Each morning has stopped being the same
Though the dogs don’t pronounce this.
It’s something in the sound of the car
Responding to my touch, something
In the sleep left in my waking bones. Continue reading “Without”
Tag: life
A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.
“Son, do you know how love should be begun?”*
Moving backward was the name of the first collection
Of poetry I put together. I was fifteen, and I typed
The poems on half-sheets of paper and arranged them
Inside a full piece of typing paper. Thirty-five years Continue reading “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.”
Beasts of Burden, Part 218
Dolphins swim through the moon
Into the sky, sliding into stars
That want to be coral, at least
For a time. Mammals like humans
Dream of dolphins, shaping them
From paper clips and doodling them
Into a life beyond ocean and sky. Continue reading “Beasts of Burden, Part 218”
Massey Set the Bird Free
Massey set the bird free.
He knew its blueness
Longed for the blueness
Of sky, its glass fragility
The delicacy of dogwood, Continue reading “Massey Set the Bird Free”
In Dead Grass
In the field of dead Johnson grass,
The red-winged blackbird landed.
It swayed the desert-colored stalks
With its weight, then held its place.
Like a swollen tick plucked from a dog
Then dropped, it did not move.
From this distance, I could not see
What suspended it there, what attraction.
Eating the World, Part 2
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 “Eating the World, Part 2”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 