‘Round the ankles of the birches autumn water gathered, murky – winter held it down til frozen cradled gently in the hollows – skirts of ice surround the low limbs stopped mid-fling by frigid wind embroidered not in poodle, plaid, suspended there, upended, glad – wee peeping frogs, asleep, adorn a petticoat of moss and … More When They Finally Wake in April
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
Fall wind scatters flocks/ Birds and leaves, from branch to sky/ Have we stem, or wing?
Auld Jack Devine, as afternoon bows to the long shadows of a June evening, stands there, then, in the green and wet field, as they all are green and wet, appraising these Americans searching County Mayo for Jack Devine, clutching a damp ship’s manifest: Well. Aye. Ye found him. Auld Jack, eighty if a day, … More Irish Evening
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
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!
I. After we see paintings of the sea, and moonlight, and doom by Winslow Homer, after we work on income tax forms and insurance and eat carnitas burritos and watch Netflix, I don’t feel well, it’s not a bellyache or a hangover or a fever or something that CVS can fix. it’s like this existential … More Wes and Jesus Come up Empty
Soft lies the light on the fern in the wood; still lies the love that we had, that we could – Long creep the shadows among grass-green blades; grave is the tongue that once held faith – Slow arcs the moon across the cold, starry, sky; steady beats my heart ‘til I die, … More Lies the Light
The end of summer this year is like a personal assault like a slap from a wet leaf, the leaves fluttering down and the colors just turning and sun setting less and less far north and the mist on the river the acorns landing like a shot on the deck and the yellow school buses … More August
I am drunk on this new summer twilight, the world’s wash is golden-hued burdens liberally poured, and so I will roll in the fields where the corn is laid out in straight, sober lines, the light Creeping between them like water rising slow – I will lick the tree trunks and the underside of leaves … More One For the Road
Halfway North 