SAMPLE POEMS

Franklin-Christoph Merit Award for Poetry

Rendering Ruins

A barn abandoned, left to drift alone,

wind torn and breached upon the reef of time;

fields, now dust, where summer wheat was sewn,

the wagons heaped with grain stood long in line

to fill the grange of this once mighty ship,

now but a shadow, listing, ghostly gray.

Raw winds and pelts of rain how cruelly whip

the wounded roof and soak the rotted hay

--the roof, an April green in days before,

a farmer's name upon it stitched in white.

This ark of kittens, bawling calves, no more.

A rat gnaws on a crib, the final rite.

Yet on this easel, raised by bardic hand,

forgotten barns, forgotten not, still stand.

First Publication, Arc Poetry Magazine

Butch the Mercurial Cat

The cat, a tabby gray,

his coat a watered silk,

long whiskers, yellow eyed.

Oh! how that cat loves milk.

A boy gives Butch his milk

inside a castoff pipe,

the pipe a whisker small

for Butch the milk to swipe.

Yet, thirsty tabby slides

into the narrow way,

a curling wisp of smoke,

a curlicue of gray.

Like brother Cheshire Cat,

Butch has his bag of tricks,

a little magic act

that he does just for kicks.

The boy lies on the ground;

into the pipe he spies.

Somehow!

Butch has turned around:

a pair of yellow eyes!

A float of tabby tail,

then into thinnest air,

without the slightest sound,

Butch isn't there!

Little Red Tree Publishing International Poetry Prize

Dagda Publishing Anthology, The Road Less Traveled

Paragram Spotlights Anthology

Spirit Road

Above the 49^th parallel:

The trace of an old wagon road

--like faded tracks in snow

or a man's passage through tall grass

an hour before--a phantom trail,

twists and turns through maple and beech,

around steep hills of pine, winding deep,

deep into the age-old wood,

the way of a wounded deer fleeing the pack

or a wisp of smoke from a dying fire.

Wild leeks in the air, the complaint of a crow,

the crackle and hum of a hornets' nest.

Winter's breath, faint as the smell of wild grapes,

yet there, always there in this high place

far north of paved roads and gathering places.

Small signs: the ghost of a wooden wheel

long baked in mud grown brittle,

a nail, a doll, naked, blind breasts, faceless,

a tree bent back, lodged behind another,

grown strange like a humpbacked man.

A dozen partridges, the color of brush,

completely without fear, move aside, disappear.

A clearing: trees felled, trimmed, stacked in rows.

An ax, the handle rotted to dust, the head red with rust,

lying where it fell, having let go slowly over the years,

falling from the stump where it was left embedded,

losing faith in the hands that would lift it

and finish the temple, hands that never returned.

The cry of a loon on a distant lake.

A yellow leaf falls lazily down,

riding complex currents of sun and wind;

the forest sighs, a nearly inaudible sigh

--north, a far place north, north of the 49^th parallel,

where a thousand years is the blink of an eye.

1^st place Aesthetica Magazine, Creative Works Poetry

3^rd place London Magazine Poetry Competition

At the Nursing Home

--an old man vacant by the window

Hold me occasionally for the light is fading

and I can no longer see the hills that once

rose there, brown hills, sand, sand. I see

the color, like the brown shoulders of a girl

I knew by the lake, outside the window.

Did I marry her? Were there children?

Is that snow? Is it winter already again?

I remember her shoulders, not her face

or name. I remember your face sometimes

(are they your shoulders?) and your touch.

Hold me occasionally. The hills are gone,

and monotony. I know that word, but I

could not say it and no longer even try.

A strange world, monopoly. It tastes like bleach.

My life is there in a thimble on the night stand

only I can see. I stare at it for hours. Hold me

occasionally. There is no hurry. The light fades

slowly. It seems the last part of some other day,

and the thimble holds so little. The hills are gone

and soon the thimble will tip slowly over.

It will make no sound, nothing will spill.

First Publication, Tipton Poetry Journal

Inside Apples

I utter apples, as only I (and you)

can do. A tree can grow an apple.

Pigs with apples know what to do.

But I (and you) can utter "Apples":

"Apples, apples, apples ..."

Red, sour green, yellow delicious,

Macintosh, Winesap, Spys,

Jonathans in pecks and bushels....

Snow white inside, "Apples!"

In wintertime I smell them,

apples in my mind. I pluck

one down. I take a bite, I hear

the crunch, I all but chew.

All, merely murmuring, "Apples."

I marvel at the mystery, this

utterance of apples, here inside

of me (and you). "Apples."

First Publication, Vallum New International Poetics

A Song of Cedars

I am the singer,

singing of cedars

touching the sky,

but not the song

--the song--

written in me

before I was born,

where the cedars

meet the sky.