Poetry
Needle-nose Pliers
Do you know what is never the right tool for the job? Needle-nose pliers. Anytime I use needle-nose pliers it is with hopeless resignation. I stare at a thing needing fixing, shake my head, and say, “I guess I could try needle-nose pliers.” I do not blame whoever invented them. They look like a very good tool. Would you like to twist, pull, or push something tiny in a tight space? Here is a tool where one end fits your palm and the other end grabs tiny things. In the middle are even…
Privacy
today a moth was in my hat when I put it on my summer straw hat, wherein I pretend I'm Don Quixote, especially on an August afternoon. When the world outside tilts to the sun, the world under my hat is cool and dim and occupied by me alone, usually, but today this tickle, this frightened telegraph in my hair, this white moth, who, escaping, hovered eye to eye, as if to say it was me who disturbed him, wings thinner than this page and really not white but more like gray ash on snow Originally…
Oklahoma Tanka / Ars Poetica
Oklahoma Tanka #1 Ice storm. Close your eyes: the wind through the last high leaves in the trees could be squirrels scouring nutshells or birds pacing limbs, warming themselves. #2 October, summer still a stifling dinner guest. At last, first north wind calls through my window like a rowdy friend: climb out and play. #3 Just east, hundred-year flood made a town an island. Here, parade canceled, we gasped with strangers at the river swallowing its banks. #4 Vacant lot, morning cold a fresh linen…
Fieldbook of Natural History
When God was handing out physiques, I thought he said antiques and asked for a distressed relic. But seriously, folks. These bodies. Imagine every creature spellbound by its finest feature. A tadpole’s in love with its tail. A mussel prays to its foot. Octopuses of course worship arms but envy the spines of salmon, who raindance in a shower of nerves. Stink is incense to a skunk. Surely a dog thinks God lives in its nose, the stereo scents down the snout always just out of sight. Homo habilis,…