Peggy DoBreer is a parent, poet, and educator. She is co-author of 64 Ways to Practice Nonviolence, A Curriculum and Resource Guide. She has published five chapbooks, most recently, Little Captures. Her poems have appeared in Cracked Pavement and Plastic Trees: Our Gifts to Future Generations, Everything About You Is Beautiful, Literary Angles: The Second Poetic Diversity Anthology, L.A. Yoga Magazine, The San Pedro River Review, Malpais Review and currently online at www.foggedclarity.com. She has been interviewed by Lois P. Jones on KPFK radio.

Peggy was privileged to read with Brendan Constantine in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during National Poetry Month, where they were paired with Albuquerque poets, Lisa Gill and Mitch Reyes, and Conductor Dino J.A. Deane in a conducted jazz ensemble of their own poetry fragments. Peggy also serves as annual host for the Small Press Festival at the Church in Ocean Park and the Religious Ed Congress Film Showcase at the Anaheim Convention Center. Peggy founded A Horse of Another Color Poetry Series in 2005, which continues since 2008, as the Poetry Series at LMU Extension, where she does Community Relations and coordinates the Literary Arts Program. http://extension.lmu.edu

Flying backwards

I.

Along the estuary

pelicans fly as hard as they
can against a current rising
to gust strong winds.  Wings
flapping against the ether to the
rhythm of the windswept water
headed west for the ocean but
forced further east by the gales. We
are walking huddled against them,
sensing something greater and good.
They are loosing sky, looking
so Kubrick against the cumulous,
facing forward but carried farther back,
seen so up close from the jetty, so
classically confounding
in everyday activity.

II.

Time drips over the bluff. Notice
I wanted to drive you home, tap
your imagination like maple runs in
winter, buoy your neck in my
palms, stretch you taller, wrap
you in reverb and feed
your root to my poem.

Aubade

                                        
                                I look
for remnants in my side drawer,
a mollusk, an errant sock, a book
of matches catches the eye. Once
there was a market for such items.
They reminded customers of what
the Buddha said, or the final words
of a prophet whose last request
is that you dance on his grave.
How can you refuse? The rain
of your loss runs down the cheek
of each rond de jambe, each piqué.
Music disappears behind your bias
and the heel of your breath hits
the ground hard with every step.
 
                                 A man's
name in Devanagri script is crisp
and treacherous. Kali guides every
dunda*, with the instinctual caution
of a lioness with cubs. His footsteps
creep across the crepe of night, abrupt
as any leave taking, weather disturbing
the evidence, changing its hue.
 
*In Devanagari script, a dunda is a vertical slash, one of the most common strokes in writing Sanskrit. Used at the end of a line it is like a period, and a double dunda indicates the end of a sloca or verse.

Published in Mas Tequilla Review

Oh, India

I have listened to George Harrison
chanting in Sanskrit, until
a wanderlust for Gujurat
pounces on me like a
loose litter of lion cubs.

I am simultaneous: smitten
and stricken, enamored and
terrified. I am walking
through intentions of
passport acquisition and
frequent flyer ‘s rejoice.

I was once a tiny monk,
maybe eight lives old.
I was wrapped in mango robes,
freshly spun from my mother’s loom.
I was walking contemplation, a
view from the eyes in the back of his
head, always looking in, unless and
until, looking through.

I was once a black-haired woman,
bent at the well for water. Mustard
flowers surrounded her head
their bounty held the threads
of her shawl mended together. The
colors illuminated her poverty.

I was once the vessel she held,
the one that gathered the water. Om ||
Asato Maa Sadgamaya || Om shantih |
shantih | shantih || She was re-
freshment near the banks of the
Ganges, I was that gathering can.

Published in Cobalt Broadsides and www.ChurchofBeethoven.com

© 2011 Peggy DoBreer