Pelted By Flowers – Poems

Kali Lightfoot has worked as a teacher, a wilderness ranger in Washington state, an executive at Road Scholar, and has retired from her position as founding Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Poetry South, and Split Rock Review. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

• ICousin Margaret’s Friend, 1955PicnicPuberty, 1956Because earth is tilted 23½ degreesAt SeventeenPaterfamilias George Gary (1867–1926)Brain TumorA Study in ConsequencePetit MalThe Day BeforeThe Day After We Heard the ResultsPaula, Dying of Huntington’sIIJazz HandsFirst Day in the Wilderness Area, Mount Adams, WashingtonWilderness RangerGotchen Creek Guard Cabin, 3 a.m.Clement Powell Butte, Grand Canyon, September 3, 1872Mountain DharmaIn Service to the ForestIIIKyotoShoulder SeasonVoice of SolitudeDonkey Riding on LesvosWilmington, North CarolinaNinety DegreesHaibun—Salt Marsh at Sandy NeckCape Cod MeanderLate AutumnIVCareer ChangeMysteryAt Roslindale StationFamily CourtThree SealsReading a Lesbian Romance Novel on the Train to SalemOn the Bench above Spring Point Light, Portland, MaineMy Affair with Alicia KeysWintryVIcarus Takes a Window SeatDear New York TimesIf 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 WorldTreadmill . . . with PoetryRequiemMelting Polar Ice CapsStar StuffNotes on the PoemsAcknowledgements

“Pelted by Flowers, the debut collection by poet Kali Lightfoot, is a wide-reaching portrait of a life in the world, touching on personal memory and identity without shying away from nature, society, or even the philosophical. . . . [The collection] takes the reader with deceptive ease through time, space, themes, even the personal and the external of the poet's 'much worried, much loved life.'”