
Sharon Lopez Mooney
Poet & Interfaith Chaplain


A Selection of Published Poems to Read -Click title below
if there's no underline, poem is only scheduled for publication
1980's
2020
So many ways to lose your heart
Stepping into 5 am, San Carlos
My folks had private morning rituals
La Bahia summer sits on my writing
2020 (continued)
2021
Dying from a different kind of arid
Father, was the cost too high?
It's time to let go, mother tree
Dying of a different kind of arid
Somewhere days are being counted
Momma, Max Factor & The Catholic Church
2022
His heart cries as he tries to....
I am our family elder
Where the light gets in
if mountain were a poem
Ballad of my daddy
Prisoner of war at home
Sometimes you just keep going
Love song to a moving target
Let's listen
I've got skin in the game
amazing power of a haircut
Northern California fire season
Writing History
I never wrote poetry as a youngster. I grew up in a mildly diverse ethnic working class community where the closest I got to literature of any kind was the 'Reader's Digest' condensed versions of books. Once I got to Catholic boarding high school, my greater education began, but still I did not write my own poems. Even in college the thought never came to me to write poetry.
In 1975 when my young family and I moved to the West Marin County California small community, Point Reyes Station, I did start writing with the inspiration of the community of writers who met at the used bookstore we owned. The store and book collection had developed a literary reputation even before we took it over, and we continue to build it. It was in that writer's group, which morphed into a group that lasted for twelve years, where I learned to write and edit poetry.
In 1978 I received a California Arts Council Grant to establish a rural poetry series; also over those years I co-published a small regional arts anthology; was a co-owner of an alternative literature service; and produced poetry readings and performances, all the while as I was mother and life partner to a wonderful photographer, and was known to be a political activist. That was the beginning of my writing career.
I've been seriously writing since 1978. Now, I am a crone writing in an uncommonly common voice of age and experience about people’s stories, death, aging, and witnessing our culture, while I put shoulder to the wheel of change and hope, with all I write. I retired from Interfaith Chaplaincy in the End of Life field, and live in Sonora, Mexico, and visit my thriving family in northern California. Over the decade my poems have been published in a variety of journals and publications, check above to read those published poems.
Only poems that have been published are included on this website. On the poem page is the publication date and where it was published. The links that are live (underlined) are poems that are available to read, but the non-underlined pieces are waiting the publishing dates.
Publications
Fallow Dee
The MacGuffin
Muddy River Poetry Review
The Voices Project
The Avalon Literary Review
Adelaid International Magazine
Galway Review
Ginosko Literary Review
California Quarterly
Sybil Journal
Poetic Medicine
Door is a Jar
Glassworks Magazine
Publications
The Ricochet
RoundTable Literary Jouranl
Hags on Fire
NewVerse News
Visible
Writing in a Woman's Voice
Evening Street Review
Unlikely Stories Mark V
The Mindful Word
Smokey Blue Literary & Arts Magazine
Field Guide Poetry Magazine
Soul-Lit
Anthologies:
Cold Lake Anthology
CALYX: Women and Aging
Songs to the Sun
Poetry is a Mountain
The Wide Open Sky
Words are Power
Smoke & Myrrors (UK)
Revealing Everything Anthology