With smudged thumbs I travel hell, Reuter’s, the New York Times, through syllables of flood and fire, abuse and plague, abduction, war death by overdose, death by Opioid, by acts of God. I grieve my dead, unheralded, praise what remains, this yellow grass, these Eastern pines, my winter squash, the Housatonic tumbling on rock, a […]

  To keep tenants warm or impress rich neighbors, builders wrap a London tower in sheets of shiny tin, and post notices that warn: “Stay inside in case of fire, and close your doors.”   Whisked up twenty floors fire came this hour from outside in, for the London tower is higher (twenty stories to […]

  Like a volcano, the sawmill burns and smokes above my village. Jostling for place on a pebbled street stretching out almost a mile to unfenced pasture and forage, houses hide behind their shrubbery. Yards might drop of a sudden to embankments and rushing creeks, where berries grow thick and jumbled. At dusk the mill […]

  Since we parted by consensus, you and I have passed many noons in politest conversation, in phrases not native to us. Our mother tongue––the language known first-hand even to Shakespeare before I.Q. and time’s passage so aptly circumcised the ear–– is all gesture and mew and trill. Before our destinies were clear our signals […]

  To the high reading rooms on Shattuck, spaces ample and legendary, poets go for camaraderie and–spreading our papers about–for work. One lumpen brings his lunch, tucks his bedding up, and opens his bible on the long, hardwood table. He is haloed in golden dreadlocks. Though Sabbath, here we spend and borrow, and have our […]

“Sally Clark, (1883-1982) Adventurer, Sculptor, Co-founder of the Society of Woman Geographers”   Library of Congress photo Number Two-Nine-Nine-Two shows Sally Clark and bear in meadow. Wet nose thrilling, sunlight on his back, the bear’s upright, massive but not up to her height. Capped, flounce at the bodice, long skirt circa Twenty-Eight, she leans in, […]