Yellow sourgrass
nodding on the windblown bluff
a thousand yeses.
First published in Plumtree Tavern, August 2015
Wind, playing across
sun-rippled crystal water—
but still the foghorn.
First published in Plumtree Tavern, August 2015
Look close, tiny seeds.
Even in Autumn’s gnawed bone,
nature is patient.
Not all berries drop
in their season. Even now,
still, we are laden.
Against the sky, we
string black wires; the Earth, blacktop.
And yet: Mushrooms. Clouds.
Like a talmudic scholar
Bent over the book of my face,
The critical theory of when I clap
The epistemology of a smile
The analytics of every snarl
A slowly unrolling scroll of the future
She will take away a diploma in me
Either way
Fallen apples
dry grasses
and one yard’s
defiant sprinkler
poised like a spider
atop a lush green egg sac, quivering
in a web of late august yellows
almost autumn browns
while the rest of us worry
our lips over drought
it becomes a little rebellion
to pour water back into the earth
I hope that I will have learned many more things
how to tie knots perhaps how to grieve
properly to put away the pleasure
of quick anger or give my desire
a bit of a break But if nothing
else it may even be enough
to have earned the wisdom
to finally write
short poems
What common sense tells me to be true.
Things that are hard, sharp and noisy.
What I can only see, hear and feel.
What I cannot see, hear and feel.
Whatever brings me pleasure.
Whatever relieves my pain.
The values that raised me.
What I will profit from.
The values of others.
What is self evident.
The order of things.
What comes easily.
Revealed truths.
Congratulations.
What I think.
Beginnings.
My senses.
Complexity.
The future.
Promises.
Simplicity.
Cynicism.
Certitude.
The past.
Outrage.
Justice.
Sanity.
Love.
Quiet.
Doubt.
Wonder.
Endings.
Gratitude.
Simplicity.
Complexity.
Uncertainty.
Compassion.
This moment.
And now this one.
What I didn't know.
The sound of birds.
What I still don't know.
Peel away one strip
then the next—this is the most
we can ask of life
First published in The MIndful Word, February 2016