Oh, Everett!  Forever for Everett I am!
I can't get enough of the touch of your hand.
Becoming our youngest resident present,
Everett, I find you incessantly pleasant.

Oh, Everett!  Forever for Everett am I!
Forever!  My love is an endless supply.
Eternally gaga, your Lala I am.
Interminably lovely, my l...

Fingers and Toes

Knit within your mother’s womb,
   wee bobbin of wooly yarn,
known but unknown until today,
  we welcome you, sweet little bairn.

From the coziest depths near your
   mother's heart forcefully propelled,
a blanket of warming arms
   awaits your winsomeness unveiled.

Woven in love, by l...

As an adolescent I hated my feet.  I don’t know why.  Probably because I was a teenager.  I needed a place to hang a plethora of insecurities, so why not put them on my feet?  I wouldn’t even wear sandals in the summertime. 

But as I’ve aged, I’ve begun to think of my feet as my best feature.  My h...

A burst of painted ladies
flit and fly around my head
carried by the vernal breeze
or violent Tehuano winds

on their migration from el sur,
twirling their colorful skirts,
pinwheels of iridescence,
in a manic Flamenco dance.

I do not have a net to catch them
(thank God!) or pin them to
a wall for my good ...

                They lift
their globed bellies
nestled in their hands
as they sink slowly
below the waterline,
singing their lullabies
to the unborn bobbing
in amniotic nests. 

                 Swimmers,
swimming and brimming
with swimmers.

                 The sun
has barely risen, and
they have come
in hope...

Lifelong friends, 1953 and 2019

Just three months older, she’s known
me longer than I've known myself,

babes in bassinets, gabbling to each other
then...now we confide, readying for bed

nestled under the covers in a city
far from either of our homes.

“What are you reading?” she asks me.
"The English...

This has been a most difficult year for my cousin Mary.  For months she had taken so much time off from her job as a resource teacher in the Naples Public Schools to take her mother to doctor’s appointments.  When Aunt Martha’s condition required hospice, she spent many days on that transition.  Onc...

In Thailand freesias bloom in March,
just as they do thirteen thousand miles
from there on the corner of my street;
here I also find late-ripening tomatoes,
available for picking on my side
of my neighbor's fence.

Some travel to see wonders, ride
elephants and dhows.  But others of us
find our pleasure...

Wading through the shifting tide,
  the frothy foam, cold at his feet,
preening his plumage, preoccupied,
  the egret snubs me when we meet. 

What canniness and elegance,
  what guile and caginess I sense;
so fluid and aloof are we,
  the bird, the watcher and the sea.

Liz McFadzean

When darkness
and futility creep in
her efflorescence
pushes back,
a provocative allure
of tendril arms
reaching from
her pristine blush,
drawing towards
the mysterious beyond;
"come hither",
the siren sings.  She yawns,
expelling fragrant
breath so persuasively
that death shudders
in her presence.

Liz McFadzean