How open is your window,
  how tall is your door

How wide is your pool,
  how slippery is your floor

How fresh is your perception,
  how broad is your scope

How clear is your reflection,
  how real is your hope

How solid are your friendships,
  how many pray tell

How strong is your commitment,
  how deep is your well

How right is your grammar,
  how your words become strong

How your heart achieves freedom,
—turning verse into song

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2016)

If I were to write you a poem

I might appeal to your senses

Tastes and smells
That trigger comfort
And satiety

Images that make a man
Stand taller

There would have to be
A mountain
And some tall trees.

If I were to write you a poem

There would be a hand to hold
Shining eyes
And communication without words

One day soon
I will write it

we the daughters of sliced sunbeams
and those who chase gales in between
the pasture gates and barbed fences behind
the silo--

who think there's nothing softer than the way
honey sounds drizzled on toast or daisy petals at the supermarket
the women of ferocious silences, standing before
dozens with trimmed smiles and deafening inner beauty

squeezing our fingers down barley stalks and sewing
the roots into our dresses, we've tried six ways to sunday
the rules, the book on being wanted, before realizing that anything
born out of self-indulgence wilts away
all the work we did to grow and plait our hair with vanilla,
dipped in sweet almond oil we had no idea
that pretending
could only get us
so


far.