One of my favorite memories from childhood was when our Mom made a treasure hunt for our birthday party (my sister Kelly and I share the same birthday—born same day a year apart). I remember particularly getting to the end of it and finding one of those wild-haired troll dolls in the wellhouse. Continue reading “Poem Caching”
Tag: life
A Reckoning
What happens to pine needles?
They get wise and smell strongly
Of no place you have ever been.
Where do daffodil petals go?
They rely on the wind and spread news
To the beetles and river rats. Continue reading “A Reckoning”
Everybody Needs Poetry
What the world needs is another book of poems, huh? Yeah, right. Actually, YES, RIGHT! What the world needs is people stepping out of their monkey-brains long enough to listen to poetry. It may surprise you with what it has to offer. And if you aren’t surprised, if you are a poet yourself, you know what you need to do? Read other people’s poetry. It will make you a better poet . . . and person. Continue reading “Everybody Needs Poetry”
The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
–T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
What to think of April? Is it the cruelest month? The “idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” as Millay called it? The time when the “shours soote” bathe “every veyne in swich licour” (the sweet showers bathe every plant vein in such liquid), as Chaucer spoke of? Well, it’s all of this and more with cummings’ goat-footed balloon-man whistling far and wee through the “puddle-wonderful” world. Continue reading “The Cruelest Month: Coming Attractions”
Holding Your Hand
We parked the truck and stepped out
Onto the road that used to be a highway
Of my childhood, winding through Mayes County
To the Grand River bluffs, where my mother
Said hobos made cave camps and where a train
Ran a solitary line amidst the blackjack
And sawbriar. I am holding your hand. Continue reading “Holding Your Hand”
I Beat Manuela
He kicked me in his sleep,
But when he woke up,
He said he was kicking a bad guy
Who was trying to get me.
I am always being chased
By bad guys in his dreams,
And he is always saving me. Continue reading “I Beat Manuela”