Deborah DeNicola Poems

There was a presence before the stone.
A pressure so much larger than human
wounds. My mind let go into the crags
of sorrow and I grew
...

Hardly a thing I can hold in my hand.
But I recall my small hand
on the polished mahogany table
out on the sun porch where I sometimes
...

Lord, life after half a century drags a Uhaul behind it.
A truck load of possessions that don’t love me back.
...

It's as if he knows how close he's always been to Spirit.
As if your hand might pass through the numen of his voice
and a little shadow shiver on the auditorium wall.
If you asked I bet he'd glance away with a half smile and husky
...

Not a cat, not a leopard, a lioness
walks out of my eye, halts on furred paws.
that cover her claws. Her head, turning, her orange
mane hangs like drapery and when she opens
...

Just off Route One
before Tigertail Corner, down the street from Casa Cara,
there's a gargantuan banyan
...

Unbearable brilliance. Each leaf surrendering
to the late ceremony of sun. The neighbor's tomato plants
have fallen through the slats in the white fence
and in the breeze, there's no denying autumn.
...

Twilight on a night in May
and I'm holding the fan you made for me
on Mother's Day when you were six.
...

when you visit the meditation mansion
run by two retired nuns. One tiny cell of a room
with one tiny bed and an oval window, but oh, beyond
the window—wind and white caps, lips of sand,
...

There is no more to be taught.
No more to be taken
away. Loss is the same
as less. A small idea
...