Diane Lee Moomey

Diane Lee Moomey is a painter and poet living in Half Moon Bay, California, where she is co-host of the monthly reading series, Coastside Poetry; her work has appeared in Light, Think, The MacGuffin, PoetryMagazine.com, Mezzo Cammin, and others. She has won prizes for her sonnets in the Ina Coolbrith Circle and in the Soul Making Keats Literary Contests. Her newest collection, the chapbook Make For Higher Ground, is available at Amazon and from Barefoot Muse Press.

Poem on Belonging

FORTY DAYS

From deep within the rows of August corn, a trill,
vibrato—every other living voice is still
for just a breath. In tangled verge beside the field,
in trees, among the ears: cicada’s well concealed.
Then locusts recommence their creaking, leaping—sticky
feet rebound off stems of thistle, chicory
and me, bare-legged, deep in milkweed. Blackbird’s note.
I open woody pods, set flossy seeds afloat.
On porches, grandmamas weave ribbon out and in
and out of eyelets—stitch and snip, pin, un-pin—
for owners of curly-headed dolls. Yards of lace!
They’re fastening the ends around the tiny waists
while grampas speak in adages, chaw, lament
the fish that got away. Ayup. And without
a pause, it’s circling—as geese fly south and north
again and summer follows summer, bringing forth
another incarnation of this very thistle,
cricket, chicory and milkweed, ribbon, whistle
of blackbird and of train, the wispy rows of corn,
the grandmamas, the homilies—all circling, adorn
this life. Cicada trills again, from spot unknown.
Ayup. It’s forty days till frost, grampas intone.

Copyright © 2021 by Diane Lee Moomey. This poem originally appeared in THINK Journal, WinterSpring 2021. Used with permission of the author.

Civic Engagement

Co-Host, Coastside Poetry, a reading series which provides a space where poets of every color, culture, sexual orientation and gender can feel they have a voice and a warmly welcoming audience.