Full Description
Kali Lightfoot's kindergarten teacher told her parents that Kali had "a well-developed sense of beauty and can skip with both feet." This proved prophetic for a life that has included a number of careers and passions—Lightfoot has earned a master's degree in physical education, worked as an executive and a teacher, served as a wilderness ranger, managed educational travel, and provided body-oriented psychotherapy. After gaining her sobriety and coming out as queer, Lightfoot returned to poetry at the age of sixty-five, earning her MFA at age seventy. In a debut collection of poems that favor a narrative style but also experiment successfully with poetic forms, Lightfoot writes in a voice that is by turns wistful, comedic, and grave. After a long career, she has come late and happily to a life in poetry.
Contents
I
Cousin Margaret's Friend, 1955
Picnic
Puberty, 1956
Because earth is tilted 23½ degrees
At Seventeen
Paterfamilias
George Gary (1867-1926)
Brain Tumor
A Study in Consequence
Petit Mal
The Day Before
The Day After We Heard the Results
Paula, Dying of Huntington's
II
Jazz Hands
First Day in the Wilderness Area, Mount Adams, Washington
Wilderness Ranger
Gotchen Creek Guard Cabin, 3 a.m.
Clement Powell Butte, Grand Canyon, September 3, 1872
Mountain Dharma
In Service to the Forest
III
Kyoto
Shoulder Season
Voice of Solitude
Donkey Riding on Lesvos
Wilmington, North Carolina
Ninety Degrees
Haibun—Salt Marsh at Sandy Neck
Cape Cod Meander
Late Autumn
IV
Career Change
Mystery
At Roslindale Station
Family Court
Three Seals
Reading a Lesbian Romance Novel on the Train to Salem
On the Bench above Spring Point Light, Portland, Maine
My Affair with Alicia Keys
Wintry
V
Icarus Takes a Window Seat
Dear New York Times
If any man or woeman be a witch, (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit,) They shall be put to death.
Queer Nobility
(1944- )
I Tune in News of the World
Treadmill . . . with Poetry
Requiem
Melting Polar Ice Caps
Star Stuff
Notes on the Poems
Acknowledgements
