My poems have appeared in the following journals: Hospital Drive: A Journal of Word & Image (issue 5), The Right Eyed Deer (issue 8, featured poet), Centrifugal Eye (Spring/Summer 2012), The Blue Ridge Anthology 2013, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and The Piedmont Virginian (Summer 2014). A portion of a poetry exchange between me and poet Tricia Knoll about "the growing season" is posted on the Orion magazine Tumblr blog for May 15, 2014.
You writers out there know how it is. Once you put your poem on the website, it's considered published. You want give visitors something to read. You don't want to dust off things so old that the voice no longer feels quite yours. But you don't want to post the newest and latest because - at least for me - there are many revisions ahead -- the poem hasn't settled down to finished yet. What to do?
Here is a poem that is nearly settled and yet still feels like mine (almost like adult children)! It was written as an occasional poem for a fall equinox ceremony, and in subsequent years I have enjoyed reading it aloud at a Thanksgiving circle around a bubbling pot of "stone soup."
You writers out there know how it is. Once you put your poem on the website, it's considered published. You want give visitors something to read. You don't want to dust off things so old that the voice no longer feels quite yours. But you don't want to post the newest and latest because - at least for me - there are many revisions ahead -- the poem hasn't settled down to finished yet. What to do?
Here is a poem that is nearly settled and yet still feels like mine (almost like adult children)! It was written as an occasional poem for a fall equinox ceremony, and in subsequent years I have enjoyed reading it aloud at a Thanksgiving circle around a bubbling pot of "stone soup."
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Equinox
Autumn now gathers more dusky wool each evening. Goldenrod and purple ironweed flare. On the mountain, trees display whatever leafy color this year's rainfall and frost allow. In the misty valley cattails losing tufts of seed and mikweed pods twisted into strange paisley foretell the palette of coming winter. As we go down into the softening browns, beech leaves whispering, as grey bark blooms with pale green lichens, let us rest, shedding our intensity our bright hurry. Let us be less busy, wind down with the world outside and thicken our coats against the cold compulsions of commerce. Let us bank the fires of spirit this solstice night; soon enough, slowly stretching, we'll unravel the sweet dark cloak from off our shoulders, evening by evening blowing to life again the spark of spring. |
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