City Garden
The community garden where I grow tomatoes,
green peppers, zucchini, and gladiolas.
My little piece of heaven – twelve by twelve
what more could I ask … Read more
Nature
Under a Tree
High school sweethearts celebrating
56 years of marriage on a trip to DC.
to find their fate hiding under a tree
Traveling 803 miles from Janesville, WI
to explore the … Read more
O, Cool Water
the quencher of perpetual thirsts,
the extinguisher of sporadic wildfires,
the melter of wicked witches,
why besmirch your goodness
with outbursts that flood unwary towns
in a flash, turn docile … Read more
Man in Flames
The man has been
burned out of his
clothes, out of
the wheat field he
was trying to save
when the wind turned
the flames that outflanked
and overran him.… Read more
Songs of the Archipelagos
For Small Island, Big Song
They come from places you could easily forget,
somewhere between the Pacific and Indian
Oceans: islands where statues gaze at the horizon,
like when the … Read more
Anthropocene Suite
For Amitav Ghosh
1
Peel the pale, brown flesh
Hold the cracked shell to your ear:
Screams of the Banda
2
Escaping Earth’s hold,
Unmanned rockets race to claim
Living … Read more
In The Breeze
a swirl of ravenous winds,
pummeling down at high velocities
a trinket lost in the damage
a house, a home
more than a million and a half to count
tin … Read more
Pyrophytes
“Pyrophyte: Any plant that is resistant to fire,
or that needs fire to propagate.”—Wiktionary
This morning I’m breathing smoke
from forest fires two thousand miles away
and the people who … Read more
Dispatch from the West
It’s fire time again.
So far so good.
Fog in the mornings
Erases the trees.
Shafts of sunlight
Break up the mist,
All of it, … Read more
Old Growth
There is an emptiness to slender trees from which the layer of leaves
They’ve shed has only begun to melt into the undergrowth
Their youth … Read more
The Inheritance
Maybe it was in the genes Banneker inherited
from his ancestors, the Dogon, who, while the houses
of Lancaster and York ravaged the English countryside,
migrated to a southern bend … Read more
I Touched You Once
I touched you once
In a moment that came in the afternoon of a day
Almost 100,000 years ago
Your breath felt in the wind … Read more
The Little Visitors
She sings by the fire
Earthen floor swept clean
And hard-packed from years of feet
She cracks the shells and separates the meat
Years of toil have separated the woman… Read more
I Am The Master
The satin box of hubris exploded
covering farmlands with grey ash
Truth danced outside insolent ears
suffering from selective hearing
Why arrogance has a steel … Read more