When winter beats its broad path
across fields, kneeling the weed
and setting, too, over sage and oak,
deep white pavement;
after wasps and beetles
have borne off, crumb by crumb,
rusted plum and apple pulp
so far beyond the last gather
the ground where they fell
no longer smells of cider;
when there is light instead of leaf
on the branch, star instead of pear,
deer [...]
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 [...]
It’s like the old Tarzan movies:
White hunters find their way barred
By skulls on sticks.
The Park Service has erected
A pavilion on the rim.
Beware, it says.
Quicksand. Flash floods.
How to Resuscitate Lightning Strike Victims
One warning tells.
It pretends helpful information,
But it is another white skull.
On a sideboard, the complete caveat—
A man pierced all through with sticks.
We are loath to [...]
First off, frequent WIZ contributor Karen Kelsay invited me to submit poetry to her online poetry journal Victorian Violet Press, where I’m the featured poet for her summer issue. Victorian Violet Press also nominated “The Pear Tree” for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks, Karen!
You can hear me read “The Pear Tree” here.
Second: If you’re one of the [...]
(for Saul)
My son, seven, says, in passing,
“To travel at the speed of light
You must become light.”
From the apparent blue, this bolt
Blasts me from terrain
Of rolling, languid thought,
I am forced to leap by precipice
And, after thrills of floundering,
Beat together wings of suspense
And impetus, igniting flight.
He is only seven, and it is my duty.
Breathless, I ask:
“Where did [...]
[Post edited 12/17.] Since this haiku chain launched itself before I had a chance to lay groundwork, I thought I’d backtrack and provide some perhaps useful information.
A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but I understand that there are longer and shorter forms. In [...]
These bargained years I’ve toiled in the fields
With you, tending, in my distraction, ample yields,
Though when the wind pressed down the grain
There was nothing, or when the sheep would flurry
And part as if a man were walking through,
Joseph, it was never you.
Plaited, golden stalks crowded down
And rose again in gusts,
Or caravans in moving dreams of [...]
Why? Because it fits.
When she woke at sunrise, she squirmed out of her sleeping bag, stood up, opened her car door, and draped the bag over it to dry off millions of pinprick dewdrops that had bloomed on it during the night. When she turned to face the dune at the canyon rim, her attention [...]
A few years back, after attending a local storytelling festival, I wondered in this post what would happen if I released a story into public domain. I resolved to work up the nerve to let go what some might imagine to be my intellectual property, to “breathe it out” into the common atmosphere, where anybody [...]
Dave’s post here caused me to reflect more self-consciously on what it is I do when I go out in the desert. Do I walk off pavement’s edge to get away from stresses or disappointments? Do I go out to have adventures? To think? Dave’s post is about seeking God in nature. Is that what I’m doing–looking for God out [...]