​
Leaving with the Geese


When a man is not loved well,
he turns his own love
toward those things that love everyone:
barns with snowy roofs,
ice covered lakes,
bold geese leaving
their homes in odd formations,
the things and happenings
that bare their hearts 
to the world.

When a man is not loved well,
he leaves home to sleep 
in that deep music
that hides in the earth,
and when the time is right
he leaves with the geese,
ascending like the shrill cries
of crickets, loving the life 
that his world 
had never shown him.

-appeared in Big River Poetry Review


​
The Walker's Prayer


To live and see unceasingly
and in awareness to know
that I've missed no mountain
and ignored no waters
nor glanced without feeling
at a thing born of beauty.

To walk the earth with gentle joy
and through such walking learn
that only visions hold the heart,
the heart which must be freely given
and in its giving all longing satisfied.

To pass quickly through the halls of grief
unyielding to the road's endless trials,
seeing instead how each scrape of knee
patch of sunburn and hour of hunger
has strengthened and informed me.

To live each day like the autumn moon,
who says, even at its lowest point:
"It is alright, friend. I will guide you 
landward, like water, toward the shores 
of some new life.”





I Advise Myself

​
Turn, now, to the small things--
water, stone, a few footprints
in the summer sand, that look
in just one stranger’s eyes,
tall grass turning
in this evening’s final westerly.

Let the other poets speak
of the role of man,
the historicity of beauty,
the intersection 
of art and industry.

It’s all worth less 
than a few holy objects
and a humble room to write in.