Poetry & Prose

Sitting in the steam room of the Chicago Athletic Club the Spirit of Calculation wafted through wet thick heat. Vapor enshrouded faces with sodden voices discussed the countable dimensions of the world. The earth is storage, want creating need, supply creating demand....

We live in an age of expectancy, a hammer flung in a room of windows and mirrors.

Now there are many big things, so many very really big things. You know them. I’ll list just a few: invasive wars, nuclear options, the Florida engulfing sea, hell’s heat in Tucson, fired western forests, waterless cities, dismantling winds. So many I hesitate to pet...

In the afternoon, late, you slept in the trunk of a well-rooted dream. I tore apart time looking for a memory, found it, dropped it; a fish back in water, a seed on a sidewalk. During supper, we forgot what we were after, some kind of history we were expected to make....

At the corner, I was ten, and my dog was waiting. I whistled a trilling call. An emotional muscular eruption, my dog raced across lawns, ears flying to leap a greeting into my lexicon arms. Since then, many times greeted, an ecstatic god or friend or tree wrangling...

Through childhood I thought it was God's imperceptibly caring hand: the close calls, the car skidding to a stop before the crossing train, the ladder tipping, then righting against the wall, the snarling dog turning inches from the rambling child, the tornado shearing...

Massive necks, boulder heads, hammer hooves, robed in shag. Verging, flip-flop-tee-shirted sightseers, but for minds with words, scrawny. A ranger addresses tourists careless of the wild, stand back! Yellowstone National Park, 2014 written: 2022...

One haiku moment on that pedestrian day, the sun and the sunflower dissolved into density: the universe a second before the Big Bang.  

Roiling, the Pacific laving the stone shore, the midnight moon slap dashed on waves, human voices out of mineral dark baths, naked, birth-ready, and reckless with hope’s question: Can the numinous, wrest from the grasping hands of gasping gods, be rediscovered in...

Smarmy robots do not need solace. No need to be comforted. No grief, they gleam. A third of their time - plugged-in. Batteries do need to be recharged. Wired for warmth, a socket for a friend.