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…
Partners & Pardners
SamplerIn the pre-op room, my wife was given
a scalene block for a brief procedure.
She had shoulder surgery three months back,
and now again they’ll anesthetize her
to break up scars that have kept her in pain.
She’ll be comatose, however…
2019
SamplerSome are apt to swoon over nature,
loving what they call harmony.
But Tennyson got it right on whoever
Trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law,
saying Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.
The…
My Tribe & I
SamplerIn a characteristically compelling essay called “Grub: A Man in the Market,”1 Garret Keizer briefly muses on his distaste for upper New England farmers’ markets. He concedes that those institutions appeal to what his wife Kathy calls “our…