I am originally from Springfield, Ohio, and currently live in London, Ohio. I write poetry to make sense of the world and my place in it.  I have been fortunate to have my work accepted for publication in several print and online magazines.  

A Break in the Weather


The sun begins to melt the snow
along a fringe of fields,
uncovers the gray-grassed farms
rigged with silos and propane tanks.

Sheep bleat stupidly.  Clumps
of frozen turf are exposed
across the muddy white pastures.

It's an irksome game
this land is fond of playing
toward the end of winter.

Somehow,
the scene seems staged.

The dead tree stump in the yard.

The white brick farmhouse
transformed to rubble.

The arthritic barn behind.





At the Pond


From the tailgate of a pickup truck
cross-hairs scope knotted bark
clumps of clover in shaded knolls of the meadow
and red-winged blackbirds that dart
from cattail to cattail
rooted in the shallow end of a dream.

My dream
the mud-built volcanoes of crawdads
on the pond shore, banked by a hill of tall grass
and galaxies of bursting dandelions
topped on the ridge by three deer
reciting the poetry of lost paths
crops and shrubs, of wet insects
asphalt and the voices of trees.





Preparing for Winter
 
 
Soon, pumpkins will gather
in patches under the moon
 
The unharvested beans 
are scorched and yellow.
 
Tiny red berries
remain on the thorny bush.
 
The icy glide of the hawk scanning.
 
There is no sadness
where the grasshoppers squat.
They will die.
 
Experience tells me that
the winter will be long and dark.
 
A stream trickles
below a brown clog
of old leaves and branches
left by the last storm.
Rocks make their tiny moves.
 
And the shaded lavender horizon
fades with the graying hills
as a new, colder world begins.