I have nearly 300 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia, Hong Kong to Canada. I often write on natural themes, showing our place within the grand scheme, based on my travels around the West.  Recently I have been responding to other odd prompts— stories of people and places. I'm a semi-retired English teacher in California, without a chapbook to my name. 

With age silence comes


not heavy but pale yellow
like drifting aspen leaves
shivering in the first breath
of cold frost on the peaks

a release of energy stored
all summer up on the passes
voices stilled now, echoes dying
at the head of dry canyons

where the streams fade
to mere stones, round and dusty 
before snow buries them for the winter,
the silence deeper in fall that

blankets the meadows entirely 
leaving the golden aspen to rustle, 
last splash of color in the setting
sun, last words before we draw closed.





Somewhere in Nevada


In the background the freeway
hums incessantly, unnoticed
until you drive for two days
back to dirt, sand and rock

a shaded canyon rising into airy
mountains, a pulse of boulders 
marking where alluvial floods 
pour down once a summer

dotted with palo verde
artemesia, jojoba, yellow
cactus flower cups open, hot 
air breath making the distant

peaks vague and unfocused— 
out here no freeways, no road 
or car disturb the heat waves,
out here the land no longer moves

and you lie under the white-blue sky 
in pure glaring silence 
a hawk drifting too high to catch
his piercing hunter's cry

autumn clouds three months
away, water deep underground
no machines, windmill, pump
to break the fragile stillness

day wanes, its orange light in the west,
time ends—you are lost and breathless
waiting for night, for dawn, for light again.