‘In Need of Saying’
I am on a porch, captain/ of a green ocean. Wasps patrol / the boundary lands. In whispering winds, conversing / in high tulip poplars, I hear / poems from another tongue …
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‘TIME FOR A POEM, No. 1’
Do not deny the urge, do/ not let the chance for a poem/ pass you by. It’s OK, it’s wholesome / and nutritious, go ahead …
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‘Unfamous’
I decide to be famous / only to myself. It is / so much easier and my / tender, so lightly bruised / ego now thanks me for this / demilitarized zone …
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‘Something for Nothing’
I want to see / if it is possible / to be a nobody / from nowhere. / Creating something / out of nothing …
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‘The Cow Bell’
A great grief saddles me,/ rides down the pampas of / Virginia Dare Avenue, / until I am too tired / and we return home / together ...
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Essays
‘Mission Statement’
‘To scratch the page,/ to pick the scab, / to mix and match the phrases, / enter the lab and whip up potions, / address the sky with curses, praises, / annoy the authorities, cause commotions …’
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Poems
‘Earth Mother Lullaby’
Wrinkle-skinned earth mothers from / another decade, a far more interesting decade they profess, / nest live orchids in tangled-up hair, / black-cotton gloves rising past thin wrists ...
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‘GODS OF THE NIGHT: 15 Woodland Thoughts’
Here in the quiet provinces,/ Wars pass via headlines, worrying us/ Solid citizens even from this distance with/ their loud report./ We in the quiet country have the luxury of/ Worry, second cousin to fear ...
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Poems
‘10,000 Thunderstorms’
If I'm to be an insomniac, a fine thunderstorm is a welcome thing. To entertain. To relish and divert from mournful or misbegotten thought. I ponder getting up. Going to my front porch, storm-sitting perch.
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Poems
‘When Hay Bales Speak to You’
Let’s talk hay bales. I have, perhaps like you, been spying hay bales most all my life. Yet, in all that time haven’t met a hay bale. Up close. The other day, I had my chance.
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Essays
‘The Flavor of Grief’
I have been getting familiar lately with the flavor of grief. It comes on me with no warning. While driving up-river, to shelter-in-Nature. At 68 mph, passing a too-slow, white Chevy truck.
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Poems
‘Window No. 1’
One of my earliest, notable windows was in the basement bedroom I shared with brother Rick. It opened to the left, sliding open with a satisfying 'chonk!' Revealing the level grass of our backyard.
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A Dozen Ways to Look at Chicago, Illinois
I've always been intrigued by human beings whose lives are lived just below and sometimes at the level of the clouds. They surround us by the thousands, the tens of thousands. In blue rooms, staring at TVs in their skyboxes. Doing Downward Facing Dog, 2,000 feet above the sidewalk.
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‘My Paragraph & I’
'I want my paragraph to strut, carved cane in hand, the Left Bank, like a proper boulevardier. I want my paragraph to wow you. leave you wanting more. To, if possible, make you gasp. To make you—prose willing—cry. And then, to laugh. And then to laugh at your crying ...'
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