Consider the fullness, the halfness, the bare dented space on my ring finger as I hold the pint, the sun and the foam sliding down the insides of my glass. O regard the Great Pandemic! The maskers and the anti-vaxers, the moats we’ve dug around ourselves – it’s far from over, but nevertheless when I … More Behold This Pint of Oatmeal Cream Ale
Early evening sun/ Caught under the arches/ Words stuck in my throat
And they fall to earth in Northern Wisconsin – Pembine, Antigo, Lakewood – I know how they feel, wings coated with ice, heavy, so heavy the loons can’t lift them one more time and, realizing it is out of their hands, or rather, out of their wings, the only thing to do is pick a … More News Item: Loons’ Wings Ice Over
A few miles past that fucked-up intersection coming off of the Chicago Skyway – the toll booth, the gaping hole in the road, the circle left and then allemand right demanded by some depraved square dance caller – I-65 shakes off the big city and, like any good Midwesterner makes a good and straight line … More Untraveling
Leafless butler trees/ Serving up platters of sky/ Our bellies growling/
this blustery March afternoon I’m crossing what is still my back yard for a time drill in hand, a spile, a bright blue bag – 38 degrees, sandals skirting dried dog poop among brown leaves that fell, bright, the autumn before; the hole on the underside of the spile, yesterday confounded me but the sap … More Sap, Rising
Fall comes on too strong/ Branches up in summer’s skirt/ Before she thinks no/
I stand a moment in the space you left, while summer air curls through the windows wide – I, reconciling, make the empty bed, the sun lies on the laundered sheets and sighs; Your desk, your chest, your closet – clean and spare, these books have all been read, the records played – the things … More Leaving for College in a Year Marked by Plague Calls for a Sonnet
It’s after eight in the evening, and in this antique light, the Queen Anne’s Lace along the roads watches the sinking sun – hundreds of tatted blooms close up like praying hands, like thousands of empty teacups drained and set upon the sideboard of the day. In the morning they’ll open again to catch the … More That Summer of the Pandemic, It Was All Falling Apart, It was All Coming Together
When I pull onto Sunset Beach Road in the purple twilight, a couple is already standing entwined in front of their truck, tail lights pointed at Lake Michigan, peering into the western sky; I am not the only one who thought to watch from the bay. Do you see anything? they ask, without preamble, as … More Waiting for Comet Neowise
Halfway North 