ME Hope travels the state of Oregon in an economy car-cum-kayak; most of the right side of the state is dry but over the mountain, watch out. After two decades of wanderlust, she has settled in Southern Oregon, where she still misses Roma, fresh calamari and any European train station. When not herding cats or teens she wades through the banality and bureaucracy of being a government employee. Recent or upcoming pubs include High Desert Journal, Rattle and the Oregon Literary Review.
We followed her in, a stray, the fattest & first, the temple cat./ In a niche by the altar she crouches, watches them come: the/ mad parade we’d wanted, this troupe of heretics — the ass,/ alpaca, gyrfalcon — unbroken line of celebrants, creatures ...
Mother comes to me as I’m making honey cake, / measuring out sugar then whipping eggs. / Never mind that Mother left this earth / eighteen months earlier...
I miss things: swooping, diving, passionate voices/ in several African tongues, so far beyond me/ they might as well have beamed from the constellations.
Here’s the river I stepped in more than twice.// I can’t see them but I know the boats/ are going by in the sturdy fog...
And now you explore the hidden pockets and come up/ with a City Guide (in English) you picked up in Amsterdam./ Why did I keep that? Where were we going? But she’s/ not there to answer
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