Ali, Ginsberg, and the Syd Lea Shuffle
SamplerThough not quite ordinary, snow at Halloween is far from unheard-of in our part of upper New England, and was no surprise at all some five decades back. Mercifully, it had held off on the locally designated trick-or-treat night. I remember how…
Pathetic Fallacy
SamplerCoyotes had yanked her entrails out,
doe’s wounds still bleeding, their kill that fresh.
Her upcast eye lay open,
and not yet dimmed, invited him
to whisper fire, birth, spirit.
He was certain he could conjure more,
though…
Mud Season Miscellany
SamplerI saw a man with a little boy in a backpack.
As he walked along he sang some nonsense song.
Though half-asleep, the child still seemed to smile.
The world’s disasters, I know, are here to stay.
Some farmers’ fields lie bleached…
Colors
SamplerIts coat showy against the snow,
a fox sat unmoving, head cocked
like RCA’s old Jack Russell dog,
looking up at the lowest limb
of a cottonwood, where some pale thing swung.
I stood deep in the brush,…
Hush
SamplerDoes it make any sense to say I heard dead silence? No matter. I’ll simply declare that I’ve never known such quiet in the sixty years I’ve roamed these woods and hills. I was sitting on a stump beside a frozen bog, an old man who needed…
Old Beech, Old Friend
SamplerLate afternoon, the crows still at gossip
in the pock-trunked beech uphill.
The tree, having nurtured bears and birds
for decades, will have to go.
My oldest friend is also failing:
addledness and illness.
He was always tough as proverbial…