Poetry
Living from Here: Poems 1968-2018
Fiction
Crows Calling: An Inspiring Journey into our Better Natures
— Coming in September from Greenleaf Press
About the Book
New Poems
American Steel
a meditation on our origins
Raw Love (Amor Fati)
After coffee you can start from here.
Faint scents of bliss, and of destruction
Waft through the window, arouse. Almost
Fearless, you rise shivering, sail
Tenderly, boldly into your life.
It helps if you break clinch with yesterday,
Become lighter, more essential.
What happens next, what fusion with the
Day’s ordinary, is so much less
Your choice than you were taught. All you can
Do, really, is try to keep your heart
Open, your mind curious, your soul
In awe. You fall in love with the world,
Into its rhythms. Your heartstrings sigh
In contentment. Life’s exultation,
Its human pain, become your own. On
A good day those whom you must love, each
In their own way, laugh and weep with you.
At evening, there is time for reflection.
You fall back, rue your brokenness, review
The costs of living and who shall bear them
Into the night. Offer them up. Hone
Your craft. Vow to cultivate compassion.
Honor truth and kindness. Look ahead,
But do not think you are the Captain.
The Knee
Take the knee, leverage joint,
Mover and shaker, hinge of walking,
Springboard of jump shots,
Bane of skiers.
Bent, from the oldest times,
In respect, supplication, in
Petition. I remember its
Objections to endless minutes
Praying, a boy in a hard pew.
Indeed, bone of contention,
You also bend in self-respect,
As on the Selma bridge, or in
Violence: a knee in the groin,
Or on the neck of someone
Black or brown or female or gay –
Or poor – until they cannot breathe.
Few can these days, and it’s more than
Racism and COVID, Mama. It’s
The coal dust’s black lung, tobacco’s
Emphysema and cancer, and
The smoky acridness of wildfire:
Entangled diseases of the
Late consumption economy.
This age of vulnerability,
The species at war with itself,
With the planet: Yes, take a knee,
And, taking a breath,
Stand.
