Skip to content

Benchmarks

Lenore Weiss

Lenore Weiss

Memory Believes Before Knowing Remembers
–William Faulkner

Walk past wild radish and California golden poppies,
beyond a pond lined in cattails and home to mallards,
continue down a slope, an easy jog,
a stretch of buckeye trees, the spring’s white candelabra,
bay live oak and laurel undulate like dancers
in a scrim of sunlight, journey to the first bench
near purple periwinkles where an oak tree
became my husband.

Raised myself, ambled past
brambles of blackberry, past poison hemlock,
the canyon shaded in sword ferns
and stinging nettles, a tale of a girl
who gathered plants from graveyards
to help swan-changed brothers,
stayed at the second bench until a lover flew south.

A hummingbird called me back to myself,
now rest at the third bench, can almost see the hill
where in a dream I found
a chorus of iris smudged with faces—
This bench is memorialized to the Jalquin people,
one of the Ohlone that used to call the area home,
surrounded by orange and yellow monkey flowers,
purple thistle, almost there.

Links to My Work

[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”1″

 

3 thoughts on “Benchmarks”

  1. Hi Lenore,
    Beth here. Josh, we miss you in Louisiana; wish you would come back.
    Lona is on your list and she had forwarded two of your writings to me…nice, nice.
    Of course, I loved the one about Louisiana – -b/c I am still here, I guess.
    Tomorrow is our little writers group; there are six of us who meet twice a month and
    take turns at each others house. We each read the new papers we have written. (I am
    wondering if Lona has already told you all this.) A
    Anyway, the point is we like you and wish you were here and you are STILL doing
    GOOD writing.
    Big hugs from Monroe
    Beth

    1. Hi Beth:

      So good to hear from you. Enrolled in an MFA program at San Francisco State University and substitute teaching. Won an award at the school last semester for best novel in progress(!), which is based in Louisiana, Arkansas. Hope to get back in the not too distant future. Hugs and all my best. / Lenore

    2. Hello to the writers group. I remember all of you and your stories. Great that you are supporting each other’s writing. Keep in touch!

Comments are closed.