Irruption
SamplerAt dawn today, the fog still slept on the river.
The sun of a seemingly endless, Hadean heat wave
had not yet broken through, so I drove to the launch
for a paddle. Green herons, smart as sentries, patrolled
one bank. A beaver sculled beside…
What Smart People Think
SamplerTo begin with, let me quote a bit from something written for George Jones in the 1990s by Nashville veterans Randy Boudreaux, Sam Hogin, and Kim Williams:
I started drinking and actin' crazy
Way back in sixty five
Mama would pray and say,…
Reckoning
SamplerLet us not take it for granted that
life exists more fully in what is
commonly thought big than in
what is commonly thought small.
-Virginia Woolf, "The Common Reader"
Once, on the steps of a cabin in wild Montana,
just before dawn I…
Compunction
SamplerDecades back, and darkness falling.
Puddles of dew had assembled themselves
In a doomed but vivid community
Across the field we gazed at below.
The puddles winked and sassed at the sun,
Half drowned behind the hill by now.
Phoebus, the…
Free Couch
SamplerI can brood on things, such as why it's always the poor who fashion slapdash signs saying Free, then stacktheir detritus outdoors.
Who'd want it? I wonder, as I pass a certain house.I know the people who live in there. Hell no -I don't know…