South Beach Florida
Photo by Barbara Mattio

“Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements; while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while some
where a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does.”
—–Susan Griffin

“Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.” —Marge Piercy

Photo by Barbara Mattio

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked the wind
roaring and whinpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm. —-Marge Piercy

June Rose
Photo by Barbara Mattio

“Neighbors, the old woman who knows you
turns over in me
and I wake up
another country. There’s no more
north and south
Asleep, we pass through one another
like blowing snow,
all of us
all. —Native American,Linda Hogan

The Miracle of the one single flower. Photo by Barbara Mattio

“So you’re God
Tell me I’m straw, chaff, mist.

Tell me the sea has springs
deep and cold as dreams
that make me wake exhausted.

Enough thunder
What have you done
with my children?” ——Betsy Sholl

Greenhouse at Niagara Falls, Canada; Photo by Barbara Mattio

“God is fed up
All the oceans she gave us
All the fields
All the acres of steep seedful forests
and we did what
Invented the Great Chain of Being and the chain saw
Invented sin.” —-George Ella Lyon

“Gerber Daisy” – Acrylic Paint on Stretched Canvas
Painting by Barbara Mattio