For the End of Summer
Temptation to hold malice
at the taking of summer.
Found such fruit
found so temporary
found true love
found out. [Read more…] about Poetry: For the End of Summer
An Adirondack Trout Haiku
Vermiculation
a million pathways to bliss
Adirondack trout
The brook trout was initially adopted as New York’s state fish in 1975; it was re-adopted as the official state fresh-water fish on August 16, 2006. [Read more…] about An Adirondack Trout Haiku
Poetry: False Casting
False Casting
Fishes Eddie
mile marker 89
one white birch
and a two-day old blood stain
beneath the soft shoulder sign. [Read more…] about Poetry: False Casting
Poetry: Taking Down Fences
Taking Down Fences
Cutting each wire I painstakingly twisted
into artful steel nooses,
working past each stubborn staple I hammered
into the unyielding locust,
it dawns on me that times change
as do our needs for constraint. [Read more…] about Poetry: Taking Down Fences
Poetry: Successional
Successional
You want light.
You want it more than most…
fight for it, treachery and spite
your consort and your host.
Increasing your fitness
while growing white and mossy,
defeat your only witness
while you become more glossy…
And the moons appear and disappear
in a steady march towards mold
and we become a memory
successional, and old.
Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.
Illustration courtesy Keith G. Tidball.
Poetry: Deep Summer Scent
Deep Summer Scent
Like packets of lavender
in a drawer in the cabin
they rise to you, arrest you
and burst.
Summer’s own fragrances,
like fistfuls of daisy
in the clearing, in the meadow
of firsts. [Read more…] about Poetry: Deep Summer Scent
Poetry: Splitting Cherry
Splitting Cherry
On our old farm
Black cherry trees are dying
carpenter ants making
temporary homes
until la Niña blows them down. [Read more…] about Poetry: Splitting Cherry
Poetry: The Angling April Fools
The Angling April Fools
Feathery snowflakes floating
blowing among still-tight blossoms
and the hopeful
verdant birch catkins and anxious budding willow,
bending, like we are
towards the snow melt rushing water.
Holding, like we are
for a sign of life or mercy. [Read more…] about Poetry: The Angling April Fools
Poetry: Tall Chair
Tall Chair
Sitting in my tall chair
listening for the footfalls
in the damp floor
below me, around me,
over me-
my room is green. [Read more…] about Poetry: Tall Chair
Poetry: September Crickets
September Crickets
With the urgency of boreal fecundity
let us prick our souls and hasten the blooming summer
let us lap, and lap, and lap
insisting like westerly waves of Gitche Gumee
to make landfall, to make love all
enveloping and awash in soaking saturation
and then stop. [Read more…] about Poetry: September Crickets
Poetry: Panting
Panting
I watched the sunrise, through a hazy veil of soot
particles of the forest I am supposed to be inhabiting…
but I am cancelled, the forest is closed.
Ashuapmushuan.
Where we watch for the moose.
Where I cannot go due to threat of
conflagration.
And here in the Finger Lakes
my covid-shredded lungs are
ingesting the panting of the Northwoods. [Read more…] about Poetry: Panting