Hawksbill Crag By gravel road we rise four miles into Ozark bluff. Our truck hugs the slant of timber line thin as a pencil streak. At Hawksbill Crag, we tramp thousands of feet above shaggy pine and the thumb of Jehovah. I clutch a walking stick, while you slide to the edge of the bluff […]
Li Po
A poem about being a poet, based on Li Po and how he knew “the tea bushes flush with leaves, / sweet scent rising / from snow-petaled earth…”
Resort
Resort When the Baker Hotel died, no one ordered an autopsy or called the local mortician. They just left the carcass at the crossroads where it fell, bulging brickwalls, gouged eyes, empty sockets jagg’d with glass. On coffee break, the local doc doesn’t wonder if he could save her. Guilt dies without memory so don’t […]
Do the shells
“Do the shells still hear the sea…” asks this poem about loss, memory, and being.
Papa is the sky
Papa is the sky
Mama is the air…
Eve’s Second Garden
Eve’s Second Garden Filled with succulents and spines that scratch her legs and break off inside, so Adam has to pinch her skin, then suck and bite the sliver, his teeth the only tweezers yet invented. Nothing requires much water. Five months drought each winter turns prickly pears brilliant purple before they die. Yucca shade […]
Petit à Petit L’Oiseau Fait Son Nid
“I used to dream of living in a garden,” starts this richly colorful sestina about love and wishes.
Father’s Day
The tree house he built, the smell of a grass fire’s smoke and vanilla, and camping. It’s Father’s Day in this poem about memories.
