Stem-Winder We’ll join in protest around favors-spent praising  fate-cakes wherever the green apple leaves. We’ll circle in song the meandering candlelight vigil our voices savoring bold freedom-flavors. We’ll stand...

The Sign —to Seamus Heaney It might’ve been a joke, but spoke to melike a blackbird’s cry, giddyand defiant, not knowing this placebut feeling in place,...

Small City Symphony The manager rushes in late, celloin one hand, orchestra foldersin the other. How can we start on timeif you’re not here? the...

Arcadian Eyes dark eyes reflect smokey flashes from deafening staccato machine guns ...

Morning Coffee shockingly bitter like a friend with a dirty secret the fun of Robusta is its acridity, acidity flavor brash as a sharp-accented lemon...

From The Adirondack Chair When young’uns (poets mostly) say elder They spout it having concluded that anyone over 39 sat a couple of rows back from Sappho in...

PORTRAIT OF DISAPPOINTMENT after years of hoping things would changegiving in to "well, that's the way it is,"look me in eyes and realizethis is who...

Interstate Most take the ramp for common needslike heeding nature’s urgent call.No matter where the journey leads,though, for some reason exit all, Like getting out to...

geometric pattern, untroubled how long traced out there on the marble floor in paradise—where we have just arrived our object–we are again reminded was to love and be fully...

Merton in East Asia Those daysthat carried him never carried himfar enough Thomas Merton foresawhis death in a vision and still flew to Thailandon a speaking tour An accidentalcrown...