I wanted baby’s breath, Queen Anne’s Lace
with its hairy stems and fern-like leaves.
I wanted a paisley carpet flung over verdant hills.
I wanted Father, Dad, Daddy.
I wanted him to send for me.
He didn’t expect to die so soon.
Yesterday turned brown and muddy.
The plane flew below a pale sun
circled by a halo of frost.
I flew into winter.
I flew into snow.
lives and writes in Southern California. In addition to her poetry collection, Forget the Moon, her work has appeared in ONTHEBUS, Spillway, Rattle, Calyx, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, Lummox, and Inlandia, as well as the anthologies 13 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers, and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art educator who earned her MFA at California State University, Fullerton.
