Recently Published Poems

“Wednesday Twilight” at Stirring: A Literary Collection
“Perspective” at South85 Journal
“The One About the Birthday Party” at Front Porch Review (page 32)
“The Outlander and the Radio” at Black Moon Magazine (page 12)
“A Purloin of Bluebirds” at Redheaded Stepchild Literary Magazine
“Wondering Just For Today” at Amethyst Magazine
“Upon Reading that Annie Oakley Kept a Flower Garden outside Her Tent While Working with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” at Hamilton Stone Review


And Then One Day She Lost Poetry
 
Oh, not like the eyeglasses or keys
that mysteriously meander  
their way into the freezer
 
or the running shoe
puppy-chomped and spit-soggy
wedged under the bed
 
More like the sun-speckled trout
snapping filament, flipping tail,
and racing for open waters
 
the last parking meter coin
slithering from hand and rolling
toward the muck-mawed sewer grates
 
a country wet with promise
suddenly hung out to dry
like some red-blotched wash of negativity
 
She didn’t notice when poetry left
just one morning her tongue thickened
lifeless as mossed quarry stone
 
The clouds were no help
no castle or dragon shapes anywhere
only vague fuzz linting the horizon 
 
Even the sun seemed to taunt her
disappearing like a plump-winked eye
a ripe cherry bitten by birds
 
She leaves the windows open now
just in case a moony night
coughs up a shooting star or comet
 
Some random spore rangy and wild                               that might catch in the lacy blue curtains
or land on her idle tongue
and give it ease

                                                            (From Reckless Pilgrims)

Fantasy
 
            After Georgia O'Keefe's
                      Calla Lily Turned Away 1923
 
She is too good for you.  The best boarding schools have instilled their breeding.  See the slim posture.  Years of walking with a book on her head, sipping tea, ignoring the cream puffs.  She is at her peak and she knows it.  Possibly there is a doctor in her future, country clubs, a good divorce lawyer.  Compose songs for her, romantic odes.  She will smile.  But never glance your way.
 
 
                                                                (From What She Sees)

Prayer for the Old Things  
                                        
Blessed be my well-thumbed Thesaurus
Its missing Index of x, y, and z
Random pages tea splattered and ink assaulted
What hours spent on the hunt for the perfect word
Like a bloodhound snuffling quarry  
Blessed also my metal strainer
Handles dearly departed to some scrap heap
Dented and waffle-faced apparatus  
A lifetime of sieving enough spaghetti
To feed all of Italy  
Blessings to my alarm clock
Second hand laying dead on the bottom
Like a discarded silver toothpick
Alarm now just a lover’s whisper
Nibbling my sleepy ear  
And blessed be this spent body
Knees like a rusty gate
Mind a sputtering choke engine
Frayed and graying relic
The ruins of some once-great society  
May we find value in what we are
Not in what we lack
May we, like the sun, wake and give light
Flaring our colors wildly
Before we tuck into darkness  
 

                                    (From Restless Pilgrims)

Mantra at 2 a.m.
 
It’s a familiar tale my father spins of my birth
How my mother, full of me, shed her water
In the gut of night
The claw of blizzard
 
How my father, proud new car owner,
Lurched and wallowed that shiny Plymouth
Over desolate, ice-studded roads
Toward the distant hospital
 
How one final skid into a vast snowdrift
Stalled their labored journey
Cutting heat and power
Safe but stranded in that arctic anarchy
 
How he sheltered his overcoat around us
And dashed down the bitter streets
Howling for any compassionate soul
Awake and willing his creationed quest
 
How in the gust and swirling dark
Greedy with snow and waiting
My mother sang us someplace warm
She sang us someplace brave
 
 


                   (From The Shepherds of Tenth Avenue)
“I sate a while upon my last summers seat the mossy stone--William unemployed beside me, & the space between where Coleridge has so often lain.” (Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals)
 
“C [Coleridge] had a sweet day for his ride -- every sight & every sound reminded me of him dear dear fellow . . . .O how many, many reasons have I to be anxious for him.” (Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals)
 
                                      
Coleridge
 
Attached by earth and art,
inspired word and heaven’s soul,
he stayed always close,
just down the road,
visiting your parlor,
savoring time in nature,
his wife and children
seeming a lesser connection
than the Wordsworth bond,
a man who declared you
three shared a single soul.
He thought you “exquisite.”
You bosomed his letters
though (after William) he
was to be your second torment.
He was a depth you could not reach,
the giddy laugh of a brook
that tickled across your feet.
 
Did you ever gaze with longing
at that classic face?
Did he ever touch your cheek?
Brush the hair from your brow?
Stir the poet in you?
Were you content with
the grass as your wedding bed?
River’s voice your cherished vows?
His absence your fluttering heart?


                                                                (From Dorothy's Glasses)