Nancy Foley: of Valentines and vampires

Heart of Gold

• It is only with the heart that we can see rightly.
• What is essential is invisible to the eye. – Saint-Exupery

• Get to the heart of the matter
• The eternal cry of a wife, mother, woman
• Whose heart
• Throbs when her husband brings roses
• Feels the pain of her baby’s bloody nose
• Melts from her daughter’s sweet kisses
• Races when her son scores a goal
• Beats like a drum when he misses curfew
• Pounds while waiting news from the hospital
• Breaks for the neighbor suffering chemo
• Hardens after a friend’s betrayal, but
• Forgives the friend over and over again
• Pours out with help for the homeless
• Works overtime – dilating, contracting
• Suffers sudden pain, heart attack
• Stops in the end due to blockage
• Rests as loved ones, with heavy hearts,
• Celebrate her heart of gold.

• Super Species
• We hang around stagnant streams
• floating like drunken tadpoles.
• You call us weak, wobbly
• thin-legged lightweights.
• Our time has come.

• From tundra to tropics
• freshwater to marsh
• in ponds or puddles
• we dodge danger
• Cluster like clouds.

• Torrential rain
• rising sea levels
• global warming has
• expanded our breeding grounds
• Move over Covid-19.

• Despite fragile wings, slim stature
• our virus-armed cadets
• wipe out scores of humans
• with toxic host-to-host bites.
• We want your blood.

• Vampire weapons make us
• the most dangerous predator on the planet
• causing millions of deaths each year.
• We are the Super Species – Mosquito Power
• Our rallying cry – Climate Change!

Nancy Foley earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Dayton. She and her husband moved from Indianapolis to San Diego in 1982. After raising four children, Nancy enrolled in creative writing classes at SDSU. She has been a member of the San Diego Community College Writer’s Workshop since 2007. Her poetry appears in the 2019 San Diego Poetry Annual, 2018 Escondido Municipal Gallery Poetry/Art Summation, and in four anthologies: For the Love of Writing, A Volume of Voices, Fruit & Fig Leaves, and The Stories Start Here as well as a self-published collection In Her Own Words. She was the featured poet in both the 10/06/16 and the 5/10/18 issues of the San Diego Reader’s Rhyme & Verse section. On 2/5/17 Nancy was the guest poet at the monthly gathering of Poets Inland North City, SD. Her nine grandchildren provide ample material for her essays and poems.