Five hours feeling happiness
I have been walking for five hours.
I got off the subway five hours ago.
I kept on walking with the city on my back
Streets becoming tracks
Tracks becoming old dry creeks
Creeks steep
Climbing to the top of one
Then making my way back
Five hours feeling happiness.
Five hours getting numb
Five hours leaving real life down there in [...]
I know this sounds stupid but but
I can’t help it
It is good for my health
My mental health
You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?
The range goes deep into the horizon
It’s been snowing for days
I’m cold comfortable cold
Nobody was coming on the track
It was only me
White to both my sides
White front
White back
Light
I keep following the track
I keep [...]
When God stood behind me,
I would have liked a shoulder rub.
Instead,
He gave me showering light,
Rabbit dens,
Trees that turn the color of eyes,
And that sweet home hearth feeling.
That feeling you can fall asleep to on the rug,
While listening to Rachmaninoff on a Sunday evening.
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To read Tod’s bio and more of his poetry go here.
The Provo Orem Word, an online venue for artists in the Provo-Orem area of Utah, has published an excerpt from my novel The Pictograph Murders (Signature Books 2004) in this year’s nature-themed issue. You can read the excerpt and rest of the issue here, or click on the picture. Also, check out the ad for [...]
Wilderness Interface Zone seeks submissions of poetry, prose, fiction–any of the kinds of nature writing listed in its submission guidelines. Please take a quick look at our “About” page too. Photographs that take nature as subject matter are also welcomed. WIZ finds especially interesting works that illustrate creative, productive human relationships with the natural world (and vice versa). [...]
Mark Twain on the tundra: At times, that’s how this 1963 classic played to my mind. Farley Mowat’s sense of humor—often self-directed—and the acuity of his social criticism reminded me so much of Twain’s acerbic wit that I found myself reading Mowat but seeing in the text Sam Clemens’ ghost—flowing white hair, white mustache, white [...]
Mormon Artist Magazine has published a fun interview they did with me for their current issue. I’ve not often been interviewed–just one phone interview where I wound up misquoted–so I appreciate Mormon Artist’s interest in my work and attention to detail during this process.
The pics accompanying are unfortunately not as fine as I’d like, but [...]
Narrator: It was a sunny day in the town Pudding but no one could see it. There was a cloud in the way of the sun.
Boy: I can’t see anything!
The mayor: We must do something!
All: But what?
Town folks: Ask the king!
Mayor: Not the king!
Boy: That is a good idea.
Mayor: The king does not rule the [...]
The usual warnings continue to apply. Parts One and Two here and here.
April 22, 2010, Earth Day and M’s birthday. Twenty-four hours have passed since the doctor put his words out there. I’m still hot with anger and grief, still breaking into sobs at the slightest twinge of thought. I’ve examined M repeatedly for signs [...]
Last week my husband found himself in need of a computer monitor. In our part of SE Utah, if you need affordable computer parts of middling quality right away, you drive the 160 mile round trip to the nearest Walmart, located in the shadow of Mesa Verde in Cortez, Colorado. He left late and returned [...]