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. 

​The Surface of Silence
–sound is a bubble on the surface of silence

for over three billion years the earth was silent 
except for steady thunder, waterfalls, surf,
a volcano — the rest was vacant

up through the speechless seas
trilobites, eels, crabs, sharks, marlins arose, 
then lungfish crawled ashore in wet tides

and salamanders and lizards—giant lizards— 
insects, all without voices, all quiet 
as they foraged and fought among the ginkos

until some lizards grew soft scales— feathers— 
climbed the trees and jumped— soared
flapped, rose into the sun

and spoke the first animal sounds, found songs, 
called together in vast flocks as dusk settled 
into the marshes, and mammals followed 

with tiny voices at first, mouse squeaks 
and then lion roars— the earth became noisy
an animal cacophony filled the air and seas 

before we appeared, masking all the others
in voices of fire making metal— machines,
wars, progress, destruction.





My Voice Disappeared

​
My voice disappeared after forty years
leaving only gaps, echoes of jaded 
arguments like waves past the buoy 
where we scattered the ashes at sea.

It returned after sixty years with the ants 
and other small creatures of the dirt ,
where life originates but too quietly 
to be noted until we are in decline.

I sit on the ground finally, open 
to such small existences, closer now 
that I'm old, their movements reflected 
in my new-found words of drifting 
and seeking.

I stare farther down, vision drilling 
into holes and burrows, find a few thin 
roots, dry but clinging to the clay 
and my voice tries to speak— 

hold the last drops of blood, repeat them 
to others, name them before it's too late,
before my voice is lost again, absorbed
into the same dirt that will keep my bones.