Peace Postcards

Blue Dream

The eight-foot blue couch

with rows of art deco crowns

on every bit of damask

has seen me through

fifteen years of solitude.

The old cat sleeping

in a fur hat on one end of it

sculpted its arms to tatters

in her youth, arms

soothed with saris

to conceal her work.

The blue dream floats.

Cat, coffee, poetry

I can make myself busy, I can make myself

tense, but why? Hold onto poetry, at least

these first morning hours. Cat, coffee,

poetry to start the day. Read. Write.

Draw. Breathe. Take recycling, compost,

trash to the alley, do the dishes, bathe.

Sweep a floor or two. Go back to the poems,

read some more, wool-gather. Go for a walk.

Later in the day I can let the world in,

call my congresswoman or a senator,

read and watch the news.

Stinky Little Beings

A form of peace, not only when

magical beings appear in the forest,

antlers glistening, but in simple things

at home. The pale orange cat

sits up in her cat bed blinking sleepily,

children yell in the hall – not cherubim,

just ordinary stinky little beings

running toward the future.

Penelope Moffet lived in Orange County from 1968 to 1982. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses, and her poems appear in many journals, including Calyx, Eclectica and ONE ART. Anthologies in which her poems have appeared include What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest; Women in a Golden State; I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing; California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology and Notes of Light and Dark: Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes. Her next book will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026.