Poems!

Where At All Other Times, They Riot  (2017-2018)

I walk through snow and woods to see

Trees collapsed in each other’s branches,

Held aloft by a notch or twig.

One has snapped in two,

Its splintered shards rising like

Pikes and steeples;

The trunk bent over

Like a gate, or a bridge.

To me, it looks forbidding.

But the dog wades out,  

Through nettle and thistle,

To the bridge of the broken tree.

She will return, covered in thorns.

It will take me an hour to pluck them.

Some trees land hard;

Others are caught up in another’s embrace,

As if it had been waiting

For that moment all along.

So much happens where I walk,

Peacefully, among trees,

Where, at all other times,

They riot.

Deep Winter (2012)

Deep winter.

Fatigue, unaccountable loneliness.

Other people flee to warm climates

Joyful, hopeful,

Sustained by anticipation.

And though this winter has been mild,

(I think I’ve shoveled twice)

I see nothing to photograph:

A bare oak in a field,

Vacant nests among branches;

A red-tailed hawk perched on a wire

scanning the ground for a meal. 

It’s Tuesday.

Valentine’s Day.

I feel a sense of loss

And the beginning of the flu.

Tired, unsentimental,

Memory does not serve.

A bench in winter, covered by snow:

Unwelcoming. Solitary.

My thoughts, far from God,

Run cold.