A View from the Dinner Table

Food forgotten, a glass of wine at hand,

in awe of glaciers shimmying down the slope,

they will be here long after we are gone.

Jambalaya and cauliflower soup, bread, butter

at Pension Gimmelwald, wine du canton deVaud,

dark beer, his hand on my knee, I watch

the glaciers crawl towards me, they will

be here long after I am gone and

the whipped cream on my chocolate cake

has flattened to a white pool on the plate.

Streams are singing down the mountainsides 

small tracks climb the valleys to glaciers that

will be here long after I am gone.

Why not stay?

Sophie a Neuchatel

et la voila
with two missing teeth
a big grin to fill in the empty space and
the longest eyelashes I have ever seen
that laugh, it makes me laugh and
smile at her cutest face of all the little
girls in the entire voisinage a
Neuchatel,
C'est Sophie!!
dans son jardin!!
et moi, je suis contente
de partager son sourire avec elle.
; )

Off to Iceland

is iceland icy
or is there land to step upon from the
icy shore, towards glittering highrises
and verdant hillsides, glasses clinking,
money falling from trees in the late fall.
we are off to this land, en route to another
and yet another, a yawning bag still
calls to me to pack the last
few things before I yawn
myself to sleep.

Four

we were four,
four among fifteen or so
whose black text splashed across the screen
strongly, they had something to say, they wanted
to be heard, but
eleven didn't show up
after all that, too
busy, preoccupied with
other things, I understand
these things,
I'd rather be packing
my bags for France
instead of being one
of the four.

The Little Things for Travel

an eye mask to shade the light,
earplugs to block out crying babies,
a credit card to buy wine,
earbuds to watch movies,
a warm scarf to keep me cozy,
some slippers to caress my feet,
the little things for a long flight,
I gather them like pearls to
drape around my neck. 

Baking Pie

Nine peaches from Mary Beth's kitchen
two cups of flour from a wheat field in Illinois
a dash of salt from the sea.
Nine tablespoons of butter from an Organic Valley
somewhere, are the cows really happy
or do they just say that to make us buy this.
a splash of rum  mixed with cornstarch,
a tablespoon of vanilla, the dough
laid so gently over, oh so tenderly,
now baking, the aroma of
sweet peaches filling
the air.

Watching Barack

watching Barack between
necks, shoulders, on tippy toes, then
sinking into a kind of claustrophobia
looking at chests, down at shoes,
at children sitting at their parents' feet
I stretch up again towards his voice
called Forward again, Forward
not back to the last century where
women walked behind their man,
where the poor sickened and died,
forward towards education and
prosperity for all, an ideal
worth striving for.