This is an old poem of mine, 2022, from before my recent book was published. A couple teachers/editors have seemed to consider it too sentimental or were concerned by the unabashed anthropomorphism which is frequently thought to be tacky or at least uncool. Yet, I love it and this is my blog and I get … More A Gladness: April, 2025 Featured Poem
Earlier this Spring I was on a writing retreat with a friend in the East Bay Hills above Danville. The frogs were so loud they reminded me of peeper frogs in Massachusetts and Upstate New York. We were just back Upstate to visit friends who live in the solar eclipse path of totality. The frogs … More Pacific Chorus Frogs: April, 2024 Featured Poem
This poem is a favorite of mine and also appears in my newest book All in Measure: A Book of Hours-2020-2023. Morning tea is a ritual part of my morning. Cloistered in the house during the pandemic, the act of making tea allowed me to travel in my imagination and never failed to bring me … More Jasmine Tea: April, 2023 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 … More Red-tailed Hawk Night Vision Live Cam: 2:00 AM August, 2022 Featured Poem
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
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
More shelter-in-place personal revelations. Hope you all are staying well. Giraffe A six feet 5” girlis sheltering-in-placein our house.I am 5 feet 2”and dropping.I want to stareat her tallnessas at a redwood.I lean backto see her. In her life,ceilings arereachable skies.Spider websin upper cornersof patio doorsget in her hair.Down the backstairs,she ducks to avoidbeing foreheaded. … More Giraffe–Poem for October, 2020
What strange times these are, wonderful moments and terrible happenings. So for a change of pace, I serve you my September poem. Fun to read it out loud. Trigger warning for people avoiding sugar. For those of you who wish to go further into the science of giggling rats, just Google Scientific American – “giggling … More Ode To Doughnuts- Featured Poem for September, 2020
Like many poets, I have a growing collection of pandemic poems. Here is one for a smile. In the San Francisco summer fog I feel even more like I am hibernating. Hope you and yours are staying as well and joyful, as you can. Cardboard Boxes ( Shelter-in-Place; May 2020) Lying inside, on the … More Featured Poem: July, 2020
We lived in Sacramento three days a week this past year. I enjoyed the differences between San Francisco and Sacramento. There is the heat and cold, both of which are more in Sacramento, and the glorious deciduous trees. They bring back memories of New England and Upstate New York. South Land Park Twilight Heat … More Featured Poem: June, 2020
Heather Saunders Estes 