Poems & Other Lies
Blackberries
I am at the side of the trail, eating blackberries just as fast as I can pick them. They stain my fingers red and dissolve in my mouth, this one sweet, that one tart. Thorns tear at my forearms as I reach inside the briars to twist free another berry. The trick...
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Cheering the Storm
The evening sky goes gray, the smell of a summer storm hanging in the air the trees ripple in a wind pregnant with humidity night overwhelms evening, wrapping us in a blanket of darkness and the smell of ozone scorching ragged rips of lighting tear apart the black...
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August
brittle yellow grass brown dirt showing through desperate for rain
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Nightride
This piece first appeared August 2018 in Nr.39 of International Sidecar Traveller The sun has already set when I reach Lost Lake Road. I pass through Dee as the light fades away. The old school house looms at the corner, then it is gone. I turn south,...
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Brittle Bright
Very early morning, the sky like back lit plate glass. If a bird hit it just right it might shatter into glittering shards of yellow, orange, blue and pink, revealing the infinite beyond. Brittle Bright was originally published in vol 1, issue 2 of the Syzygy...
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D
Everybody dies Do not rush towards oblivion Pause here with me Let us keep each other company, linger just a while. Tomorrow or the next day, or even some time after that is soon enough.
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Improbable
This is the most improbable anniversary since this time last year. My darlin' wife has put up with me for nineteen years! I always love you, Amy, even when it seems like I am thinking only of myself. I am looking forward to the next couple of decades. ...
read moreMissed
His glossy flanks glisten in the morning sun. Sleek and shiny, well fed on corn, he runs along the fence line, moving faster than my finger on the trigger. I will see you again after work, Mr. Rat.
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TMI
If you don’t want to read a slightly vulgar complaint about the discomfiting realization that I am becoming an old man, stop right now. You are under no obligation.
read moreHarbinger
Swarms of beetles emerge from the receding snow banks on the first truly warm day. Sunbathing on the south wall, a mass of black bugs lined with red, their excrement stains the window trim. Some find their way inside the house where they crawl into my teacup or...
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The Rooster
In the darkness a rooster calls for the sun. His brothers repeat his insistent crowing, like echoes up and down the canyon. They will drag the day from beneath the eastern ridge by sheer force of will. Deep in the shadows, a lone frog applauds their efforts. The...
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Shorted
Shambling along, we stumble through our daily routine with the dead eyes of Daylight Savings Time
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Bark!
A single bark rings out, exploding like a gunshot, echoing off the laundry room walls. Walter wants out. Now. A short while later he will demand to come back in with a similar bark. The stars look like paint splattered across a deep blue drop cloth. They provide just...
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Fog
The fog moved through the trees and we moved through the fog. It was as impenetrable as a wall, as ephemeral as a ghost( a thought half formed? a memory not quite recalled?). We were boxed in; at times we could only see one hundred feet, sometimes we could see one...
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The Latency of Morning
It has been snowing for a week It snowed all last night It is snowing yet. My world, confined to what I can see, is a shapeless mass of amorphous heaps. A rumpled blanket hides the ground. Everything is pale and colorless. The paper birch, branches laced with snow,...
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