The Monkey Tree:
New and Selected Poems

Michele Heeney

Paperback:
Perfect bound, 67 pages, 5-1/2" x 8-1/2" 
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ISBN 978-1-484997413 
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Preview

After Love

My friend
Asked me
To her party.
I said I’d come
And bring
The cake.
She said, “No,
Bring forgiveness.”

My parents
Asked me
To their grave.
I said I’d come
And bring
Red roses.
They said, “No,
Just bring forgiveness.”

The Holy Spirit
Whispered that
He had a gift
For me.
I opened it,
Sank to my knees
And wept.
It was forgiveness.

Surely, after Love,
Forgiveness is
The Golden Gift



* * *

The Impolite, Always Right Monkey

Oh, no,
That monkey’s
Back again.

Throws banana peels
At village matrons
And would be suitors.
Laughs loudly
In genteel company.
Corrects people’s grammar
And long-held beliefs.
Butts into private conversations.

I tell that monkey,
“Keep this up and
There will be
No birthday cards for us this year.”

That monkey don’t care,
Keeps on butting in.

Finally he’s kaput.
Jumps off my back and
Out the window.

That crazy monkey.

About the Author

For many years, Michele Heeney’s life was centered around giving birth in the literal sense, as an obstetrics and gynecology nurse practitioner. But at the same time, her creativity in the more-personal sense also was flourishing: “I was always writing poetry and taking pictures.”

Now that the medical world has shifted into the past for her, the poetic and visual arts have leaped to the fore, producing images of striking beauty as well as her fourth book of poetry, The Polka Dot Chair, and this new edition of The Monkey Tree. And throughout this artistic journey, as both bodies of work powerfully declare, has run the unifying thread of Michele’s deep love for nature.

After working as an RN in western Pennsylvania, where she was born and raised, she found her vision opened up to a changing world by the energy of San Francisco and the ’60s. California became her new home, with an expanded career as an OB/GYN nurse practitioner. What followed was a time of rewarding work in both professional and human terms, first for Planned Parenthood and later for a county hospital serving a large population of Mexican farm workers.

“I would drive through the fields near Salinas and see my patients there,” Michele says. “It was extremely interesting. I loved it. I felt I touched people.”

In addition to the personal closeness her job brought during this time, nature filled her life at home—a 6,000-acre ranch at the north end of the Big Sur wilderness where she was caretaker for the regional park district that operated it.

These are the links that informed her work, and travel over the years completed the chain. West Africa with the Peace Corps, learning Spanish in Costa Rica, scuba diving in Fiji and Micronesia—just a few of the many places whose experiences merge today to feed Michele’s imagination and gift for lyric imagery.

The areas she focuses on are concerns never far from any of our minds. And Michele’s vivid words and thoughts bring us the gift of a unique new perspective on these eternal themes.

About The Monkey Tree

Visit Michele Heeney’s take on recurring themes of obsession, oppression, love, pain, loss and one’s own nagging self in the verse and photography of The Monkey Tree. Humor, sor­row, introspection, anger and wonder access the extraordinary and mundane in Heeney’s exploration of emotion—the monkey on everyone’s back. Varied perspectives and bemused detachment reflect Buddhist philosophy while moderating the primacy of the human ego. The reader observes and participates in this slender volume.