I-90

Our highways haven’t the poetry
of Kerouac’s.  You might get off
anywhere and find yourself
anywhere, with chained food
and the locals chained to it.
They watch travelers come and go
as through a pulley, moving
an object far away.
When the zippered interstate
splits woods crowded
with uncut trees, our minds
find time to imagine
the migrant paths among them,
always pointing somewhere.

Gone Figuratively Fishing

Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity. It tells you who you are. It’s gotten so abstract. People don’t work for the sake of working. They’re working for a car, a new house, or a vacation. It’s not the work itself that’s important to them. There’s such a joy [...]

Journey to the Core

The unseen center of the earth
is liquid—a battery without parts,
a buried sun. Like a heart,
its power is warmth, not light.
With no requirement beyond being,
it aligns waves of magnetism
to dress the planet. The only instrument
to measure it truly is imagination,
and I picture it turning, newly sprung arms
of magma reaching in the dark
to embrace and absorb,
embrace and [...]

Writers I Admire: Howard Nemerov

Writing poetry requires reading it—otherwise, how will you challenge yourself to reach something original and how will you know if you’ve accomplished it?  Yet, I understand why reading poetry can be intimidating.  Some poetry seems well out of my grasp, especially when the writer shames me with endlessly perfect decisions about diction, syntax, imagery, and [...]

The Spectators

A tree shoved by the wind creaks like a ship’s deck.
A gate rattles its latch. Birds announce every move
from branch to lamppost, broadcasting their bearings
from each new perch. You won’t find quiet outside
this time of year. Nor an orchestra. Nothing is ordered
enough for music.  Some time ago some more attuned soul
knew these noises as ticks [...]

To Be Well Again

In 1861, as Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois for his first term as president, he made a speech from the train car about his “grave duty” and “the principle or ideal that has kept this Union so long together.”
With his characteristic eloquence and elegance, Lincoln says
Perhaps we have come to the dreadful day of awakening, [...]

Seven Metaphors

Teachers are great sharers—or show-offs, depending on how you look at it—and often compare the clever and cruel tasks they’ve given students. In the summer, all of these assignments float up, borne as by some ocean current to my desert island, and I plot ways to use them.
An obstetric nursing teacher once told me [...]

The Madding Crowd

In the city every window
is a mirror. Watch closely,
you catch walkers looking.
She touches her hair.
He tugs his belt.
Their eyes linger as long
as the glass repeats them.
Amid the current of forms
is an expression they know,
affirmation they can’t resist
seeking. With the proper angle,
you might stand in their sight,
but something flickers in them—
a flame the slightest [...]

Naming Stuff

Lately I’ve been thinking every poem I write could begin with the words, “Well yes and…” and, in fact, those words may make a good title if I can ever get a book together.
They suggest that what follows will acknowledge, affirm, and supplement what a reader already knows, which seems to be all I can [...]

Writer’s Block

The friction of traffic
wears deep, digging
inescapable grooves,
and this morning the city
looks like an underlayer,
a landscape exposed
by abrasion, carved
from what might swell
without me. The world
sinks exhausted,
spent from carrying
all I’ve taken from it.