There is time you spent looking
somewhere in the course
of the day
or days
or weeks and months
maybe even years

for that certainty of presence.

This is where you are no longer any sort
of impostor
of fearful
of lacking
of emotional
or dramatic

when the only thing there is, is that you, yourself, are.

those noises in your head are you
however…read more

A steam engine train chugs
down the tracks in the Alberta wilds
great clouds of steam
exit from the engine down at the side
the whistle sounds, echoing off the gorge
while snow falls off the tall pines.

It is a black engine
great silver coupling rods rotate the dark wheels
a pilot cow catcher moves first on the front
the locomotive turns with…read more

GOING TO BERLIN IN 1970 -for Hank

They were traveling by train
the whole family, for Thanksgiving
at seventeen it felt like being thirty
courage for the i-am-strong-enough
to face the i-don’t-know-what
speaking German wishing-to-know-words

even so he was in his own thoughts-
Where does genuine live?
Is it In amongst the realizations of the s…read more

She had left so much here
the carloads taken to Goodwill
numbered, now, beyond ten
he’d kept a count, tho, if pressed
he’d not admit to it

too much there to allow in
it was only to go out

elsewhere.

Which thoughtlined to such a different place
one of today the multi-colored thoughts and pictures
in an everyday, always anyway, person’s mind…read more

What are we doing as poets? To whom are we writing? It cannot be only for ones-self, not only for some sort of self-edification.

I write for the everyday person, for those pictures in our minds we all carry. So many great poets have gone before, I’ve nearly let that intimidate me in the past, causing an unappreciated inertia.

However there…read more

She just showed up with it one day

the patient I cannot name here.

She had been one of those few patients

that I’d allowed myself to get too close to

guess that we had come to know each other

over the several years it took

to get two, t-w-o, double lung transplants

such a vivacious twenty-something

progeny of excellently smart parents…read more