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. 

                                                                                   photograph by Emily Strauss

—from The Alfalfa Chronicles: in which we take an imaginary drive around the West to visit some small towns and rural areas. We have looked at roads, dying towns, people, the desert. We have studied the land itself, vast spaces of dirt, hills, dust, and peaks, and some of the stories therein. Now let us return to the alfalfa.



Through the Fence


Through the fence the fat deer
look alert, nervous of the dogs
the rancher sets on them at dusk

running them up to the dry hills
away from the lush alfalfa, watered
in circles, the deer a nuisance, a pest

that nibble the new buds, sweet green.
They stand tense, ready to sprint 
twitching under their shoulders, and I

enter now, silent watcher as they thread
the weeds, raise their heads, eye me 
carefully, will I shoot, will I rush them 

back to the brown oaks this drought
year, dust coating the leaves unpalatable
these days, every summer hotter, but 

the deer only know fences.





Herons Grazing in Alfalfa


silently they step
head down seeking
insects that writhe
in the dirt

picking them with
their long delicate
beaks, sliding their prey
down strong throats

silently they disappear
as the light stretches
eastward in the cold
afternoon as if they
never were