hail ping
on a galvanized roof—
the woodshed perfumed
with yellow pine
and packrat nest
windborne
the woody essence
of Rose of Sharon
suddenly she’s with me
the sister lost long ago
the gleam
of her beaded evening clutch
still, faintly
that old familiar scent—
Shalimar and Lucky Strikes
dry lips brush
the nape of my neck
a whiff of cocoa
on his breath
an old bedtime story
is the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. National Library Service. A retired health care worker, she earned her doctorate at UC Irvine. Although she writes in a variety of styles, her special interests include haiku, tanka, and related forms, as well as “mainstream” lyric poetry. Her work has won numerous poetry contests, and is published online and off. Billie lives in the Chihuahuan Desert with her family and a betta fish named Ramon.
worked in marketing communications with IBM and before that with one of the divisions of The State University of New York at Albany. Her poems have been published in cattails, Contemporary Haibun Online, frogpond, Haibun Today, The Heron’s Nest, KYSO Flash, Modern Haiku, Narrow Road, Ribbons, and Scarlet Dragonfly Journal. She currently lives with her husband in Brighton, New York.
