Caution - Rail Crossing
I wait like the gasoline tanker at the railroad crossing.
Behind me an ambulance screams and the red lights
strobe their way into my brain.
I wait for the klaxons to quiet,
the red lights to go out,
and the trembling arms to rise.
How did it come to this?
Published on The Laundry Line, 2 December, 2025.
November
this summer’s fox gloves
stand
ragged brown soldiers
their rockets waiting
to launch
there are no longer
any foxes in the field
Published on The Laundry Line, 25 November, 2025.
Ekphrasis on an Imagined Pastoral Landscape
we diminish beneath happiness
without you she
considers the unfocused clouds
blueprints
madness and prophecy
run coldly
past the night forest
the slight rosary of the stars
your treetop microscope
looks through
a cathedral organ toward
organisms whose function
we have yet to discern
you close up your glance
put down her attention
look for instructions
find only bone
Published on The Laundry Line, 18 November, 2025.
Drowning
To drown is to fall
beneath the surface.
To linger below
in the silence
with the mud anchored weeds
floating aloft from their roots.
Do you too long to lie face down? Floating.
Eyeing the small fish
that drift in and out of the rushes.
This pond
where the horses stand in
the hottest part of summer evenings
as they wait for the dusk and
the waning of the heat.
They come
one after another,
head to tail,
down the single track
to bath their feet
in the cooling mud.
We sit on the screen porch and watch the trucks.
Headlights swinging down the graveled country road,
away from the pond,
the horses, and
the way the breeze sighs at the sunset.
Published on the Laundry Line, 11 November, 2025.
News - October 2021
Dear Joe,
I am sorry that I forgot to call you on Sunday.
The weather here is changing;
summer is ending;
tomorrow the first fall storm arrives.
The trees aren’t turning color so much
as losing color.
The ferns bend
under the weight
of the rain that drops
from the trees.
Leaves fall
into the mud and become
soggy. It rains too much here for
any kind of fall crispness.
We continue to function under
the increasingly porous lock-down,
masks at the ready.
They will make dating
our pictures easier
for our grandchildren,
if there are any pictures,
if there are any grandchildren.
Just now there’s a bit of sun
and I wonder—how are you?
Has the season begun to turn there?
Published on The Laundry Line, 4 November, 2025.
