missing from
my bookshelf—
last night’s spider
/ / /
15 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
Category: Nature
utter silence
buzz
a bug against the lamp
/ / /
9 July 2023
Charlottesville VA
Inventory Of An Evening Walk
Three humans with four dogs.
Well, three if I don’t count myself,
who I can see from the chest down.
A deer, from ten feet away.
A fox, fleet of foot, from fifty.
A hundred fireflies —
lightning bugs, says Patrick —
and dozens of bats to snatch them.
/ / /
17 June 2023
Charlottesville VA
How Can We Sleep
I’m sitting in a camp chair
on the concrete rectangle
I call my front porch.
The catbirds are squabbling
in the Adam’s needle;
the neighbor kids are shooting hoops.
I’m trying to read a book of poems
about the environmental crisis,
but my eyes are stinging from smoke
that has traveled all the way to Virginia
from wildifes in Quebec and Nova Scotia,
nearly a thousand miles away.
“The earth is not dying, it is being killed,
and those who are killing it
have names and addresses.”
Now one of the neighbor kids is crying.
Maybe she knows
our days are numbered.
/ / /
6 June 2023
Charlottesville VA
Meet Gulliver. (UPDATE BELOW) I’ve said for many years that it’s not good for someone to be the only living thing in their home, whether that means having a partner or a pet or a plant. Gulliver is a wandering dude, aka silver inch plant, aka tradescantia zebrina. He was mailed to me all the way from Texas by my friend Amber, who cut him from her own plant. After many weeks and one additional trim, he’s tiny but he has roots. His dad plant has been around since 2004, so he’s got good genes. What you’re seeing in this photo isn’t the tip of the iceberg — it’s the whole iceberg. He’s got about a 1/2″ of stalk and some little root filaments in the pot, which I put him in yesterday. I named him Gulliver because of the wandering connotation, and because he’s tiny now but will hopefully get big, and there are many size and perspective shifts in Gulliver’s Travels, which is one of my favorite books. Send him — and his caretaker — good vibes, because I definitely don’t know what I’m doing.
(UPDATE: I took a photo of Gulliver in the Picture This app and it turns out he’s not a wandering dude [tradescantia zebrina] but instead a purple heart [tradescantia pallida]. But I’m keeping the name.)
Leave a CommentI wrapped myself
in a tent made of sky
floating in the half-light
/ / /
10 May 2023
Charlottesville VA
the aroma of a nearby fire
fades in the steam
of my morning tea
/ / /
13 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
sun & Star Wars
green tea & dogwoods
: a loved one’s voice
/ / /
12 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
we fight the monsters
with little streams
& viburnum plicatum
/ / /
8 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
it’s cold and rainy outside, too
/ / /
7 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
today I watched a bee
generate enough breeze
to move little clumps of dirt
/ / /
6 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
A Winter Poem
Winter is more insidious than summer.
The low-angled sun is a dull blade,
sheathed in bitter grey.
In winter I play old music.
The music my grandparents listened to
as they took me to Friendly’s or to
a clarinet lesson in the next town over.
It’s the music of nostalgia and longing
and emptiness. Winter music.
Winter creeps into my thoughts,
warns of the approaching holidays,
sets a single place at the table.
In these months my fingers are always cold.
I sit hunched, arms crossed,
conserving what little heat I can muster.
Not every place has a winter.
At least not the way I mean it.
I’ve spent Christmases by the pool,
New Year’s Eves under warm, soft skies.
A friend says, “You’re a real New Englander.”
I say, “Only in disposition.”
/ / /
14 November 2022
State College PA
murder!
on every block
a leaf blower
/ / /
6 November 2022
State College PA
parking in the shade of a leafless tree
/ / /
3 November 2022
State College PA
tree limbs versus the wind
the gym parking lot
keeps the score
/ / /
17 October 2022
State College PA