New book coming April 28 – Along The Way ~ Poems for the Wayward. Pre-order link: Wayward. Available anywhere books are sold beginning April 28, 2023. “A stunning collection that embraces both the sensuality and the profound meaning of small moments.”  –Kirkus Reviews ..read more

Click here to purchase. All sales benefit One Tree Planted and the Rainforest Alliance ..read more

Greetings, all. This is just to say…(William Carlos Williams pun intended) that I now have a poetry PODCAST available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It’s called… Why Am I Telling You This? (Not to be confused with the Bill Clinton podcast of the same name.) If you enjoy reading some of what I post here, you might want to give it a listen. “Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” – Gary Snyder ..read more

Could have been most anything really – there        are innumerable ways for things to get dicey. Is the red line of tetanus tiptoeing toward your heart? Maybe       a golf ball is sailing your way. Could be a bone hiding in your hurried lunch, something electrical        near the shower, stitches unraveling   while driving in the fast lane,        a tumor swelling in the inner sanctum of the skull, unexpected crossfire, something        in ..read more

It’s the middle of January, what are you doing here? I ask this of both myself and the geese as I rise to the shallows of dreaming and break the surface. Oh, right, they’re Canadian. This is south for them, and my own reasons are not so simple. It is a lonesome sound, their squawking, though not one of them travels alone. Their voices make a chorus of notes both crowded and sparse. Orchestrated, yet in disarray. I cannot decide if it is classical or experimental. I cannot determine if it is four clarinets and two oboes,   or several windows being polished by the hands of six window w ..read more

You’ve lived here for time out of mind, between u and w, given of yourself, yet been grievously overlooked toward the back of the line, fifth-to-last, always in twenty-second place. Without you there could be no love, no forgiveness, no reverie. No vertigo, velvet, voodoo. Verse, violin, viticulture. No need for vaccinations, because – imagine! – no viruses, no variants. You give us adventure, the dove with the olive branch, improvement, vulnerability, revolution. You are not to be underestimated, not to be confused with u, who lacks vitality and never comes to the point. You bring vision to t ..read more

May you ever walk in kindness be it a walk of haste or of leisure, peace I leave with you. If you find gold may you throw it back, peace I leave with you. May your hands be ever generous, may your words be ever gentle, peace I leave with you. May you make your heart a home, and so never be homeless, peace I leave with you. May you make peace with yourself, and so always know peace, peace I leave with you ..read more

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Reluctance to leave the envelope of bed, reluctance. But the whirring and humming, revving of the mind (faithful engine, reliable horse) harasses the body into obedience, and for good reason. There is wood to cut, snow to shovel, ice to melt, water to boil, pots to be washed, plans to be drawn, ragged roads to salt and plow. There are the needs of children, the old, the sick, the animals we keep, the ceaseless demands of the things of man, waiting, all waiting for the poet to pocket his notebook, waiting out the idling of dreamers, the sinning of saints. But then there is this winter morning ..read more

If I were a plant, I might arrive at silence and stillness a little more gracefully.  I might meditate with greater success. If I were a plant, I think you would find that – impossible as it seems – I am both an annual and a perennial.  Both evergreen and deciduous, succulent and garden flower, creeping fig and marigold. A plant thinks, “where is the light and heat, there is the light and heat, here are my roots, if water comes I shall drink what I can.” An animal thinks, “my belly is empty, my belly is full, this is my place, this is not my place, these are my children, I have no ch ..read more