Nancy Cavers Dougherty as Featured Poet for Village Poets Reading on May 23, 2021 via Zoom

YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/G4wxZ0DJ4uE

Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga are pleased to present Northern California poet, Nancy Cavers Dougherty as Featured Poet for the Monthly Poetry Reading on Zoom, held on Sunday, May 23, 2021 at 4:30 pm on Zoom. 

Please email Maja@moonrisepress.com and /or DMHSkiles@gmail.com if you would like to join us and receive the Zoom link. Two segments of open mic for poets (two poems each) will also be available, before and after the featured poet. Please, provide refreshments to yourself on your own. Alas, we still have to wait for the re-opening of the Bolton Hall Museum where we could provide our poetic guests with tasty treats. 

Nancy Cavers Dougherty, whose love of the creative arts goes back to her childhood in Massachusetts, is the author of three chapbooks Tape Recorder On, Memory In Salt, Levee Town and Silk, a collaborative work. Her poetry has appeared in Westview, The Pinch, the California Quarterly, I-70 Review, descant, Compass Rose, Big Scream, The Timberline Review, West Marin Review, Quiet Diamonds of The Orchard Street Press, and other journals. 

She holds a BA in history from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in public administration from Sonoma State University. She lives in Sebastopol, California where she has been an advocate for teen counseling services in the high schools and art-making in group settings. She is the proud mother of three and grandmother of two. 

Was a Turtle

     after Was a Man by Philip Booth

Home 

was 

parasol to sun

Whipped by spring winds

fragrant with love

and song 

blue jays and robins

Was citadel to grooving

down dirt of possibility

so what if grounded 

in scute-ness and angles

beneath Icarus shadow 

Was woman 

with tresses locked 

in turret 

of keratin 

a-moving past muck

glassy-eyed gaggle 

pond of stares 

and squawks

Dome of complacency 

this 

Home 

The Boy and Big Foot

The fable has it—the tracks

lead way back lead through

Norwegian Woods under bright day-night sky

echo-less starless like this night 

I close the book, and tuck him in

before the muffled steps of a full-grown Big Foot

will tread into his slumber—my young boy

dreaming his favorite cotton blankie 

clenched in mouth the darkness

of his night reflected in window an ant

crawls upon windowsill the Stephen Kings

await him on his parents’ bookshelves

secure among the volumes beyond, the stories

rustle among the eucalyptus

silver crescent of leaves stirring

his night imagination    in mighty excursions

I’d tip toe in and fold his blanket over and 

tug the one out gently, to leave by his hand