Flowery Wasteland
Mind is blue, tattooed with floral etchings. Copper wire rib cage, coiled around bone. Dust and sunlight on the wall, seems you were never quite as tall…
When I Met the Wolf: A Poem
I skied beneath the light of the moon through forest and clearing my dog ahead startling rabbits and partridge to flight— to our mutual delight— Mars piercing…
Winter Solstice: A Poem
I am sixty-six years old, there is no cure for that. Another winter solstice observed and waved off, the days are brief, and icy. Meister Eckhart, I…
Happiness: A Poem
The movies that really hit the spot have ironic, downbeat, equivocal endings. Happiness’s grand illusion is always just out of reach: Garance dwindles into the crowd; Rick…
Dusk of Fall in Two Frames: A Poem
Under ash-colored clouds the peaks of hardwoods going bald tremble like a hopeless remnant clinging to old, exhausted scalps. Watching the vault of heav’n the crowns of…
The Monologue of Lazarus: A Poem
Do not wonder why I am pale and ashen Do ask me if I have seen a ghost. I do not want to tell you: I have…
Remembrance
Burial The still, calm silence of the morning Breaks into hammering – hard, Sharp and ringing – metal on metal: Somewhere in a neighbouring garden I guess…
Mary Magdalene: A Poem
And when the fits were on me I wanted to abandon myself, strike my foot on a new mountain, sacrifice my voice. In me, the bride led…
At Twilight: A Poem
Nobody will come, nothing will change, The day will continue to drag its hours Through dusk, evening, then the night: The cold will intensify, lodge in flesh,…
The Shovel & the Song: A Poem
Chinquapin fields yielded more than just rows Of okra, cotton, or tobacco leaves Seventy years ago. A boy with hands Borne to work like shovel and spade…
The lecture: A Poem
I’m counting down the lectures I’ll never give again. Last week it was “Christabel,” Coleridge’s weird Gothic fragment. Did he really have a thing about lesbian sex?…
From Duncliffe Wood
1 We lie now in absolute stillness: I see this hollow of the wood, These trees, as if they were Joined with us - we with them…
Liberalism: A Poem
I retreat, yet I never quite escape. Hellish hounds, so familiar with our scent, Exhaust us till our very soul is spent, Then drink the spoils of…
In Isaiah’s Sandals: A Poem
Thus spake the herald: Look upon this holy hill; Where the sun spills over ever so brighter, Where waters leap over rock like flying buttresses Where the…