Category Archives: Poetry

Looking at Light

In the last few years, objective circumstances have not been particularly joyful, and yet joy breaks through regardless. That is because joy has nothing to do with circumstance. Looking at Light Pain carves deep so the body might survive. Clear … Continue reading

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Driving at Night

My night vision is getting too poor to enjoy this form of meditation from the driver’s seat, but there is a special form of peace to be had running down a smooth empty highway in the middle of the night. … Continue reading

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Elders on Sunday

Somehow I never managed to share this poem from “Light Year” on Facebook or in this blog. I come back to it now because it is central to the themes of my work-in-progress, “The Other Village,” a volume of poetry … Continue reading

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Into High Country

During this time of seemingly non-stop bummers, of disease and unease, dreary with fear, a little drop of joy can feel like a revolutionary act. Into High Country When I head up into high country my doubtsstay back in the … Continue reading

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Universum

I have long used a hand-colored detail of the so-called Flammarion engraving as a visual identifier for my website and for my nascent publishing company, Liberty Street Books. But I have never before written an ekphrastic poem using the piece. … Continue reading

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Easter Rising

I’m a little behind the season with this. I kept going back to it, revising, revising revisions, dropping stanzas, rewriting the closing more than once. Now bluets, daffodils, and hyacinths are blooming too, in the churchyard and around the village. … Continue reading

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Dead Mailbox Daydream

It’s such a relief, when coming back to town after a couple days away, to find the house still atop the cellar hole, with no trees come through the roof or any evidence of fire damage, that it takes a … Continue reading

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As April Comes

The hinge of the season is an interesting time. Not the one, not the other, but blending both. Its own thing, really, were we not so ingrained in our dualisms. April only seems a cruel month if you have no … Continue reading

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New Year dreams of spring

In some ways my property looks like the aftermath of battle. Blow down, cut-down, deadfall, invasive species, overgrowth, old farm ruins. But snow covers many sins and cold weather gives the armchair general a perfect chance to game out his … Continue reading

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How Everything Didn’t Change

Terry called me just after the second tower fell. My first words to her were “We’re going to war.” And of course we did, several times over. The catchphrase was “Everything changed after 9/11.” But it all looked like business … Continue reading

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