Relative Distance

Red Wolf Journal (Online) January 2023

RWJ Winter/Spring Anthology (Online) March 2023

Red Wolf Editions (Online Author’s Collection; Visitations) – March 2023

I suppose I’ll be up late again tonight,
with the white high full moon
in the cold, almost-springtime sky
banging on the windowsill
screaming to be let in,
and you so far away.

I suppose that in two months’ time
the grass will have greened
and I will lie again in your arms,
having forgotten completely
the shadows of these midnight clouds
racing across the deadleaf lawn. 

Tonight, though,
it’s late and I’m awake,
thinking of you
staring up at the same silent moon
                   a quarter million miles away.

 

As It Should Be

Red Wolf Journal (online) January 2023

RWJ Winter/Spring Anthology (Online) March 2023

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) – March 2023

This morning’s forecast

requires no translation.

There is nothing unintelligible

about the sunshine, nothing

open to interpretation, nothing

equivocal.  No. 

                          This morning

the lawn—if brown can be a lawn,

if a lawn is a mat of last year’s leaves—

this morning, then, at long last

is finally and totally frost-free,

no snow left anywhere, just a

slowly warming too-long cold

and the promise of a soon Spring.

 

 

 

  

Rust, Pepper

Red Wolf Journal (Online) January 2023

RWJ Winter/Spring Anthology (Online) March 2023

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

Red Wolf Journal   (Online Leaflet)  March 2024

It’s hard, living here, not to
want to be a tender poet, not to
wax poetic and rhapsodic when I
step out onto the deck at dawn
as the last tendrils of fog fade,
the first birdsong of the day
rising, a delicate prelude; hard
not to give in, not to write
about wispy cloud and fragile
early leaf unfurling in early Spring. 

But I’m not like that. No.
Morning’s birdsong is for nerds.
Not for me the silver sunrise; rust is
where I really live. Give me instead
the mid-afternoon call of ravenous
crows, swooping down on carrion. 

I can tell you this much:
faced with a panful of fresh-caught
trout, I’ll choose the coarse-ground
pepper every time, leave the lilt of
saffron for some other kind of poet.

I Heard Voices

 Red Wolf Journal (Online) January 2023

RWJ Winter/Spring Anthology (Online) March 2023

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

I heard voices
on the long highway home from Sutton
and I missed you when the sun went down.

I heard voices in the dashboard, singing.
I turned up the volume and I missed you.
I thought about Graffiti Overpass
thirty years ago in Stafford Springs:
“Love conquers all,” it said; “The strong will endure.”

I heard voices on the rise near Coventry
and I missed you when the sun went down.
As the darkness rose around me
I thought about you, that night in Forest Park,
the darkest rose in the garden,
and the long highway home, alone.