Recent Poems

Where Plovers Complain

When my body rouses at the slightest

and I fear you will not return, and our lives

shrivel from the world's trumpeting,

I go to rest, in silence, where your spirit speaks,

where plovers' complaints precede the dawn,

in a cover where waves continuously crest and crush.

I come into the resonance of that music

unmediated by voice or strings. And I know

around me a cantus firmus not bound to earth.

Through the Hut Door at Aslan's Keep

Don't stop! Further up and further in!" called Farsight...

--C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Your gaze along and through Yosemite's valley,

from lustrous river to the Sierras' rim,

bids you, Come, you must come to see

what's further up and further in.

When shadows narrow the valley floor,

light outlines the scars, the inner shine

of the sheered-off granite faces, and opens the door

to further up, and further in,

into stone thrust up by earth's shambling deep,

stone clothed with light, stone that calls, Come in,

into our room, our enormous keep.

Come, further up, and further in.

As we glide in, the door expands

and this valley widens through all mountains

and brings us to them, mere borderlands

to further up and further in

where we ascend the spray of waterfalls

to more fragrant air, to fields of lupin,

dimpled under a sky's open parasol,

the edge of further up and further in,

up Tenaya's gorge and smooth rock bowl

and around the sun-edged curve of a mountain

to see beyond the higher altitudes

what's further up and further in.

Adult finalist in the 2007 Sierra Foothill Poetry Contest, and published

in Little Town, USA, 2007 (Auburn, Calif. : Singing Tree Press, 2007),

p.22-23. Slightly revised.

to pirouette

center your balance, stay

calm, place your leg in  a

deep plie, lift yourself

over your toes, and turn,

and turn, and turn again.

To turn, and turn again

feel the turn, left knee out,

your arms held gently in,

then on demiplie,

come down solid, erect.

Published in Brevities,

no.58, Dec 2007, p.1

Thomas' Wish, or Bypass Surgery

With thanks to Rhonda Perryman

the surgeon's scar--

the cross he left upon your heart,

the surgeon's scar--

hideous symbol, axlebar,

emblem of life, a mapped chart

to our blood kin, our counterparts:

the surgeon's scar.

the surgeon's scar--

I trace my finger on your chest,

the surgeon's scar--

and I too, now life's door's ajar,

will wake alive and be twice blessed--

In our blood kinship I will rest

on our surgeon's scar.

  Published in Time of Singing,  Winter 2007