May 2015
I live in central coastal California where I write stories and poems. I have performed stand-up comedy, spoken word, and in poetry slams. My poems have appeared in The Camel Saloon, Melancholy Hyperbole, Poems-For-All, The Stray Branch, and other journals.
On Eureka Street
After the rain-soaked day,
in the early still evening,
coming back down
from posting the letters,
I met a pair of large raccoons
lumbering up the sidewalk.
I had ventured out
to wonder at the rain’s handiwork –
the newly washed city,
the sparkling night.
We met in the middle
and stopped, surprised
to find something
we felt in common,
looked at each other
for one moment,
almost nodded a greeting,
and silently,
without changing pace,
continued on our way.
-first published in Thema
Promise
Some insistent little cricket
said something once about wishing
upon a star, long ago,
when I believed everything.
I dream of that child,
who waits on still nights,
so eagerly, so sure,
sometimes I stumble upon her
curled up in the fetal position,
knees touching the seeds of breasts,
buried deep in the old dried-up well,
on the hill where the house burnt down
waiting for the water to rise up again,
and afraid that it will, or I find her
high up in a tree in the forest,
eating green leaves, in her new
spring dress, or on the hill
dancing in the tall weeds,
which hide and brush her skin
with the tender tiny buds of wild
flowers, the gently stirring breeze.
I hear her singing softly
in the dead of a dreamy night,
still spinning straw into gold.
©2015 Nancy Gauquier
