June 24th

The crow calls and crosses the road
to sit in the shade. She pecks at nothing.
Bored, not hungry, and with nowhere to be.
Perhaps anxious under the weight of time.

The nest sits empty. She knows:
It will grow noisy again. But today, she sighs,
Calls, and crosses the road to sit in the shade.

July 14th

This morning I woke one day older
The ferns curl in, away from me
Brown dirt greets me in silence –
I knew my father at this age.
We stalked the forest, reveled in its fruit,
Took its life for ourselves.
But today I am my own child.
I will take one hand in the other
And try to teach myself.

July 26th

Amid the hickory smoke
My father taps my beer with his and
Recalls his own father, who he likewise fought,
Who he cussed as I did him, who he
likewise cared for, who he now weeps over any time
he sees a semi, tars a roof, shoulders a rifle.

Under the heat and the flies,
beneath the skin tanned by Indiana skies,
there is a muscle
that beats and beats and beats

August 4th

In my dimmer days
I would curse the buzzsaw, the
trucks and stereos,
The blinking that broke my darkness,
These alien machines.
They are not fish,
Nor fowl. No blood, no chlorophyll,
And so they are stupid. Impure.

Today I smile at the popping nailgun.
In each button and wire: the beauty of nature,
As in each creature, as in each person,
A millenia of struggle and work

August 7th

“(this page is not a poem. It is a reminder-
ponder: not only works, ink, the act of writing,
ponder also the paper. The maker of the paper.
the ink-mixer. Those who craft pens, who carry them to
the place you buy them, and the person you buy them from.
The stanzas are no more enlightening
than the crease between the pages).”

October 19th

Grammar ain’t my strong suit
but in a distant land
Beyond the veil of time
if pages bearing my name
could be food for hungry insects
I will have done enough

October 31st

Upon a morning’s repetition
Ponder last nights moon-
The dogs in paradise
Play fetch every moment
And eat, and eat, and eat

Once more upon the day
Live as a dog in heaven-
Play at your own heart
And chase without worry of finding