Creative Writing

Several of these poems appear in Saturday Afternoons, published March 2009. My photograph, Laundry, San Felipe, shot in Mexico’s Yucatan, is on the book’s cover. The most recent Harney County poems come from my spring stint as the 2009 Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence.

Essay
Opera's Wild Ride Opera, as the hype goes, promises high drama and grand emotions. Oddly, I can’t remember an opening night soaring to such heights when I take along a date.
Read more...

Poetry
Coyote Call Persuade Raven Wing, future legendary local, to yodel the coyote call, barks so deep in her throat she might mourn a lost world. Yet the yip-yip of the pups trying to keep up, confuse coyotes with a wicked wind whipping its broad tail across the desert prairie.
Read more...

Poetry
Prayer for Returning, Harney County The hay-gold light and the green sage will nourish me. I will see an ibis, with a long neck, for my eyes only. A crane will toss a stick and lure a faithful mate. What bliss. I will miss my son, my cat, and the rattle of the Brooklyn train yard.
Read more...

Poetry
Seven Ways of Looking at a Dogwood A nod to Wallace Stevens, a bow to Basho Dogwoods turn fecund, succumb one to another. Black boughs birthing blooms. Onward Christian trees. Eastertime’s righteous branches blister with crosses.
Read more...

Poetry
Babysitter The mothers came home, lipstick smeared like jelly, lurching for coffee, just freshening up. The fathers, revived after a cocktail fling, ties loose, hair tossed like high school boys. Some walked me home.
Read more...

Poetry
Harney County Lessons I am heartened in this vast lonely land by the room for affection. Tundra swans swim in twos, mule deer mingle, then muddle, sandhill cranes remain faithful.
Read more...

Poetry
Sunday Outing, Harney County There is no reason to move fast, not here, where the wind slaps newcomers in the face, insists we slow down or miss the big prairie’s picture.
Read more...

Poetry
Sweet and Sour This winter I lost my waist, my nest egg, my columns, our 90-year-old maple whose tired roots surrendered to relentless storms, my patience with slumdog renters, a gazillion arguments, all of my geraniums, gallons of tears.
Read more...

Poetry
Harney County, First Day Dedicated to my older students at Frenchglen I sail the sagebrush sea, green scent drifting, and just as you tell me, scan the land for elk and antelope, big-horned sheep, jack rabbits, those suicidal pests, like Jessie said.
Read more...