Sharon Lopez Mooney, say’s, words my heartland. Her intention is to put her shoulder to the wheel of change and hope with all she writes. A retired Interfaith Chaplain, she lives in Mexico, visits family in California. She received an CAC Grant for a rural poetry series; co-published an arts journal; co-owned an alternative literature service; produced poetry readings. Her poems are included in The MacGuffin, The Muddy River Poetry Review, The Voices Project, The Avalon Literary Review, International Adelaide Magazine and anthologies: Calyx; Songs to the Sun; Poetry is a Mountain; The Wide Open Sky; Smoke & Myrrors (UK).

Intimate Conversations

We talk about race, he and I
he trusts me, I trust him
it’s what makes us a coin flipped
he tall skinny, me short rounded
he traditional, me irregular
me schooled, he self educated
he black, me white
he christian, me something unnamed
he there, california
me here, mexico
I know him
he knows me

We talk about race, he and I
he works in the system, I no longer have jobs
he’s reminded he’s black everyday
I am favored simply by my whiteness
his anger boils, my voice silently listens
he sabotaged by them, me familiar with their treachery
he doesn’t trust them, I know them well
together we wail

We talk about race, he and I
his righteousness prickly hot
rejecting exclusion, deceit
he fights for the kids
defeats their forecasted failures
turns his back to fear
calls me to remember he’s building
a dream for all of them
I am certain of him, he gives me his secrets
together we try to dream
a new future

They don’t notice us those trees

A footfall on the stair startles little russet gecko,
tiny cactus flowers cling to dry earth
green lingers on desert bushes for a few more weeks
before the return of aridness to this rustling slope to the sea.

It is the same as last year only newly alive
in the cycle of another fleeting year on a calendar,
but lyrical canyon wren visiting the railing every day
searches for insects not dates, woodpecker doesn’t care about the hour.

Mountain abides each day into the next, changed by sun,
dressed by rain not by caution, sea wends its twice daily way
washing out old, pushing new into shallows of these sacred shores,
silver flash fish don’t ask permission to flow by in a liquid rush.

Sudden voices are of no concern to nightsnake curled in a tangle of weed,
each nameless season is not counted by shy fox discreet in the night,
flies and carpenter bees know to detour around the houses,
pipe cactus doesn’t worry about who builds nests to its left, to its right.

Dawn bows into morning on mountain’s green bushes and incoming tide, and
slowly floods into full daylight because that’s the way of it not because its time.
And we, we are just other beings among many members of this pulsing realm
even if we cannot always remember our true places here.