Old Leather Suitcase and Me: A Fable
SamplerI found this suitcase slumped in a dark attic corner
like a drunk awash in self- pity. I was Me once.
There’s a burn mark beside one latch. I tell myself,
with a bit of wonder, Me used to smoke in those days.
Indeed– and drink.…
Why Poetry?
SamplerThe following essay is from my forthcoming collection, The Music of What Happens, a compendium of newspaper articles I wrote as Vermont Poet Laureat (2011-2015):
People have often asked me, of course, why I chose poetry as my principal vocation.…
The Singin’ Rage
SamplerFats and Little Richard would come to our rescue,
but before they did I ached for Patti Page,
“The Singin’ Rage,” as the radio deejays dubbed her.
I remember loving “How Much Is that Doggie in the Window?”
And “Mockingbird Hill”–…
Fantasies in’56
SamplerHank Nicci worked as the gas pump man
at Greville’s Sunoco all that summer.
He had a heart like a Valentine,
but softball-sized, tattooed on a shoulder.
It said Mom. What else would it say in those times?
His bleach-blond girlfriend…
The Rural Sublime
Sampler...the only sensible impression left is, "I am nothing!"
–Coleridge
Farmwives conjure elaborate quilts.
Woodworkers busy themselves at their stations.
No shortage at all of craftspeople here,
but however deft these artisans,…
Assumptions and Cullings
SamplerI sometimes come on headstones in backwoods graveyards
girt by their own shallow graves the size of bathtubs
and by brush, through which each one juts valiantly upward.
Lately, whenever I take to my local river,
small cavities in either…