Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk! — Rumi They give me tips on how to live— Save your money, forgive, forgive. But I tip my glass to a different creed, Dancing on edges, chasing need. In tulip fields where the wild winds ran, A Dutch girl dreamt...

This piece is for Sofia. And for Carmen, whose dancing brings morning light to the park in Puerto Vallarta. E.Z.Years ago, in a classroom far from home, she was my student - a poet, a swimmer, a soul who carried more couragethan most will ever know.She faced a world...

The Crone in this poem is an archetype — a symbol of the inner wisdom many women discover as they age. Whether we call her intuition, clarity, elderhood, or simply experience, she represents the truth-telling voice that grows stronger over time. E.Z. December 12, 2025 The night before my 70th birthday,...

You return again—not as the girl the world adored,but as the woman who has lived,who has carried kingdoms quietlyin the chambers of her ribcage. The mirror greets youthe way old witnesses do—with tenderness,with patience,with a kind of honestythat has never once betrayed you. Some mornings you glimpse the girl you were—snow-white...

I’ve always imagined poetry as a kind of food truck.Not the stainless-steel kind you see outside concertsBut one that pulls up anywhere the heart is hungry—feeding whoever needs itwith whatever words are warm enough to heal. Some nights,the world feels starved for decency.And so I park this poem here,in the...

I saw her firstin the glossy pages of National Geographic —a schooner slicing sunlight,her sails like prayers to the wind. And I said,That’s mine. Not in ownership —in destiny. For six monthsI lived the feeling of it. Saw my hands on her helm,heard the ropes sing in salt air,tasted the metal tang of...

The night kissed the fading day with a whisper: I am death, your mother, from me you will get new life.” — Life After Death: The Book of Answers Tonight the year exhales. Marigolds glow like little suns, guiding our steps across the dark. Children laugh behind painted masks, pumpkins open like...

Prologue She came to the end of herself— not in a chapel, not in the stained-glass sliver of someone else’s faith, but in the hollow silence after the storm had swallowed everything she thought she knew. She did not find God in a book but in the silence between words,...

Old man, look at my life — I’m a lot like you were. — Neil Young When I stepped offstage, still warm with words, still ringing with the music of the moment, he met me by the exit — curious, kind, a little cautious. “My wife loves your dangerous, old-woman stuff,”...

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. — Mexican proverb Once, we were born of the same trembling star — ash, wind, song, and seed — ancestors whispering one word: remember. But some forgot. They built walls out of fear and named them safety. Sharpened ignorance and called it...