Poetry
My Old Man
“Get a job,” he used to say / when I was up till midnight, / red-eyed, nervous, burnt out, / cramming for first year finals. / And when I got a summer...
The Watchwoman
I hope to retire in the village / of heavy-headed children, / the off-balance boys and girls / who run with their faces pitched forward / along muddy paths in the brilliance...
Abandoned
Someone tore the hands off a big round clock, familiar / as a classroom clock & abandoned it in the weeds / beside the river. It took the time right out of...
Land then Water
The cheque refuses to be cashed without being thanked first. / One cow has skidded down the meadow and tipped over. / By the time I find her, her skull is a...
Barometric Pressure
Always start with poems about places / that sing themselves as if they were a whir / of mid-august heat bugs. Begin each / with words by other people, famous / or...
Herons on the Ice
Having had their summer, swum, fished and plunged / deeply in their chosen waters, these old birds / have woken up to find the world changed, / their choice stretch of pond...
New Year’s Eve fireworks at the Forks
River and bridge / and things that hover over: / smoke, / helicopter, / ...
okada
months after the earthquake / inside the exclusion zone / the water has hardened to mud / there are bodies still / there is a man in white pants & a white...
Sinuosity: a found and erased poem
A river’s sinuosity is its tendency to move / back and forth across the floodplain, / in an S-shaped pattern, over time, leaving behind / scars of where the river channel once...