Poems

Genesis I saw my father’s house in the country, Adams County, Ohio. He was born there in his parents’ bed after the harvest. written in 1973 _________________________________________________________________________ Today is my father Rev. Fred Taylor Gaston’s...

Three days after the creation of animals, and two weeks before the fall, at the primordial sundown meal they called supper, after playing with cats that had never been kittens and thinking up names for the owl and the dog, Eve and her man Adam played a fantasy game...

I have wonderful friends who suggest good things for me to do. They say, there’s a movie you should see. I probably should. But I probably won’t. They say, there’s a restaurant you should try. I probably should. But I probably won’t. They say, I’ve read a book. You...

We were walking through a forest. You ducked under the trunk of a fallen tree. You came up too soon. You whacked your head. A bloody cut where hair used to be. I should have stayed low longer, you said. I should have stayed low.    

In my garden among trees looking up, I see leaves searching for sun, brown boughs bending toward light intelligent oak.

for Katherine Walking at Sandy Ridge Pond, joe-pye and rag weed stiff against summer’s last breeze, cattails and egrets and geese, a line of dead wood trees, a standing scrawl of calligraphy, turtles, bodies sunk in muck, thrust green necks forward, ignoring danger,...

At night after the crickets, after the last birds, silence and darkness creep from lilac boughs. In the still dark, the lilac scent remains.