The Solstice Moon

The moon became a spotlight
in the outer sky.

I saw the singer flooded
with light as the stage

spun round and round. It
coifed its light to shine

its radiant smile. Then a
tap dancer appeared with

her cane and top hat & I
could hear the sound of

her shoes tapping and see
the smile in her eyes.

Mr. Moon you are kind
to me I settle under

your smile the way the ballerina
lifts her legs in releve as

her toes press forward Mr
Moon You are too good to

me as I dream and see the
pianist at the keys. He

plays the sonata and reaches
for all the relief. He

feels the ivory on his warm
finger and they are cool

and smooth as he strikes
and strokes. You are risen

Mr. Moon your little spot
so bright as I look

out my window on the big
jet plane. We are heading

North to London for you are
on my right side and

your music gleams your
shirt so sure and clean

Each elbow rests gently
as the little girl lies belly

flat on the gleaming white
spotlight and tells her

story of growing old before
her time. She rests

her head on her hand
and moves her knees

to the side enveloped in the
warmth of your shine.

She sleeps tonight knowing
she is protected by your

ribbon white. Over
the Atlantic Ocean you

nod your precipice rising
as you do each night

or early day. You chat at
me your eyes full of

heart. I use to take your
hand when I was a

little girl and have you bless
me to sleep that night.

It is the language and the culture of an upstate mind-set that invades my art. I am from the North Country which has been populated by French, English, Irish and Native American. I contain all of the parts. For me watching the language that developed from this over-lapping area of much discontent and inter-marriage has been the edge I write from. As much as I watched the people that inhabited those certain hills, it was the beauty of the natural world around me in the farms, open fields, pines, stone fences and the Salmon River that turned up just about everywhere in its journey. It was also the poverty that abounded but never a poverty of food because the land provided. I always, most of the time, felt rich and learned to make do with little other then sustenance of good food. People worked in the local dress factory, slipper factory or at Alcoa or Reynolds if they didn’t farm. My father was lucky in that he was a local 106 Operating Engineer and worked on many of the Big Eisenhower projects: The St Lawrence Seaway, The Plattsburg Air Force Base and the New major highway Rt 87--the Northway. But since poverty was so instilled into him, he also kept a junk yard, a towing business and grew and raised most of our own food. This solid foundation of place is what I write about and how easily or uneasily, at times, I have fit into it.

Place is most important to me in all my work: theatre, dance and poetry. When I feel deeply place inside myself, I can tell you a story about it. I am lucky to still be from a town with a rich history and culture. It contains a certain rhythm of language, conversation, gesture. It is the nuances of the language, the stops and starts, the humor mostly back-handed or of the Irish gallows humor.

From this palette of colors, I tell of experiencing the world I grew up in, or the world I found in my adolescence and my twenties, of the world I inhabit now as a wife and mother and the world I have created as an artist.