I’ve been under the spell of words (and the silences in which they bloom and fade) for as long as I can remember. This poem, from my collection Instead of Sadness (Gunpowder Press, 2015), says something about that obsession:


                  SAFE

           I am six.  I don’t like coffee,
           but the smell of it drifting
           up the stairs
           along with breakfast-making clatter
                          means I’m safe.
                                     I lie in bed, point
            my toes, think about the secret
            language I’m making, my list
            of words and their meanings.
            Today I’ll write them in the book
            I plan to make with sheets
            of my mother’s onion skin
                          typing paper.
                                    The summer I turn
             nine, my father will find
             a bat, rust-colored and furred,
             roosting among the loquats
             in our back yard.  The breathing
             fact of a wild creature so near
                            will alarm and thrill me.
                                        By then, my private
              language will be forgotten,
              not to be remembered until
              I’m forty and look back to glimpse
              myself in the amber
                          wilds of my childhood,
              first and last speaker
                          of a snatch of language
                                     without a name.


These days I write, teach, collaborate with my husband Rob, and dream of rain in California's San Joaquin Valley.