The park forty years later is still green half the year,
and empty, though its emptiness courses
from indifference rather than vandalism, created
by children no longer running barefoot down a hill.
I had to pass the bully’s house on the way
to the park. The house was patched together
with plywood and the weeds hid snipers
with slingshots and rocks big as my kneecaps. Continue reading
In the rusted brown Chevy truck,
You explore the back roads of my childhood
With me, the creeks chilling my youth,
The ditch where I fell over on my bike
After a day in the sun. I lay there
In the poison ivy shade of scrub oaks
Until my head stopped spinning, Continue reading
for Lea, 9-9-1962 to 8-30-2012
It is late October, and a red rose bush
Is blooming on the south side of her house,
In that best place for the light. I remember
How she could draw a flower
When we were in high school, a few
Simple strokes and strange beauty appeared. Continue reading
for Luann
The stump of the locust tree roared
When its body fell away from it
In the April wind before the land
Clocked its beat into her, the roar
Evident in the toothy spears of bark
Stalagmited from its edge, the hollow
Of age rifled by coon, snake and beetle. Continue reading
for Roxann on her birthday
“Open you mouth,”
She said to sister Kelly,
Sitting in the high chair,
Smelling those mashed turnips,
Knowing none of that
Was getting in. Continue reading
At 5:17, the coyotes end their run,
their cries circling in on each other,
a haunting cyclone of sound you never forget.
Sometimes the world you outgrew
reclaims you, surrounding you in its ever-ness.
Keep coming.
Keep coming closer.
If you have left anything behind,
you don’t need it.
If the darkness threatens to drown you,
remember what is there.
–Shaun Perkins
The boys running the bases like rabbits
scurry to far-off places, not moving
toward targets—just moving. Montie Jean
recalls the ballgames she played as a child
in the dusty pasture where milo died
early. She can’t believe she was ever
as small as these kids. One sits on the bench
crying. Another has smeared snot and dirt
up the side of his face and into his hair. Continue reading
Scribbled affection
dusted in bone-ash blowback
paneful messages
gazing in
Attic exhibit
Defensively tucked away
Eight panes
Eight years
– Tony Lee Orr
You hold the prints of my terrier dog Socks, the dog of my son’s childhood who died after the ice storm of 2007. You held her prints for a week after she was gone. I still remember walking by them when I went around the house. They were in the dark place where the sun doesn’t reach beneath the southern edge of the carport. You didn’t take her, but I will always remember when she left because of that path you kept after she was gone. You are a season for imprints. Continue reading 
Doesn't she look like she is memorizing poetry?
I have about twenty poems in my head, speeches from Hamlet and Macbeth, a couple of the Bard’s sonnets, a few by Frost, a few Dickinsons, Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” (the first free verse poem I memorized), Joy Harjo’s “Remember,” Auden, Shelley, pieces of “Ulysses,” and various others, including a few of my own. Continue reading
