Category: Childhood

• And our longings will meet

  coming in the house with sand between your toes or mud covering your boots, you may pause by my old needlepoint and long for vague days cradled in my arms, singing on your father’s shoulders, woods, dunes, day dreaming on long highways, prairie, corn stalks clicking by

  Jenifer

  April 6, 2020

  Childhood, Memory

  NaPoWriMo

• 2019, my Dad and coming back

  2019 was a year that was filled with loss for me and my family – a dear aunt, my step mother and then Dad. I have not been able to write much, but am now ramping up for NaPoWriMo. Plus, I am beginning a yoga teacher training and have promised to rekindle my writing practice…

  Jenifer

  March 28, 2020

  Childhood, Family, Father’s Day, Grief, My family, Nature

  NaPoWriMo, Sampler

• My father finds comfort in crows

  Inexplicable. That is what I say when you tell me and all I can do is shrug and count: How this is one more thing that separates us How you would kiss me goodnight and I would pull back How you stood wishing the boys would come to you not out of duty, however precisely…

  Jenifer

  May 3, 2017

  Aging, Childhood, Family, Grief, My family, Parenting

  poetry

• Your body is returned

  i. I know because you are me. You came here afraid, chased by storms. You huddle with spare, odd friends who you doubt you can trust. As the noise kicks up all around, you hunker down, raise strong the barriers, but they are cracked, indifferent. I know, because you are me. You curl up in…

  Jenifer

  November 17, 2016

  Childhood, Dying, From Hafiz, Grief, Pain, Political struggle, Violence

  poetry

• The meadow prefers no trespassers

  or, To Donald Trump and all the other letches throughout my long life, starting at age 11 and continuing far longer than anyone would expect It is not for nothing that I seek payment for you to come near my soft body. It is a design to hold you off, just so, make you think…

  Jenifer

  October 22, 2016

  Childhood, From Hafiz, Grief, Memory, Nature, Political struggle, Public, Seasons, Violence

  poetry

• Taking the car to the beach

  this is not quite the breeze that wound past us when we entered the woods off the dirt road and into the forest path, wheel ruts covered in moss, air mingling sea, hemlock, wintergreen, moss, and the fresh soil overturned when you backed out of the cul-de-sac because a tree had fallen that winter while…

  Jenifer

  September 25, 2016

  Childhood, Lake/ocean, Memory, Muse, Nature, Pentwater, Seasons

  poetry