Sample Poem

In case anyone has actually found their way here, and is curious about what I write, here's one that appeared earlier this year in Octavo:

Searching For Graves On San Juan Island

A west wind is lashing
the regal lilies back and forth
and scratching through the thistles

as usual, but since last summer the innkeepers
have lost two cats, our favorites.
We listened to their stories:

the old male fell asleep
in January next to the iron dragons
of the woodstove; a tumor, not much pain.

He is buried in this field beside his sister, who was taken
by a fox. We prowl over the wild ground, follow
their paths through marmalade grass,

not finding any monuments
except for the lichened stones,
and they have always rested here.

Umbels of queen anne's lace stretch over
this field, marking out their territory
with a nursery of spiral galaxies.

All the plants have sprung up stronger
this year. Blooming then subsiding finally
to seed, every inflorescence curls itself up

into a nest, a basket-clutch of fragile claws,
a secret cave, the slow blinking
of a green eye.