Category Archives: Poetry

For years I have been working at beating back the aggressive invasive species that have taken over much of my property. I thought of it as gardening by subtraction. Get rid of all the crap and then see what I … Continue reading →

Each year, a few weeks after school let out, we would overpack one of a succession of enormous station wagons and drive a thousand miles west to Indiana. Hobson relations were liberally salted across the state, and we would manage … Continue reading →

This is a second stab at this scenario: me, insomniac at a window imagining my fellow insomniacs awake with me, near me on a moonlit night. Only a few lines remain of the first take: Light in Other Windows. I’m not … Continue reading →

This feels like the first real North Country winter we’ve had in years. Five or six falls of powder without a thaw. Temperatures below zero at night. Not just coat weather, but scarf and mittens and boots. I prefer to … Continue reading →

Some of this comes from an older poem that sort of petered out unsatisfactorily. I decided it needed a second person and a touch of mortality. Cold Snap All night as we lay sleeping snow came down,the way time accumulates … Continue reading →

My resolution for the NewYear is to get together with other poets and artists more. I’ve been having a dry spell since I finished my manuscript “The Other Village.” Before I retired, I had a weekly writing assignment to keep … Continue reading →

There’s something about trillium. They are a near obsession with me and I return to them over and over in my writing. It may just be the physical and emotional constraints of winter being lifted from the shoulders. But I … Continue reading →

Macular degeneration: it’s a classic example of “Some blessings are harder to give thanks for than others.” Failing vision prompted me to retire as a web editor sooner than I might have otherwise. And my previous careers in publication design … Continue reading →

I’ve written about my poetry “junk drawer” before, how it is sometimes possible to weld pieces together into something good (or good enough, anyway). But no matter how often those unlikely mashups occur, the junk drawer seems to stay as … Continue reading →