Braided Way Magazine

Down the walking trail from home, the neighbors strung
a thin wire fence between two pine poles with paper tags
and a sharpie. Their number grew by the day.

I wish to beat cancer, someone wrote, and another, unity
and peace for Lyn’s family. I wish for this too.

Someone is praying that their son finds lo...

I sage-smudged the house today while the sky poured buckets and the mutt dog looked on skeptically. Overdue, this rain and the smudging, and maybe a bit desperate, both. I can’t speak to the sky’s intentions, but my humming of, “May all beings be well, may all beings be happy, may all beings be at peace” came with intrusive thoughts about the yard needi...

O, my God is the longest wave I ever saw 
on a beach I can barely remember
plus the foam from that wave
that has not dissipated to this day 
and the unheard boom 
of the water from that same
ocean striking a shore 6,000
miles away.

O, my God is a great whale, 
and my watching

I have cancer. On a hospital bed, I lean shoulder-to-shoulder, backs against the wall, with a white-coated oncologist. His large Mediterranean nose reminds me of my uncle’s. Your illness is terminal, he confirms. In the face of death his presence comforts me. I relax into his shoulder, into the wall, even further back, falling into a sweet, enc...

I like the random flowers
you sometimes see when passing
a scratch of grass by a rusted fence,
or a forgotten dirt lot strewn with garbage
chucked from car windows.
There’s a clutch of daffodils as if they were
just borrowed from a bouquet and planted
in some sort of brave gesture. Those errant
blooms saying that even a bare sp...