Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
What do you notice in winter stillness?
Does the stillness allow you to be still,
Also? Or does it make you want to move
In ways that keep you from noticing?
The honeysuckle vines are disappearing
From the fence rows, the wild rose bushes
Rooted out like kudzu by backhoes
Trained to pasture and emptiness. Continue reading “Aware of Birds Missing”
I am looking at you through a window
I work to keep open, through the world
At 50, and I’m seeing a landscape
I had not anticipated, a life waving
In this still image from the abandoned garage Continue reading “Abandon”
“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.”
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.
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 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.
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 