Elizabeth J. Coleman

Elizabeth J. Coleman is an attorney and President of the Beatrice R. and Joseph A. Coleman Foundation for Environmental and Social Justice. She is a longtime friend and supporter of NRDC who visited San Ignacio in 2000. Elizabeth's poems have appeared in, among others, Connecticut Review, "J", Per Contra, and Blueline. A collection, The Saint of Lost Things, was published in 2009 by Word Temple Press of Santa Rosa, CA.

I was pretty excited about kissing a whale (hadn’t done that before, haven't done it since), and the experience
made it into a poem I wrote (though rather obliquely):

Guardian of Unimportant Things

A Buddhist monk
wanders from town to town
begging for alms:

philodendron's shadow,
long-ago glimpse of coquelicots,
whale kissed in Baja, Mexico.

Stars shine on the bay--ships are still.
A woman by a window combs her hair.
She delivered the broken mirrors, ran away.

--Elizabeth J. Coleman

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