Dawn Wind

strawberry moon sets

dawn wind howling like a wolf

among bloodstained sheep

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Blood & Bourbon

Blood & Bourbon #12, featuring three of my poems, is available now from Amazon

Sadly, they don't put any sample poems or prose pieces on their website.

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

How a Salamander Sheds

I want to shed like a salamander, shucking hands like pale filmy gloves. Like someone coming off shift at the ER, shedding gloves of purple nitrile, discarding them in the bin. No: a salamander eats its skin when it molts. I want to change my skin like that. I want to get rid of the hard layer I’ve grown in the last three years, under the mask that made my face smell like a dirty sock. I’d like to forget the gloves and the smell of Lysol everywhere, but I’d also like to believe that nothing is wasted and that I could eat this discarded armor and grow stronger. That I could eat my gloves, and my mask, and my own face.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

SUPPORT THE WGA

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Finding Trilliums

Find me in the warm shade

Find me on the east slope of Marquam Hill

          where the black squirrels roam

Find me among the sprawling ferns

Where the woodpeckers knock-knock overhead in the standing dead trees

Where the hillside soaked in winter rain drains slowly across the path

Find me where the fir needles lie so thick

          that soil is just a distant rumor

There, where I spread my giant triple leaves

Where I raise my trefoil standard of cerise paling to pink to white

Find me there.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Ode to a Spruce

Not for you the gaudy dance of color,

green to gold to red to dead: autumnal

corpses piled in wheelbarrow tumbrils.

Spring for you is barely marked by pallor,

newer needles lighter than their older

siblings on the same branch. And your oblong

cones persist from year to year, unfallen,

full of life. The year is never over,

 

promises your whispered counsel. I must

surely learn the lesson you’ve assigned me:

growth and change are slow as well as rapid,

haste should not become a ruling habit.

Constant friend, I count on you. Remind me,

God is near, and evergreen means timeless.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside