Selected Poetry

"Ghost Farm, Derry" - originally published in Slant, A Journal of Poetry

"Nightfall" - originally published in Blueline, then The Blueline Anthology

"Perspective" - originally published in Soundings East

"Report" - originally published in Front Range Review

          GHOST FARM, DERRY

The place remains in good New Hampshire order,
big house, little house, back house and barn—
the road blacktopped and busy now,
the sound of trees drowned out by cars,
though stone walls mark the line still.

Hyla Brook runs silent through the pines
and three apple trees, long overtaken by the woods,
bear green fruit not worth picking
while the hayfield that once succumbed
to the whisper of the scythe has given itself
to brown-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace.

The horse stall in the barn is empty now,
the feed sacks in the back house hanging limp
against the wall, the stash of wood a fraction
of the pile that once warmed the red kitchen
where the family gathered ’round the stove.

In the parlor sits the Morris chair un-sat-upon
and quilts on the beds upstairs warm no one
against harsh snowstorms or human tragedy,
yet in all this absence there remains a presence:
as it happens time has neither lost nor won.

                                   Originally published in
                                   Slant, A Journal of Poetry

          NIGHTFALL

The wood begins to gather darkness,
stuffing it in holes
and spreading it in hollows,
tucking it among the tree roots,
piling it against the sapling’s trunk.
At first the upper branches stay aloof
preferring not to watch
the hoarding going on below,
but darkness stacks on darkness
stacks on darkness, up and up,
until the glutton woodland
vanishes from sight,
itself consumed in blackest night.

                                   Originally published in
                                   Blueline, then The Blueline Anthology

          PERSPECTIVE
O’Keeffe’s New York with Moon, 1925

The city is all angles
against the night sky
as towering buildings rise
far beyond
the church spire’s reach.

O the triumph
to create these monoliths
from the humblest
materials in the ground—
sand and stone to make concrete,
iron and carbon for steel!
O the victory
in the street lamp’s
haloed incandescence
and the stoplight’s red glowering
against the darkened buildings—

yet the eye pulls away
like a thankless child
to fasten instead on the sky,
a shade of blue somewhere
between cerulean and teal,
the full moon
playing hide and seek
in the scalloped curves of clouds.

                                   Originally published in
                                   Soundings East

          REPORT

Blake cautioned that to generalize is to be an idiot
so I’ll only tell you that when I saw the orange sun
about to drop behind the lavender hills of the horizon,
I thought of Matisse ensconced in a hotel in Nice
during the First World War, painting the woman
in the purple robe, the wallpaper behind her
stripes of apricot and tangerine.

                                   Originally published in
                                   Front Range Review