Published June 14, 2019
Children’s Book Club: ‘Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees’
July 17, 2019 By Leave a Comment
‘Anniversary’
July 3, 2019 By Leave a Comment
We never talk
We talk all the time.
No, I mean talk, talk
Well what do you want to talk about?
I don’t know, just talk to me
I been talking to you for forty years.
You don’t concentrate when you talk to me
How much do you have to concentrate to talk?
That’s generic talk. It don’t count.
You want name-brand talk?
No, just talk, health talk, horse talk, I don’t care.
You want to talk about the horse?
If the horse is important to you, then yes, I want you to talk about it.
Not really. S’just a horse. I could talk about my guns.
God no. No gun talk.
Well I give up then. I never talked so much at breakfast in all my life.
You been talking so much you’ve hardly eaten a thing. Want more coffee?
Sure, ‘m all talked out.
Fine..
From Mountain to Mountain: The power of poetry for people affected by trauma
June 19, 2019 By
Published May 17, 2019
‘Clean Up Good’
June 12, 2019 By
It’s competitive shower season
Now is the time for serious shower-ers only
Those who enjoy languorous strokes beneath the Whirlpool
waterfall need not apply
Contestants toil all year, alternating cool
with heat, daylight with moonlight
There are categories for outdoor bucket showers
shaving in the shower (men’s and women’s levels)
Extra points awarded for the dexterity needed to operate
a hotel shower
The forecast favors the adventurous. Leave behind
your lucky body wash, your ducky towel
Apply your industry to becoming the cleanest, speediest you
you can be
Tickets on sale now
Film at 11
The Cardinals
May 22, 2019 By
For the second time since we’ve lived in this house, cardinals made a nest in the mountain laurel.
Inspired by Kristine O’Connell George’s book of poems titled Hummingbird Nest, I’ve written a few of my own haiku about our cardinals. I didn’t notice every detail, so it’s an incomplete narrative.
April 22
cardinal in the nest
safe in the mountain laurel—
plans for motherhood
April 24
Mama cardinal sits
on her nest in pouring rain
all day—never blinks
April 28
“Some birds are people
watchers,” says Tony Hoagland.
Mama Cardinal is.
May 1
Male cardinal busy
back and forth—female sits tight
unmoving, umoved
May 4
three baby bird mouths
open, parents flit for food —
We watch from inside
May 5
Papa Cardinal feeds
gaping baby mouths and Mama,
who feeds chicks also
May 7
baby cardinal pokes
out his fuzzy head—does not
see the nesting snail
May 8
quietly, oh so
quietly, pull up the blinds—
Mama Cardinal’s there
Almost Mother’s Day
through thunderstorms, winds
(damaging), hail, tornado—
Mama Cardinal sits
May 10
baby cardinal stands
gray and fluffy in the nest—
“I’m self-sufficient!”
May 12
Cardinal family pecks
the grass and then flies away—
the nets is empty
June 23
When the cardinals left
I threw out their nest. They’re back.
Rebuilt in one day.
June 28
Mama Cardinal eyes
me from her new-built nest: You
can never stop me
