A Creative Collaboration Between
The Coachella Valley Watercolor Society
and
Palm Springs Pen Women
A Poet Reincarnated as a Feral Cat I wait, in thought, among the leaves and scan for sounds or scents to see with slightly, sideways, cautious eyes what may ensure a decent prize. I draw on time and lines to taunt, a reborn cat who lacks for naught of skill to place upon my plate a suffering shape to celebrate. I dig and draw new marks for play, and look for turns to steal and slay those stressed and wild killables with n’er a glance at syllables. I know I bring high smiles to one old gal inside her backyard door. She understands I’m not a cat but a recharged poet from the past. So, tonight she’ll sip her wine I’ll eat my prey, my catnip’s fine. Words are coming easily now, What a life. I’m known … I’m someone’s love, her cat’s meow. Cheryl Heineman
A Bevy of Blackbirds
-after Wallace Stevens “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
By Donna Fitzgerald
1.Why do birds sit on wires? Does it energize them?
2.Two of the blackbirds are mating—hop on—-hop off
3. Three are squawking and pecking at each other. Who offended who first? And over what for goodness’ sake?
4. They congregate in groups spaced evenly across the horizontal wires and unevenly across the swooping background wires. What’s up with that? Is there rhyme or reason?
5. Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Was that a popular dish once upon a time?
6. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive”
7. Blackbirds thank Lennon and McCartney for those poignant lines
8. The blackbird becomes a metaphor for racial injustice
9. Black is the symbol of bad luck, but not in the case of your portfolio
10. How does a blackbird stay on the wire in a strong wind?
11. Do foreign blackbirds speak the same language as domestic blackbirds?
12. One blackbird is sizing me up. I think he might peck my eyes out for staring at him for too long.
13. I so admire the community they have created on those wires. It is a tenuous life. I hope to follow their example.
Some souls are born in gentle places.
Others arrive through openings in the cracked earth…
where the sun asks hard questions, and even the trees must learn how to lean without breaking.
The tree did not grow straight.. because the wind never spoke gently here.
It learned early on that survival is not always beautiful…
sometimes it is twisted bark, roots gripping dry earth…
a body bent toward whatever mercy the sky might offer.
Still… if you look at it….
It’s not dead.
It’s not defeated.
Just constantly reshaped by whatever storm comes through.
The desert knows things lush gardens never will…
how to bloom without abundance,
how to hold light in empty places,
how silence can become a kind of prayer.
And some people are the same.
Some of the hardest seasons do not come to ruin us….
but to carve unnecessary softness away until only the truest shape remains.
A wild thing…
A weathered thing…
Something still reaching upward…
despite everything.
Shauna Judnich
I March to a Different Drummer
By Donna Weeks
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
—Henry David Thoreau
The bird world uses a number of interesting terms to describe its various flocks. For example, a group of crows is a murder. Owls are a parliament. A group of wrens is a chime.
Look at us, brilliantly arrayed in our pink splendor. My flock is all about making a statement; doing whatever it can to stand out from the less endowed avian species. Take that, crows! You are losers, dull gray pigeons! And mourning doves … don’t even think about strutting your dull blandness in public spaces. Is it any surprise our flamingo collective is known as a flamboyance?
We flamingos are show-offs. It’s in our DNA to flaunt our colorful plumage. We proudly gather in water and spend our time nibbling such delicacies as brine shrimp, mollusks and insect larvae. Sometimes we nap standing on one leg.
However flamboyant our flamboyance, there is a downside. Our quest to stand out crushes individuality.
What if I want to distinguish myself from my bright pink brothers and sisters? Is it a crime to resist the drudgery of conforming?
I have an idea.
My Mother’s Pledge
The candle was lit, she promised
To devote her life to healing.
I watched her tender touch
At home and in the hospital.
Cool cloths for a feverish brow,
A hand squeeze for a frightened patient.
Like osmosis her comforting ways
Entered my being.
She passed the baton…
I touch my children, grandchildren,
A mother bear licking
The wounds of her cubs.
The pledge is remembered,
She lives in me…
Her light still shines.
Rosalee J. Tithof
Branches stretch upward
Shadows fall onto the ground
They dance together
Neither could exist alone
Janet Dagley
Beautiful flower
you add color to my garden
bring delight
to those who gaze
upon you and your companions
Like a floral sun
your petal rays spread outward
opening yourself up
to the world
Birds and insects
are drawn to you
feast on your sweet nectar
and leave to distribute
the beginnings
of future generations
Kathy Bjork
WE and THEY
by Joanne Hardy
When WE lived in the little house with the high fence we didn’t talk to our neighbors. They were different and WE always spoke of them as “THEY.” A long road before us beckoned.
In a small town we found people who still used a horse and buggy and dressed differently than we did, but they were living well enough.
And we learned.
In a city, we saw people whose hair was different than ours, some spoke a language we didn’t know. Their food was not like ours. But they were getting along well enough.
We learned and the road we traveled grew wider.
Across the ocean, in a big room, chairs lining the walls of a big room, we listened to bearded men in a turbans and long flowing gowns create music with strange instruments. They prayed to a different god, but they were living well enough. And we learned. The road was growing wider.
We came to a place where temples, now in ruins, had graced a marketplace long ago. Each temple revered a different god. A man once stood before them, and talked of an austere way to live, a way, we knew would one day spread to half the world. Here we learned, whatever WE think or THEY think, nothing is eternal.
The road now grown very wide led to another place of broken walls and columns, a city in ruins, whose power once stretched from far north to the south and held indomitable power in the world.
And we learned nothing is invincible and forever.
We traveled to the top of the earth, awed by the grandeur of the heavens above with its waving and folding colors. WE felt very small and it made us reflect on what we had learned.
Everyone, during their time slot on earth, had known joy and sorrow, felt acceptance and loneliness, knew pride and shame, felt love and knew loss and above all believed they were right.
There was, we had learned, little difference between WE and THEY.
