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