Anne Mitchell
Fog Totem
Anne Mitchell's newest collection of poetry is now available in a chapbook from Kelsay Books and Amazon.com. Cover photo: Martha Casanave.
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Anne Mitchell
Sacred Space
Sky of Lapis frothed clouds sail in with the west wind, valley heat teases sea. Chaised, gaze up at old pine tower, thank him for roots...
Anne Mitchell
Planets can wander through space without a parent star
I’d like to meet those empty nest planets out there, perhaps rifling through the fledglings’ things left behind, their first big bang and...
Anne Mitchell
Scent of Summer
In Pacific Grove, mint pastel cottages line the seaside streets. Deer families stroll through backyards, on sidewalks. Pre-teen white...
Anne Mitchell
Meals on Wheels Mourning Abecedarian
Any old day on the job, our clients may bite into their last meal, perhaps choking on the shrimp stir-fry, that final home delivery,...
Anne Mitchell
Burung Watching
Once, in a flower market in Jakarta, surrounded by intoxicant hues, perfumed in frangipani, among mounds of rose petal baskets, I found a...
Anne Mitchell
Let Him Eat Cake
I’d like to write poems with Billy Collins, invite him to sit next to me on the center beam of the redwood eaves crisscrossing my living...
Anne Mitchell
On the Occasion of my First Poetry Reading
A 100-year-old hotel, glows mauve, sunset bounces light up from Carmel beach-a W.P.A. mural greets me, Austrian coats of arms, Dirndls...
Anne Mitchell
Anne Mitchell
Grace
Before you reach for the hand of grace you must shed skin. Sense all comfort molt from shattered cells like needles from a dead pine in...
Anne Mitchell
Broken Records Still Make Music
Rue nothing. Not the yellow jacket Cliff’s Notes skimmed In place of The Scarlet Letter, not the TV Cinderella you sang along with to be...
Anne Mitchell
PC Highway 1 at Watsonville, 6:00 am
Fog so low it kisses the artichoke blooms, hovers over a snaking traffic jam of field workers, white school busses off-load into the...
Anne Mitchell
Day One in Johns Hopkins Maternity Ward
I run my fingers along the scalloped, frayed photo, touch the rough edge my father held when he jotted my name on the back side with his...
Anne Mitchell
Love Note to Sonnet
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—John Keats At two a.m. I ponder Sonnet’s art- a form meets torment, to love eon’s night,...
Anne Mitchell
Sonnet of Lost Summers
When days equal night and the air is crisp, sand etches tides into swirls and I breathe ferment of apples and hungry wasps’ wisp, before...
Anne Mitchell
Pollinators
“The Queen’s bees have been informed of her death” “Please stay”, he begs of the broods while wrapping them in black satin ribbons, bows...
Anne Mitchell
fourteen hours
thick fog morphs soft rain distant cats yowl mate or fight voyeur gulls cackle redhead woodpeckers hula dance mist off feathers phone...
Anne Mitchell
The Great Leonid Storm of 2001
There’s the story of me sitting in the grass in the dark on a lounge of rattan, hot chocolate in hand. Aumakua-Pueo, Hawaiian Owl,...
Anne Mitchell
Breathe
Life will not always go your way. The bees will disappear from the hive in your garden and your orange Tomcat will wander off to die...
Anne Mitchell
Pinwheel
Don’t you wonder if they will ever slow down, images bouncing round in your mind, popcorn maker, dimes in a coke can to ward off...
Anne Mitchell
Two Abcedarians
What is a poem? A poem breathes quietly in an abecedarian’s basement, dark, like the black lagoon some creature in a little cart with...
Anne Mitchell
Alternate Universe
Skim headlines then re-write the rosy side. Your blue sky will come with the gold of spring. Losses of winter disappear in spring- babies...
Anne Mitchell
A poem on identity has me perched atop an existential high dive…
To write about what formed me into this Anne at a point in life sandwiched between passing of parents, flyaway of a child, covid-era...
Anne Mitchell
Cicadas Swarm Ocean Avenue
In old Carmel, Bohemians shared poems from a shelter of Cypress Wickiups, the abalone butterflyed open into pearled rainbows- Now, Red...
Anne Mitchell
Burmese Lesson
In Mandalay my guesthouse hostess Alice, served sweet milk tea in little glass cups. “I was an English Professor at University before...
Anne Mitchell
Starset
You do not have to figure it all out. You don’t have to bow to what they say you should feel, look like, do for a living. You need only...
Anne Mitchell
Becoming scarecrow
I sit in the garden after work to enjoy the decay of fall. Oak moths flutter reaper fairies aflame to a serenade from three crows. The...
Anne Mitchell
Blue Agave
A Century plant pierces through grey fog above a white stucco house. Sentry agave tower to cloud nine beside her white stucco house. She...
Anne Mitchell
Mystery in the bathroom
After Billy Collins’ “Christmas Sparrow” What caught my eye first, was the updraft of feathers, weightless, suspicious. Remnants of a...
Anne Mitchell
My diver whispers...
Weightlessness. A Caribbean winter of forgotten fins, Stingray stares a barb of trust through us, you knifed him freedom from a net, and...
Anne Mitchell
Trade wind lullaby
In the bedroom we burrow a nest, our sleepy time tundra walled in saffron. Palms sway and sing, a breeze of back up strings to the...
Anne Mitchell
Open Sesame
May I walk through this door from black and white to meander like Toto in Technicolor, from the tsunami of trashcans brimming in...
Anne Mitchell
Crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats with Gnat
We left Salt Lake City at dawn, westward on I-80, onyx river over salt, daughter furled in a seat-belted nest, over landscapes of Pluto,...
Anne Mitchell
Dear Coffee
I wake you into a pot at 3:30 am, grace in hazel, eyes barely open. A plunge into the pool of Cashew Milk & Colorado Honey. You perfume...
Anne Mitchell
Beach Walk
I watched the surfers this morning. A ballet of arrowheads floated over jade glass, Cormorants as audience dove alongside. They remind me...
Anne Mitchell
Out of Tickets to Ride
I squirm at that phantom hand of smoke, a clawed finger beckons toward a carnie operator, keeper of the wheel in plaid knickers, who...
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