Born broken to a

mother who pushed her  

into a world wordless

with grief, sure her

father that she feared,

had mixed a dose

of poison in a

drink that he bade

her give the mother

that she adored who

drank it to the

last and died in

anguish on the night

that good night became

goodbye for ever more,

she was splinted with

popsicle sticks and grew,

walked, ran, but never

up or away from

the sorrow, but always

toward the salt-caked

embrace of this woman

who was never free

of guilt or ghost

that took turns with

their haunting of her

heart and soul and

those of her baby,

who nursed at the

breast of Lot’s wife.

©Dana Hughes 3.4.25

Now that we’ve learned that we’re

not who we thought, and the sirens

beckon us below despair’s depths

to live in the wreckage of other

sunken dreams, resigned to a diet

of salt and dark, we must remember

who we wish to be and kick back

to the surface to fill our lungs with

that which makes us float.

Hope will keep us buoyed.

When we can breathe, we’ll see

the others just below the waves who

need our hands to help them rise.

Who knows how long we’ll bob,

tethered with kindness and an

audacious certainty that it is

as one that we shall live? 

Hope will keep us buoyed.

© Dana Hughes 11.9.24

The four of us who birthed and raised the two of you,
who fed and rocked and clothed you in love,
watched you blossom like sunflowers pushing up
and away from the natal soil, heads filled
with bright purpose and hearts light with song,
your faces turned skyward until that day,
that divinely ordered day,
when you found the sun in the eyes of each other,
we who knew you first knew this was love
that is more than love, this is today and tomorrow
and all the everlasting that we here witness,
exulting in the promise that moves in
and through you like breath and blood,
and we claim for you blessings
of strength and tenderness,
determination and humor,
fortitude, companionship
and boundless joy,
knowing that from your first breath
you were growing toward this day,
when family and friends shout their AMEN
to the love you were made to share
from this sacred day to forevermore.

© Dana Hughes 9.28.24

Oh how I love that second cup of coffee

splashed in the cold puddle in my cup,

remnant of what I drank fast, burning my

tongue on the quick heat and hit of caffeine

meant to yank me up to what the day holds,

and then remember the hurry time is past,

when the babies filled my arms to bursting,

and pointless employment gnawed my soul

like mice on a wedge of molding cheese.

This cup is for slow sipping, holding the

warmth in my hand as I ponder the yarn

that wants knitting, the scraps that need

quilting, the chickens their feeding, and

the bees, oh the bees, making honey

in my heart, whose songs I’m only just

beginning to sing.

© Dana Hughes 8.27.24

On a hot day in the summer

you were one we went

to a pool in the exurbs where 

y’all splashed like tadpoles in the

shallows until both of you tired.

Dried, changed and seated in the stroller

you yawned along the bumpy ride

across the gravel lot.  

I took the wet things to the car,

and turned back to see three 

young boys approaching.

At six or seven they were itching

to prove their mettle to a baby 

and a four-year-old.

Out of their line of sight I saw 

their swagger and heard them

taunting your brother, who stood 

between them and you, his

chin and chest outthrust,

tight fists on hips, ready to take

on all three for your sake.

They scattered when I yelled, 

and your brother deflated like

swim floats with the valve opened.

We loaded and drove, and the two of you

slept hard all the way home.

Dana Hughes© 11.21.23

On the sill of the window

sat one of the squirrels

I’ve been feeding peanuts

to help them stay fat

in these days of deep snow.

I tapped on the glass,

and he looked at me,

pulling his hands to his chest–

a sign of curiosity–

asking if I noticed.

Then he turned his head

to point with his nose

to what he wished me to see:

the harbingers of Spring,

filling the cherry tree

with flashes of red

and giddy chirrups.

Robins. 

Together we sighed

and smiled.

©dana hughes 1.21.23

When first conceived, she attached to the lush flora of her mother’s womb

and the two cells she was divided and multiplied in an arithmetic wonder

of becoming.

From buds her fingers blossomed, and feet sprouted toes to tread the waters

in which she bobbed, tethered by a rope that delivered three squares a day

and then some.

She was not the first occupant of this inland sea; a sister who grew awry swam

there before and died when born, leaving the womb empty of all but the salt

of Mother’s tears.

Did the sharp tang on the waves of grief flavor her own growing so she emerged

a quiet survivor, every breath measured, each milestone a triumph in a story

not her own? 

Or was this the way things were meant to be, with one the herald preparing

the place for the fully-formed-other who would devote her life to the narrative

of ebb and flow?

© Dana Hughes 12.14.21

Pop enlisted as soon as he could,

itching like the fellas did back then

to get over there and show what

he was made of.  But WWII was done,

and at the base in San Diego he kept

his shoes shined, his chest out, and his

cap just right of center, at least in the

pictures he sent to his mother, who sighed.

He wanted to be like his brother who

never spoke of the Purple Heart or the

terror that preceded it, or the bile that

rose to the back of his throat to the end

of his days whenever a door slammed

or a car backfired. Without a war to prove

his mettle, he never was known as a veteran.

But he was ready, by God.  He was ready.   

We hung his PFC picture on the Honor

Wall at the retirement home, and he gave

us an earful on why he didn’t deserve a place

among the real soldiers, but it stayed there

‘til after the funeral, and I like to think that

on his good days, he might have looked at

that handsome man with the twinkling eyes

and smiled back, proud that he had tried.

©Dana Hughes 11.12.21

Memories rise like swamp gas from dank depths to burst at the surface and propel me to days forgotten.  Today’s blister holds the hamster that my sister, two years senior, convinced our parents we would care for after she’d seen a litter at a friend’s house. Ginger arrived in a small cage and drew blood when my sister put her hand inside.

Salve and a bandage were applied, plus Momma’s kisses, which I wanted badly enough to offer my finger for the swift bite that garnered no sympathy as I should have learned from my sister’s mistake, or so I was told.  Hamsters are not born tame, but we didn’t know that.  Nor did we know their life span was only two years. Our interest proved far less.

There were delighted weeks in which she napped in our shirt pockets and loaded her cheeks with sunflower seeds. But the novelty thinned, and the exercise wheel squeaked, and she was moved from our room to the garage, where not long after I found her dead. We said we’d take care of her, and we didn’t.  I didn’t.

Guilt bit hard like those tiny razor teeth, and burrowed deep into the warren of my heart, to birth litter after litter of small things I couldn’t save, not least of which the fetuses that slipped my uterine grasp.

It’s only after all these years that I remember I was 5; hardly a responsible age.

© Dana Hughes 10.26.21

When the ferruginous hawk took flight

from the prairie dog town mound with

talons wrapped round one of the locals,

his breakfast sank its teeth into his toe,

and with attention turned from a swift

lift above the highway,

he met his end on a windshield, fell

to the shoulder and released his prey,

which scurried home to tell the tale of

salvation by car, while the lifeless wings

of the hawk continued to rise and fall in

the slipstream moving past.

Dana Hughes © 9.22.21