Toni Partington is a poet, editor, collage artist, life/career coach,
and grant writer. Her new book, Wind Wing, a collection of poems
dedicated to the women who transformed her life, will be available for
$10. Toni’s poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, Selected
Poems of the River Poets’ Society, The Cascade Journal, VoiceCatcher
(editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink.net and others. She is the author of a
poetry chapbook, Jesus Is A Gas (2009). She serves as an associate
editor on the collective of VoiceCatcher, an annual Pacific Northwest
anthology of women writers. Toni is a regular columnist for Writing
The Life Poetic, an online Zine that complements the print version of
the book by Sage Cohen, http://writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com.

Wind Wing

Sweet breeze
scented with orange blossoms in early summer
caress my face pressed against the
open wind-wing in her Impala.

These rides; a secret time to talk
while we forget she is crazy –
top down, headed home with drippy cones
her, strawberry
me, maple nut.

Just enough time to adjust the wind-wing
while the red leather seats grow warm
she lets me push buttons to find
the right song for our sing-along.

These are the times I remember now
in melancholy middle age –
her hair cut short, dyed blonde
shoulders tanned above the halter-top
while shorts sprout bare legs
down to bright red toenails.

I picture this as her departure from upstate New York
and Catholic School rules
when California set her free
and took her down.

I watched her ricochet between two worlds –
safe home or padded room
delicacies or dry-mouthed delirium
green lawns or barred doors
Sunday Mass or shock treatments

her sanity – barely or not at all.

I long for the Impala
it is easier than longing for her –
a drive along Victoria Avenue
lined with orange groves and old songs
while we drift between dark nights and darker days.

Her life, like the wind-wing
unlatched slowly, one inch at a time
till the wind arrives at high pitch.

Throw it wide open and watch everything fly away.