Tracings is an award-winning chapbook of nostalgic, accessible poetry.  It was named Top 10 Best Reads of 2005 by The Compulsive Reader. 

Here is a sample poem, the first in the book. I hope you enjoy and consider selecting the book as a gift for someone you love; perhaps you could give it with a bottle of Chardonay or a cream-colored rose!

This Place My Heart Lies

No one could call me a Carolyn-come-lately

                                                            but many did.

My husband’s mother laughed, lifted her chin,

displayed her teeth. I don’t know why you outsiders

go after our men. She was thinking sons,

of course. No matter. No matter, that I qualified.

Great, great, great, my genes informed

as surely as if they had been stamped

with Good Houskeeping’s Seal. Approval.

I belonged between the Great Lake

and the Wasatch, miles of kaleidoscope

peaks the colors of Canaan, midnight,

or tumble weeds depending on their mood.

Lying at their knees a blocked quilt

geometric lawns, firebrick bungalows,

pressed pioneer lace at their windows,

dwellings for generations of converts

from Hässelholm or parishes

in the Berkshires. My roots tamped

among theirs until what we called

then, marriageable age, when I no longer

fit. If I ever did. Baskets pass or offering

trays collect white unsealed

envelopes, folded bills. Sacraments,

pleated cups like tiny wimples filled

with mountain water or wine sipped

from a communal cup depending

on the meeting or mass I attend. Instead

of contribution or conversion, I chose

                                                            other places,

a replica of my birthsky, so far north

that opal light shrinks hungry pupils,

lavishes its blue on the Neva in a single season.

Light from the self-same sun, warmer now,

silhouetted palms, banana fronds stout

along the Pacific because they can march

no farther than the Palisades. An ancient

with no teeth pumps my gas, puts me on the road

to Birmingham without a map because, I’m sure,

he cannot read, his voice a song finer than Foster

or B’rer Rabbit fables read to me by mother

who never thought I’d see a black man

or the night sky as Hapshutset saw it, a cloak

of burned velvet enfolds galaxies,

a Bedouin’s bonfire spits embers

into its depth, composes a display

of cinders the color of mangoes,

among pricks of light yet undiscovered.

It’s because I feel the stars’ ice

from a distance, the sputtering

embers’ heat up close, because I prefer

measuring basmati rice in milligrams,

to counting parsed condiments

that I fondle memories of unplanted rhizomes

pushing up clods along fences at home,

hand-made signs offer nite crawlrs 4 sale

posted by a kid with blond hair,

patches on his Levi’s knees.

The woman--abundant bones--ties a washed apron

so thin that threaded grates expose

faded pansies on her housecoat

tells my father she don’t care what religion his kids are,

                                                      she likes 'em anyway.