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The poems

• ordinary poets
  • ordinary poets
  • waitress
  • desk clerk
  • chaplain
  • cable guy
  • for sale
  • luck
  • to the rescue
  • personals ad
  • warrior
  • fashionista
  • valentine
  • normal
  • sean and teresa
  • fame
  • prepared
  • caste
  • soldier
  • PR girls do pepper jelly
  • chick place
  • in Hovland
• outrage
  • baja
  • priorities
  • illusion
  • mobile home
  • tour
  • mother
  • hair
  • hurricane
  • loser
  • Red Lake
  • privilege
  • poor
  • weapons of mass destruction
  • Lamborghini
  • fur
  • temple
  • American
  • Sedona
  • values
  • why they didn't leave
  • efficiency
  • shelter
  • lounge chair
• love
  • marriage
  • old marriage
  • vulnerable
  • terrarium
  • caretaker
  • material things
  • laundry
  • rose
  • that's all, folks
  • lost and found
  • daybreak
  • eHarmony
  • envy
  • love song
  • reunion
  • beds and ladders
  • prom
  • farewell
  • incurable
  • reset
  • vow
• family
  • mother's Hippocratic oath
  • bridge
  • shepherds
  • letting go
  • wedding
  • training wheels
  • first blessing
  • scales
  • Patta's car
  • psych ward
  • graduation
  • border collie
  • triage
• thinking too much
  • magic act
  • choices
  • logic
  • sorting
  • grudge
  • doubt
  • caste
  • film
  • aging
  • Shady Pines
  • alone
  • getting ready
  • hedgehog
  • clarity
  • lonesome
  • planes and anthrax
• hurting
  • paper cuts
  • collateral damage
  • conflict
  • forest fire
  • lights out
  • wounds
  • breakup
  • commitment
  • camouflage
  • knives
  • unfaithful
• hooked
  • hooked
  • adversary
  • monkey
  • addicts and angels
  • the First Step
  • serenity prayer
  • iceberg
  • sober
  • enabler
  • hope
• loss
  • grief
  • monsters
  • autopsy
  • ambush
  • bruise
  • giving back the daisies
  • checkout
  • bad check
  • talking with death
  • condolences
  • closure
  • full post
  • spring
  • jacket
  • resurrection
  • first year
  • passage
  • Michael
  • uncharted
  • lightness of being
• respite
  • carwash
  • September 11
  • Kauai
  • at the lake
  • muskrats
  • crisis intervention
  • balloons
  • star over Sedona
  • inspiration
  • pilot light
  • souvenirs
  • night of stars
  • balance
• reflections
  • politics
  • what Disney taught us
  • moon rabbit
  • Herzegovina
  • poetry games
  • autumn
  • envy and the snapshot
  • perfection
  • critters
  • prayer
  • Sodom and Gomorrah
  • otters
  • winter of the century
  • Louie
  • the zone
• the light side
  • home repairs
  • almost haiku
  • body parts
  • competition
  • typewriter vs...
  • style

© 2010-2013

Warrior

She strips off her top
With the casualness of one
Grown accustomed to her barrenness
Apologizes briefly, though she knows she doesn't need to
And exposes her blank chest with a single seam across the middle
A terse reminder of a brush with death
(And death lost, temporarily)
Her "courageous battle with cancer" as the obits say
The flatness of her chest is a statement
Here I am -- take it or leave it -- I'm fine with it
Stripped of the one thing
All women seem defined by
I am a living, breathing icon
Of wholeness
I have lost what is falsely most prized
And -- surprise -- am still a human being
No, more than that
I am a walking soul, a triumph
Of mind over matter
A survivor
And the epitome of who we really are
We women
Heart and soul and brain
Look at me -- look at who I am
Without the breastplate
That is supposed to define me
I have stronger armor
Than you think

Just see what I can do ….