Díos Mio, I’m bleeding. Got to move, out of sight.

Rainbow de Amor

• Someone’s amigo
• Someone’s son
• Someone’s novio
• Out having fun
• Someone’s hermano
• Someone’s wife
• Someone’s primo
• Enjoying life
• Dancing and singing
• Fill the room
• Until terror strikes
• With a thunderous boom
• Díos Mio — I’m bleeding
• Got to move, out of sight
• Ayudame — I’m dying
• Te piedad, tonight
• Forty nine persons
• Whom someone loved
• Reflected in a rainbow
• Shimmering above.

• — (Pulse Nightclub, Orlando, Florida, 6/12/16)

Midnight Trilogy

• One night
• I ran through fields of slumbering daffodils
• Pursued by packs of faceless raging wolves
• Falling in a ditch, I shook and shivered
• Desperately awaiting my fate so all alone

• Another night
• I flew far above the treetops
• Soaring through a still star-studded sky
• Feeling free, I reached the rim of heaven
• As I grabbed onto a snow-white angel’s wing

• Last night
• I rode the midnight train for hours
• Arriving at a golden concert hall
• Seated at a grand piano was Daddy
• Playing Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”

• I watched his fingers glide o’er the ivory keys
• Spell-bound by that once familiar tune
• My eyes filled with tears as
• I mouthed the words “I love you”
• Then the midnight train returned me to my room.

Just Sayin’

• Our daughter and her boys
• join us in Palm Desert
• just for the weekend.
• Grandsons nine, six, and four
• bring twelve guns —
• three “camo” squirt guns
• just for fun
• three water pump pistols
• just for the pool
• three bolt action toy rifles
• just for desert hike, and
• three Star Wars light sabers
• just because
• I bring classic Huck Finn
• just to give them a break
• The book is never opened
• Just sayin’

Nancy Foley earned her bachelor’s degree from University of Dayton. She and her husband moved to San Diego in 1982. After raising four children, Nancy enrolled in creative writing classes at SDSU. She has been a member of the SDCC Writers Workshop since 2007. Her prose and poetry appear in three anthologies: For the Love of Writing, A Volume of Voices, and Fruits and Fig Leaves. She also has a self-published collection, In Her Own Words. In 1997 Nancy started the Literature and Lunch Book Club. The seven original members will soon be celebrating 20 years together.