walking

yesterday when I heard catbird?

No catbirds here now.  10-25-12

The great white storm whirled through.

Yet, still here—

the yellow and orange wood.  10-30-12

Peace now.

Behind the green honeysuckle,

hickory’s golden self is alight

under gray light.  10-30-12

Sea green, cinnamon, gold—

autumn’s other colors threaded through

rain-darkened trunks.  10-31-12

The cloud moved.

The light moved.

Hickory’s empty branches are silver now

in the dry raining light.  10-31-12

It’s like painting,

loose, with colors,

and the other things that shine in the light,

in the dark,

moving things that sigh

with enough breath, 

sharing mine. 10-31-12