Frances A. Cota

Frances Cota is the President of the Kern River Valley Poets and Writers Club. She moved to California from her home in Minnesota in 1956 and resided in the Los Angeles area until she retired to Bodfish, California in 1987.

As the mother of eight children, grandmother to twenty lively grandchildren and great grandmother to six more, she leads an exciting and adventuresome life.

In addition to all that 'mothering' she spent sixteen years as an employee with the City of Los Angeles, serving as a Deputy City Clerk and retiring as an Administrative Assistant with the Los Angeles Police Department.

In addition to her writing career, she loves crafts, bowling, and playing cards.

She has been published in all eight issues of Reflections Of The Kern, has had some of her work published in the Guidepost Magazine, and has published her own book of poetry entitled Indigo. She is now working on her second novel and manages a new poem or two nearly every month. She plans to publish a book of short stories and personal essays in the near future. A busy person??? You bet!

INDIGO

In her favorite chair she sat alone
with balls of colored yarn
inching up to gnarled fingers
from a basket on the floor.
The clutter of the room around her
spoke of busy hands, so seldom still,
a life of making do,
and not much more.
There was little to speak of riches
in that poor place.
Still light and color flooded
her existence. Bright eyes
watched her knit, and happy faces
smiled down from every wall,
and they sat in gilded frames on every
open space and down a narrow hall.

Sometimes she spoke to them
and in her mind they answered back.
The needles in her wrinkled hands
poised on the last stitch,
and her face held a puzzled frown,
as if she was not quite satisfied
with the project she was working on;
an afghan made in rainbow colored rows.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet;
the spectrum arched across her lap
from the first row toward the end.
She worked with violet now
and was nearly done.
Those rheumy eyes would never see the violet row.
Her heart's last beat was indigo.

By Frances A. Cota

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