October 2024
Bio Note: I have had a good year - published my third book, "Squalls", wrote like a fiend, revived and became president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana and just tied the bow on a chapbook of poems about Egrets that I will soon shop around. Along with my wife, Renee, I perform rain dances on the back patio at sunset. Here are 2 tiny sonnets that came out of the Cascadia Postcard event last year.
Somehow Improved
In deep, empty country (cud, cow
pine next to pine, turkey-vultures
that revolved within wavering strata
of high heat) my friend Russ was raised
By a defeated and vacant, vain, delusional mother.
No one but the roaches to share his dreams
and games. So he turned resilient, self-reliant
quiet, deliberate. By a strange mechanics
Lately I’ve been imagining his deceased mother
lingering in ether. Somehow improved by death
she oversees Russ as he plants carrots, pours coffee
sands an oak board, chats with his son on the cell.
Among no angels, she says to thin air
“God bless him. He escaped me.”
First By My Mother, Now By My Wife
Except that I am old
old in joint and ache
older than I ever understood
I would be. Except that I keep
To this chair, only sit and witness
how a western forest suffocates the day
except for that, I am like a child
who stays out long and long into dark
When he knows he should be
back home for sup. But still
Stays out to relish what delights
and animations flourish in half-dark
Until he is called back in by a voice that
Means everything, means everything to him
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