A Rose
byHow can you run about two minutes after you are born? Be a horse, then you can discover a valley, the taste of a…
Poetry
Summit, Elk Hills
byIn the distance, smeared by haze, thin snow from last week’s storm that seems to persist along the ridgeline will melt in a day…
Aldo Leopold’s Cabin
byjacked cider, giant saw teeth, bald eagles raking the sleepy Wisconsin River for risen fish, sandbars with ribbons of chocolate like a marble cake…
Snowbound
byI can’t walk far or drive away. I’m here, deep in snow. Still, I can follow the heart better than on a sunny day….
Tears
byForty years ago, I wrote I would sooner disgust you than ask for your compassion. My tears are barley water. I give you my…
Notices
byOnce an Irishman in his coffin had to be wrapped from foot to chin in English wool, not Irish linen. I saw this notice:…
To Alexander Fu on His Beginning and 13th Birthday
byCut from your mother, there was a first heartache, a loneliness before your first peek at the world, your mother’s hand was a comb…
Rutabaga
byYou darken as my knife slices blushing at what you become. I save your thick leaves and purple skin to feed the cows. A…
12. from The Heart Pine Imprecations
byPassion for scavengers cease for the sentinel perched on a high limb falls from its colloquy a black sheen sombers such collaud toward vanity…
Blessed Nicholas Steno
byThough noting with incredulity their employment in the harnessing of winds, Pliny the Elder in his treatise on Natural History could state with more…