Ithacan Lament: A Verse Response to Nolan’s “Odyssey”
Awake, and reenchant our drug-dulled hearts, sweet muse; The West is washed away and cast upon a shore Where twisters of the truth conspire to abuse Your…
First Words of an Infant Bird
Rise, my little wings, so others can sing How they saw me flying out of this tree. Right now, as I look up at the sky I…
The Future
This is the ninth year of regret. Luminous decay. Still thinking small — Cinnamon. Feet. Horses. Pink lobes. Graves of silence on bones sing, not All children…
Purple Martins
Return now, with your weightless arabesques. Let your sharp silhouettes pen a cursive script of poetry across a cobalt page of sky. Throw your weightless wonder upon…
It Falls To Fools
Oh, what is better than the burden of being wise being lifted? The wise have their answers– And their sorrows. It falls to we fools to dance…
The humming
It was not a night to remember, rather, a night to forget. Late autumn, my German Shepherd and I in a farm cottage on the far reaches…
The Forest
We found a fallen path in failing light Twilight deepening to a fragile night And searching saw the ash, well grown As wandered long amidst the ancient…
The Back Fence, 4 PM
The shadow of the feeder dangles slant from today’s gold dwindling scaffold. Winged jots record, on radiant boards, birds fanning and declining to the feeder. Smoke suspended…
CPR Training
The nurse had hair the color of a healing bruise and arms hard from pressing plastic breastbones. On real people, when you do this, you should hear…
Decoration Day
Mockingbirds sing in this rural Southern graveyard where you now lie amidst engraved stones, some broken, some legible though weathered cryptic by rain, drought, cold, spring and…
Pentecost in Dust
The Galilean Druid knelt And stuck his fingers in the dust. The crowd that clamored all around Had no effect at all on him. Though every eye…
Kid on a Scooter
1 There’s a kid, a teenage boy, who - As far as I can see, and I’ve seen him Nearly every time I’ve driven past the place…
Being Itself
Being itself, boundless beyond all form Without any essence, soundless speaks Across the chaos of the raging waves Bringing every being out of nothing. Beauty itself, incomprehensible…
In the Piazza of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
Now I begin Semper incipiens, To sit and drink my wine Beneath this obelisk, the son of pride. Nor mind nor will incline To know how I…
Glass Stained
High rafters, vaulted ceiling, Light streaming through the wall, Beaming inside through angels, From outside where gargoyles crawl. Falling on the baptismal font, A shimmer is thereby…