These atmospheric river storms just keep on happening. The poems keep on coming. This was from the storm a couple of weeks ago. The poem is new and might change form eventually. I need to sit with it for longer. We had storm wind force water in under our patio doors to leak on the…
Category: poetry
Rain –– February, 2023 Featured Poem
And it is still raining! In January I was so busy editing my new book All in Measure: A Book of Hours, 2020-2022 I missed posting a poem. Yet another storm is passing through the Bay Area. Snow on unexpected hills. Even more trees uprooted or branches broken. When we first moved here, California the…
A Petal Moves––November, 2022 Featured Poem
This is a season when people bring bouquets to hosts and hostesses. This was an unexpected and delightful gift from our housemate. Happy Holiday season to you all! A Petal Moves, Then Another She brought me flowers,a bouquet of fuchsia anemones.Elegant stems covered in soft downlengthen up to ferny ruffs framing faceslike a cluster of…
The Fog Speaks –– October, 2022 Featured Poem
Growing up in New England, over 50 miles from the ocean, fog was rare and exotic weather when I was growing up. My Dad would tell me about the pea soup fog in London and I imagined getting lost. Living in San Francisco, 2 miles from the ocean fog is a very frequent visitor and…
City of Forty Hills — September, 2022 Featured Poem
I am hoping this will appear in my third poetry book which is currently in the editing process. This poem is in a loose version of a haibun. The great Japanese poet Matsuo Basho wrote many haibuns. This form is composed of a short prose piece followed by a haiku. I went down a delightful…
Red-tailed Hawk Night Vision Live Cam: 2:00 AM August, 2022 Featured Poem
I don’t know how many of you ever watch the live cameras. In the Bay Area I have watched the osprey nest on the Richmond Bridge, the peregrine falcon cam on the UC Berkeley Campus, and this live camera on the grounds of the Presidio in San Francisco. Internationally, there are so many more live…
“If There Is No Other Shore” July,2022 Featured Poem
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…
Secrets and Decisions, June, 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…
Memorial Day, 1959 — May, 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…
Narcissus — April, 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…
Heather Saunders Estes 