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Three poems from the new collection Be-hooved :

River Stone

The stone I hold

fills     my hand.

I want to tell it,

compel it,

to tell me

how to be

still     within.

I feel cool rays spill     

into my palm.

Not will     but

willing.

Orphan Hours

Some nights, submerged leviathans,

intermittently recognized

by dorsal fin patterns,

break the surfaces of deep

marine dreams, breech,

occasioning rough wakes,

probing echolocations answered

by the hard-pounding notes

of the central organ.

                    ~

Some nights, tined travellers

with ultraviolet-tuned eyes

recognize us dreamers

slumped under snowy sheets,

like lichens, waiting

to nourish something;

those deep blue winter eyes

see us in the dark

of our imaginings.

                     ~

Some nights, death is just

the summer beach ice wave-stacked

between ocean, coastal plain.

Now, summer ice is not.

Eyes, memory, attest to change.

More than ice, going-going-gone.

When metaphors lose meaning

language, like any beast, becomes

endangered as a species.

                     ~

And we are left to migrate

fluked or hooved through

dark dreams;

and we are left to our efforts

to dive or paw through

dense mediums;

and we are left to cry out

hoping to be, hoping--

to be answered.

Abiding the Cold

Cows no longer lactating, / bulls no longer sparring, / herd no longer moving, / south-of-the-tree-line-snow / easily pawed from ground lichens . . . / Northern-forest-dispersed, / the herd thrives. Fattens. /

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