Poem: Thesmophoria

I cry, I cry — the women are wailing the mysteries despoiled by blood and pain. Soteira, Brimo, Praxidike — may ash of the burning field renew the blessed earth, may justice turn the graves to wheat fields and orchards and dancing grounds. The Mothers were the ones who set the laws although children who […]

Poem: Time's a wastin'

We spend time like pennies that are now unmade: scattering for the lucky to find, or the careless, or the poor. Dropped the light on the floor. It muted, extinguished, felt my way back to bed and vowed to recollect it come dawn — charity of free illumination. Time drips and splatters, a faulty pipe […]

Poem: Snowy Sunday

Like light — these bits of sky floating their seed-heads cold as winter tears. A touch and then their asterick fades to clear, a drop swelling and descending. Too warm and nothing sticks, we are insubstantial– a temporary wetland. Anyway I let that silent hum lull me to nap, gave up all my responsibilities and […]

Poem: Henwen

She comes — white horse, white sow, a cow with red ears. The white deer you follow through the misted wood until a hood slips over the path and hides it fast. Clear the leaves and the bones are revealed. She comes with the hum of your pulse your galloping heart the panting breath almost […]

Poem: I don't want to know what tomorrow will bring

Summer’s breath whispers its promises on the south wind. But I yearn for stoppage: an endless dawn, a bird frozen mid-flight over buds that have yet to awaken. Each sorrow unfists a petal and thorn, a possibility too soon becomes tragedy. Better the doldrum air, pink as a storm-harbinger never fulfilled. Even the starving fields […]

Poem: March rain

River down — the rain stealing light, swelling the passage and licking the bridge. We melt, the hard crystals dissolving into mud and swirl, everything eddying and lost. In like a lion: lions are strutting, slaughtering the lambs in boats and in fields. The rain falls hardest in the cities, sharp knifed, comet-bright with that […]

Dream Poem: Crack shot

Night gloom, the day’s carnival ended — prizes won and lost, the raucous shouts, goldfish in a bag. We’re graduating now, I hear, or you are — I’m a sheepdog, a herder, a tending hand. My dreams say I’m a crack shot, slaying the slayers with calm-eyed efficiency. And I swim the dirty waters of […]

Poem: This time again

Ebbs the ice amid the chattering birds the glacier churning to mud and wetland gold reeds humming in a south wind. Time moves in its slither and hop, time tells stories that span seasons and years, long ages. We are convinced it’s always the last chapter but new sparrows announce the coda. New frogs hatch […]

Poem: Amadán

Aching my wings, the spring underneath them pushing blue to blue, lifting with the song — even when it’s all gone wrong, the white rose enrapturing my attention, the dog dogging in its worried way — then I fly. or I plummet, anchor and stone dead weight alone — you’d like that as recompense or […]

Poem: Respectable

Love is never respectable. Love haunts gutters and waste places, sifts the rubbish from memories, finds delight in puddles. It vines among weed trees and scrabbly thorns. Love has a fruit few dare sample, full of seeds and pith, a touch of bitterness that deepens the flavor with complication. Love builds a tent in a […]