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.  

Outside South Vienna, Ohio


Twenty years
in an apartment
on a country road

not far from the interstate.
A steady monotonous flow
of unknown souls

eastbound westbound
passing each night
in cars and rigs

following one another
across the icy flats
like slow tracers

headlights passing
tail-lights leaving
24/7 the same sounds

hypnotizing the night.
Imagine these 
opposite processions

across a continent.
How many workers
in cities like

Detroit and Cleveland
the untold number 
of hours

of rawboned labor
to keep the line moving
from coast to coast?

A string of metal 
and humanity
carrying ruptured lives

of truckers and lovers
by the millions
bisecting

the dark landscape
a constant
carbon-burning murmur.

Each passing night
an accumulation of things
we can't quite get over.

-First appeared in Red Booth Review



Hunting the Hills of Champaign County


Up at Bill's Dad's place hunting rabbits,
the call of a crow echoes off tree-lined gullies.
The gurgling begins in the foothill springs
as I step in sticky muck in my rubber boots.

Pushing through an overgrown hog-lot
the snowy humps of weeds mix
with iron stained mud.

The steamy hearts of rabbits
sitting in the pale swampy thicket
imitate Buddha with a fearless faith
that only a boot in the ass could break,
hold tight to the ephemeral wind-blocked brush.

Something moves above my line of sight,
man or deer, as wind dies down
long enough to empty a bowl of dreams.

The field below the woods, wrecked by winter,
holds geese gathering between rows of snow,
stubs of cornstalks, and frozen clumps of dirt.

As light fades, I leave the dark hillside,
wrestle through the tangled growth.

Tree shapes morph into knees, legs
dark shoulders and elbows
and hunker down under a ransacked moon
dreaming of ancient rituals.

-First appeared in Danse Macabre



October Migration


The sounds of starlings
gathering in the trees
reaches a chaotic peak.

Like revolution in the square.
Like bloodshed in the city.
Like ambush in the fields.

The change in autumn's rhythms,
omen to the flocks, audience
to the crazed assembly
under gray clouds.

How can I be so calm here?
What are these sounds
this movement
this massive expulsion?

I have my head and my heart.
I am outrageously in love
with summer.  But winter
is my reluctant companion;

the one I trust,
the one that will always
come through in the end.

I see tiny droplets of water
gliding the distance of grass blades
and weeds.  It has begun to rain.

Thin, barely visible needles
of water, ordained as earth.
The clothesline sags,
neglected garden beans
shrivel in their pods.

-First appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review