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Sunrise Words for My Teacher
In stillness at sunrise, I slide bloodstone beads between my fingers, counting nothing—my hands, invisible to words shut out my mouth and eyes, and I peer into your dark eye where mystics whispered,...
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Beyond Fear: Taking the Leap
Part of being a creative writer is facing rejection and waking up the next day to try again. The first piece I wrote as a copywriter required seven rewrites. That taught me real fast that writing on...
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Hiroshima: 75 years after
After blue-white flashes seared the living into shades, after black rain unquenched mouths begging the sky, ginkgo fossils shine in temple gardens, bitter-sweet. In a split second on August 6, 1945,...
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Coneflower Sequence (the rewrite)
Reconsidering and revising a poem can take you to a new place. Like many this year, I turned to nature for respite and got a new perspective. Here are two versions of the poem. 2020 Last spring, I...
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On Writing: The Power of the Exact Word
As a copy chief for a magazine and book division, I edited articles relentlessly—while honoring artful turns of phrase—inspired by Gustave Flaubert, the masterful storyteller who coined the term le mot...
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2020 Birdwatch (nature heals in an unlikely year)
Everything came sooner this year— ‘February Gold’ daffodils frilling the neighbor’s yard, marching in patches, like bonneted Dutch dolls patterning the quilts hand-stitched by my grandmother in the...
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Blue Ridge Autumn
Last weekend, as fall slipped away, I paused. Where had the color gone? Everyday noise, as well as high winds and heavy rains in late October and early November, had blinded me to the season’s leaf...
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When Memory Takes Us Home: “Iowa Dreams”
The Orchards Poetry Journal recently published “Iowa Dreams” in their winter issue (p. 21). Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed how I’ve tinkered with this poem while evolving my craft....
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Song on a Winter’s Day
Cold days in February may drive us to retreat indoors. Life is fragile, as these turbulent times remind us, but we can seize its simple moments—preparing the garden for renewal, witnessing early fields...
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My Father on D-Day and Mountain Shade
To remember D-Day, I share a poem published in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel: Appalachian Witness, produced by the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. It’s the finished piece from a post...
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