This night
in cold moonlight
earth rises up
clouds float down
ghosts walk the margin.
Old ones sing
now shall be then
older ones still sing
then shall be once
to wolf and coyote.
In this season of north winds
sun’s heat barren
spirits rise up
dreams descend
man lies interspersed.
Women sing
we are bearers
men sing
we are sowers.
First appeared in Dipity, Vol. 3, April 2023
Stop and imagine for one moment
what it would be like if:
during hunting season
the deer were armed with AR15’s
and hunters with a bow and arrow.
the mud wasp, docile insect
that you go after with a shovel
comes armed with a can of poison spray
the raccoon eating your garden
that you wanted to trap and take
into the countryside instead
trapped you and left you
in the middle of absolutely nowhere
or even if none of those, what if
in your next life you come back
as a deer, a mud wasp, or a raccoon?
It is the Italian season in the southeast. This has nothing to do with the country, its food or language. Well a bit to do with food. It is hurricane season here, and when a storm arises, you can be certain most of us begin to scan the web for information, for weather can quickly become our nightmare. But NOAA and others know we are thristy for information, and perhaps that almost everyone loves Italian food, so they feed us ever changing, ever shifting spaghetti models. Pass the red sauce please.
Mars has risen in the western sky.
Perhaps it is waiting for the moon
to draw our attention,
but the moon is periodically
irascible, as tonight, and has
chosen to abandon Mars
to the stellar firmament.
Mars has risen in the western sky.
I wander into the dark in search
of the peace that only
night affords, but the horizon
is war and disquiet
and I stumble and repeatedly
fall, and the ground holds me
denying me the sky.
Mars has risen in the western sky.
The plants that have reached
for the sun, and borne
fruit for months
now shrink and wither
under his unrepentant eye,
and I know a cold
foreboding wind will
still blow and I will mourn
the passing of summer,
the season on peace.
Mars has risen in the western sky
and Jupiter watches jealously.
First Published in Cerasus Magazine (UK), Issue 3, 2021
The birds departed one morning
which we believe may be how
they express displeasure, although
the destruction of the nests
and the death of the children
by predators may have had
something to do with the departure.
We wait patiently for their return,
the wetland still dry, but we hope
with the wet season that what
is now mud will again drop slowly
beneath the surface, the new
growth will drown, and the birds
will sense a return to status quo
but that assumes that birds are
unlike humans, unbegrudging
and willing to forgive us our sins.
This is the season
when the maples
began their rain
of colored tears.
It may still be so,
but not here,
and the palms
know no seasons.
Once there was
a veil of lilac,
bushes trying to
outdo the others.
But at least
the magnolias care
nothing for distance
offering their beauty
here and where we
now have only
memories of the ebb
and flow of seasons.
I want the sky to be that certain crimson
tinged with burnt sienna and cinnabar,
but today winter is holding sway
and the sun sneaks off behind
the gray wall from which it only peeked,
and left the day one of grayscale
where intensity replaced beauty
and even the cardinal opted to stay
high in the spruce, offering
only an occasional glint of red.
We come to expect this, it is a season
of colorlessness, and the only question
is whether we can hold out
until spring returns the full pallette
and nature takes up brush again.
The temperature falls, slowly at first
but gaining speed, as though
in the grip of winter’s gravity.
Winter has the potential to be
a black hole season into which
we enter and imagine we
will never reemerge into spring.
The wind whispers stories to us
of a time when this was all ice
when no one complained of a chill
for there was no one.
We turn up our collars to remind
the wind that we will remain here,
for nature has given us
an equal dose of stubbornness.
an old writer and his words 