Places – Page 3 – Halfway North

The Nest (Or, a Father Considers the Odds of Raising Successful Small-Mouth Bass Offspring)

June 24, 2019

That afternoon at the cabin we sat by the river after I had cut up those small trees that you dropped at my feet with the tractor – (an offering, a challenge, one that I tore through haphazardly with the new chainsaw, black and yellow like a drunken, terrible bumblebee). It was quiet after all … More The Nest (Or, a Father Considers the Odds of Raising Successful Small-Mouth Bass Offspring)

Vire-en-Champagne, April 1919

February 18, 2019

Two months shy of a century ago, it’s been raining in France, great sheets snapping like sodden flags across the farmer’s field – And my grandfather’s father, a child of German immigrants, sits down in soldier’s boots, and looking at the crops with a farmer’s eye, writes a few lines to his brother in Barnesville, … More Vire-en-Champagne, April 1919

Crivitz Piggly Wiggly Philosophy

June 3, 2018

It’s a Thursday in May after five when I swing into the Piggly Wiggly with two bikes on the back of my SUV, and the dog inside; The woman slicing my deli ham struggles with the wrapper on the summer sausage, limps like her hip is bad, too; she paces, trapped behind the glass cage; … More Crivitz Piggly Wiggly Philosophy

Ask For Me Tomorrow And You Shall Find Me a Grave Man!

May 30, 2018

So Mercutio cried – and before and since and ever, the years start over in darkness, the face of the earth turned away from the sun; The calendar is a ragged thread of a winter sweater snagged on a fencepost nail; it’s a ball of yarn spooling out into the future, bouncing across the kempt … More Ask For Me Tomorrow And You Shall Find Me a Grave Man!

Night on Shakey Lakes, -17°F

January 28, 2018

Tonight we sleep above the ice, (cocooned like mousies in sleeping bags) under an impossible number of January stars, (brilliant like only winter stars can be, Orion hunting alone) over the lake, and the fish in the lake, (swimming slowly in the iced water capped by sixteen inches of ice) in this bitter cold, (as … More Night on Shakey Lakes, -17°F

Wee Thing

December 10, 2017

While waiting for the Percoset to kick in, and the Spinal to bid goodbye, (thus far I can tense the muscles in my right thigh, only), so I can walk, and pee, and get home, and while trying to breathe out in a hiss through the cramping of my missing womb, (though to be clear … More Wee Thing

Drifting

November 25, 2017

Either it comes to you Or you go to it; nevertheless You meet. Highway 139 weaves southward after your day of skiing; a newly teenaged girl watches a screen in the back, playing a movie meant for her younger self – the older brother left behind at the friends’ cabin, the eldest sister in a … More Drifting

Inheritance

July 4, 2017

Maybe he’s driving the Jeep through the Vietnamese jungle strewn with tents and men trying to dry their socks and men trying to get the cigarette to light and men trying to tune in the radio signal and men trying to find the words to write a letter and trying most of all not to … More Inheritance

Black Horses Wet

July 4, 2017

And shining in the green field As though they are just-painted models In someone’s miniature world, Set just So as We fly down 577 while Sun and rain leapfrog over each other, Empty houses, fallow fields, A woman pulling weeds In a rectangular patch Reclaimed from the wild, Destined for the wild In 40 years … More Black Horses Wet

Dog Walkers in Manhattan Beach

February 27, 2017

Up, as the sun stretches lazily across the unmade bed of the Midwest and taps the Pacific shore, rousting the shore birds, up before they planned, before coffee, before mirror, up before their war paint and fences, they come out with leashes, wrinkled pajama pants, and flip flops that softly slap and whisper sleepy recognition … More Dog Walkers in Manhattan Beach

Halfway North

Meet You Halfway – Ordinary Poetry

Category: Places