The following poems (along with others not shown here) will be included in my upcoming novel The Lake Poet.

            PRAIRIE REVERIE

I want to crawl into the prairie grass with you

Grasp the dirt with my hands, my knees digging in,

Grass stains on my elbows,

And the fairy dust of wildflowers sprinkled in my hair.

The joe-pye weeds will stand as sentinels

Their lavender riches offered to the sky.

The prairie grasses, gardens of the desert,

Will move in a rhythm to match our own.

The thick air will absorb our cries

And the cries of the hawks gliding above us, watching.

Grasshoppers will alight on our shoulders.

And everything will be you,

The clover, the green shafts of cutting weeds,

The yellow ragweed the color of lemons,

And the slice-of-pie ghost moon in the daylight sky.

            GRAND CANYON

The words roll off my tongue

As words of love, which we spoke

Looking out over that edge.

Kaibab, Coconino, Supai, Muav

Layers of sandstone, shale and limestone

Laid down when the earth was smooth

Like a ball of clay, wanting to be formed.

What did Coronado think when

He first stepped toward that edge

That ledge from which one more step

Meant a plummet through ages

More ancient than God?

The juniper, pinion, agave, Spanish bayonet,

Cling stubbornly to dizzying walls of shale

And below, the river rolls over bleached Paleozoic bones

Churning, placid, roiling, joyous.

I thought for a moment I could fly into it,

Down into it, like the hawk we saw

Spiraling through rarefied air.

But then your hand steadied me

And my feet gripped the ground

Leaving my heart under the hawk’s wing.

            SNOW AND MOON

Winter settles in, and still you are not here.

I measure days not in time

But in the hardness of the ground

The loss of leaves from trees.

At summer’s end we parted

Cicadas hummed as we wept

But already we shivered

As the air blew grey from the north.

There are two ways to feel about this

The best way is that with each season’s passing

We are that much closer

To finding our way back.

The worst way is that

With every waxing and waning

Your heart will give up a piece

Of what it knows to be true.

For me there is no waning

Only waxing and waxing again

The brightness and fullness of the moon

Is infinite and frightening.

Yes, the snow will come

And I’ll taste the flakes on my tongue

Not as honey from the sky

Nor as balm to soothe my heart.

Instead, I’ll wonder if you, too

Are tasting winter and how it feels

As it travels down your

Throat and into your soul.

                SUNSET ON PRAIRIE

When the day’s last light falls

On the trees at the edge of the prairie,

And for that moment they are bathed

With a supernatural aura,

I think of the light that comes

Just before darkness.

Already, as the tree branches glow

A black wind howls up behind me

Bringing with it bits of leaves and dirty things

A broken branch raps against the roof

Like a wild animal trying to get in.

I watch the crown of the tallest oak

As it revels in that last bit of shining glory

Before it too, gives in to

The rush of darkness

That drops over us all

Like a cloak.