The air both warm and cool on my legs, early morning in the high mountains, in the summer in Yosemite. Currents of cold that have nothing to do with shade. I walk under the oaks towards more oaks filtering sunlight, gauzy gold cloth wafting down between the tough little leaves. Oaks are everywhere I look, dark glossy green leaves like wet turtle shells, a cloud of leaves above bark and boughs, showing how trees are supposed to look. The ranger told us that deer eat the acorns. Stretching ahead of me, ladders of light. Light floating down, illuminating the dust I’ve stirred up. The Yosemite smell is from man-za-NEE-ta. The ranger said. Light like the light I will see later from stained glass in a cathedral. What am I doing out here, five years old and lost? Yesterday I sat on a pony. This morning, I woke up before everyone else and went out to find the ponies. I had a map in my head, but this sudden wilderness isn’t matching. And no one else is around. Nothing to do but keep on walking, just keep going until I can tell someone, maybe a ranger. If I’d known how, I would have said, Hey, you gotta trust someone.
is a retired clinical psychologist, former German major and restaurant reviewer, and a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have received Special Merit and Honorable Mention recognition in the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial contest from judges Marge Piercy (2016) and B. H. Fairchild (2013).
Karen’s first complete sentence was, “Look at the moon!” Her work in fairy tales and dream interpretation, and her obsession with Kafka and flirtation with Buber, have led her inevitably to prose poems. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Comstock Poetry Review, B O D Y, CHEST, Rappahannock Poetry Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Spillway. She is the author of a full-length collection, The Book of Knots and Their Untying (Kelsay Books, 2016), and three chapbooks from Kattywompus Press: Burrowing Song (2013), Eggs Satori (2014), and Kafka’s Cat (2019).
The poet shared her life with her late husband for 34 years, which were not enough. The Beautiful Leaves, a collection of poetry about his illness, death of cancer in 2018, and her grief, was released by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2023. She co-curates Fourth Sundays, a poetry series in Claremont, California.
