The elm and hackberry branches are thick with brown buds today, only the willow presents her green bonnet. The earth begins to glow. The air fuses river mud with winterberry bramble. Wind and rain both present with power and new life The Worm Moon is new tonight and the land trembles with their incessant turmoil….
A Poem from the Past
Bridle hand caresses turns in a road that leave dust hard in the wake of the horses, past homes that live in the darkness. There are roots beneath the stables, bathed in darkness, waiting on the softest rain Children appear in a cloud, astride the horses, all entering a clearing from different directions. They are my…
Eighth Wonder of the World
Two days before Christmas in 1943, the Liebmann Building in El Reno, Oklahoma, burned to the ground, including my grandfather’s Woolworth store. He relocated his family to Cushing, a few counties to the east, and took over the store there. Mom was 20 years old and was attending a small college in Missouri. Home in…
This Is The Week
The change is real tonight, the buds are swelling above, the green is coming alive below, the air is damp in the way only spring air can be damp. It’s really not official yet, but winter, you are down for the count. One image that always comes to me when I think of spring involves…
The Things We Cherish
I close my eyes and let the warm late winter rain glisten my skin as I carry on shirtless where just two weeks ago I was here in five layers with my hood cinched up tight around my warmest winter hat – the one I tossed, metaphorically, into the river last night It was a…
The Moon In My Window
As the snow moon wanes, it fills my window through the night, fills my dreams with skin aglow in transplanted light, and shadows with the fragrance of soft fruits, prairie rain, salt air Spring sits on the other side of the wedding veil of night, waiting to take my hand and rise from the earth….
March It Is
The great contradiction with the Gregorian calendar is that February is both the longest and the shortest month. There is no other delight that compares to it’s passing. Baby March, lamb that she is, we welcome her The longer we wait, the clearer the vision becomes. Sometimes, through a crack in the sky, I see…
Will Grace Overcome Fear?
I heard it in the wind at nightfall – live true and die well. I lie under these stars and search for the one that has protected me all these years. I know it will have to release me at the appropriate blink of the appropriate eye. At that moment, my lucky star will become…
Landmarks in Time
It was three years ago this week that Mary and I opened our CBD store on the east side of Wichita, Kansas, one of the very first in our area. Our beautiful shop in Riverside that we opened later that summer fell victim to the pandemic last summer, but we’re hanging on here on East…
A Bird’s Breast Can Hold A Poet’s Heart
Grosbeak at the window, turned to catch the light, her silhouette reveals the fragile stance & turn: the exquisite balance of style and form, the longing that lifts those hollow bones Air instead of marrow! Only in dreams could I imagine it, the wings flicker and go, return and swell, dwell within that charging heart,…