This poem was inspired by a line from ” On Prayer” by Czeslaw Milosz. He was a marvelous Nobel Prize-winning Polish-American Poet. My parents grew up with summers on Long Island Sound. When getting ready to retire, they bought a sailboat. Mom felt that the salt water could cure anything. I visited and sailed with … More “If There Is No Other Shore” July,2022 Featured Poem
This was a very bad week for individual rights, respect and kindness and for all of us who care about bodily autonomy, privacy, public health, equity, and justice for women, LGBTQIAA people and those with limited access to health care. As many of you know, I was the head of a regional Planned Parenthood for … More Secrets and Decisions, June, 2022 Featured Poem
I have many memories of the Massachusetts town where I grew up. This memoir poem seems quite appropriate for today. Memorial Day, 1959 The man was huge, his horse gigantic,a living, heroic bronze with a clerical collar.The Reverend Headmaster of the local Prep Schoolheaded the small town parade.His bald head mirrored the bright sun. My … More Memorial Day, 1959 — May, 2022 Featured Poem
It is still spring here in San Francisco. My mother taught me how to “force” bulbs, and to bring in sprays of forsythia which she left in the cloisonne vase on the piano to develop buds and bright yellow cascades of flowers. I think of her in spring and her love of flowers. Even in … More Narcissus — April, 2022 Featured Poem
Many of us have lived with or still enjoy old dogs. I remember my childhood dog, India, with this poem. If you had not heard, there are more dogs than children in San Francisco. I see a bunch of them out my window at the park all day. Sometimes they come at late dusk or … More Grandmother–Featured Poem for March, 2022
Lilacs are special flowers for me. I grew up with three shades of lilac bushes around our house. They come in lilac-lilac, deep purple and white and smell ever so slightly different, or so I imagined. T.S.Eliot’s poems made an early impression on me and I appreciated his use of lilacs evoking the wild, mystical, … More What Did The Scrub Jay Notice?Featured Poem for February, 2022
The furnace that heats our bedroom just broke and I have been worrying about the people Back East. Growing up during the Cold War, when we had cold snaps in Massachusetts nobody used the word “bomb’ for a Nor’easter. We did take our weather seriously and tried to predict it with almanacs, good noses for … More Metamorphosis-Featured Poem January, 2022
It has been eight months since I started feeding the hummingbirds. I hung a feeder on the deck railing off our living room. The garden is two flights of stairs below so they often fly up from beneath to perch and drink. Being a Massachusetts girl, even after over forty years in California, I worried … More Sharing–Featured Poem for December, 2021
I wrote this early in the pandemic. Thank you scientists for the vaccines, boosters, and treatments we have now. However, we know it is not all past, but we have this moment. This poem is another of mine from Pandemic Puzzle Poems, the anthology from Diane Frank, Editor at Blue Light Press. The recent book … More Any Day Now-Featured Poem November, 2021
I am very excited to have this poem, “Stitching Together,” and two others of mine in a newly published anthology of poems, Pandemic Puzzle Poems Selected by Diane Frank and Prartho Sereno. It is perfect timing for this marvelous book. There are 92 writers represented, some famous, some not. The poetry is earnest and moving. … More Stitching Together– Featured Poem October, 2021
Heather Saunders Estes 