Rosemary Ybarra-Garcia

Rosemary Ybarra-Garcia is an educator and a lifelong poet who has been a featured poet for several years at coffee shops, bookstores, women’s study classes, and special venues such as “Women and the Muse” in Santa Cruz, CA, 1988; “Floricanto in Xochitle in Cuicatle, Flower and Song” at the De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, CA, 1993.

Her poetry has been included in several publications, among those: Lighthouse Point: An Anthology of Santa Cruz Writers, M PRESS, Santa Cruz, CA; New to North America: Writing by Immigrants, Their Children and Grandchildren, Burning Bush Publications, Santa Cruz, CA; California Quarterly, A California State Poetry Society Publication; Poetry Quarterly, Prolific Press Publication; Calyx Journal, CALYX Press; River Poets Journal, Lily Press; Minute Magazine, Minute Press. She has published three books of poetry: House of Song, Weaving, and Blue Maze.

Poem on Belonging

LACE AND FAITH

When she moved, she left
laced heirlooms and her faith behind—

the yellowed, crocheted tablecloth, its arms unravelling;
black laced scarves, folded forever in a drawer,

worn by widows at funerals and graveyards,
by a doña who turned the unfaithful to stone

Stern, pale faces stayed behind with tablecloths,
dusty doilies, strict religious hardness

They all stayed behind despite their pleas
for a spot in the moving van

Faith, being so persistent, would find its way,
traveling through miles of countryside,

stopping for water, leaving its stamp,
a bit of itself everywhere

It would cry at the front door until she let it inside
It would not look like the old faith—fat and balding,

wearing a monk’s cassock from the sixteenth century,
wooden rosaries hanging from his waist

No, at first, it would be as unassuming as a kitten, 
mewing its way into her house