is often softness. Fabrics: a silky, warm scarf snugged around your neck, a fleece nightgown, velvety sweater, the supple nap of flannel or cotton sheets, fluffy blanket. The sooth of beauty, kindness of color: a bouquet of purple, robin’s egg blue, orange; your nails manicured a pearl-white polish. The pleasure of wearing your favorite jewelry: […]

The crocus, first in my yard to bloom, purple  with tiny orange kernel—blossom within blossom.    Ground saturated from a foot of snow three weeks ago.  Now, magnolia—white feathered with pink stripes;    furry gray-green sepal they open from; the way sun filters through slim petals. Spring’s early yellows: witch hazel,    forsythia, daffodils, meadow […]

I Circles within circles: red, brown, mustard, green, blue— multiple eyelids—tiny pupil, scarlet iris with feathered edges radiates waves of pink, yellow, aqua blood vessels that triangulate the white. II A camera lens: interlocking rings to adjust your view. III Hypnotic, dizzying. IV My first and only time at Florence Speedway, car races on a […]

I Green apple split top to bottom encapsulated in a blue severed heart hugged by rhythmic pink pulmonary vessels clasping lung sacs—twin bellows Will the halved mirror images stitch the fissures whole? II My parents, first husband, all emphysema. Second one, lung cancer. Me as a child, asthma, inhaler hidden—my secret defect.