It wasn’t what we were looking for
one preternatural summery day
in March, in the Davenport dust.
No app or website prepared us to find
such a vessel of hope near the levees
(they get as much use this year
as the bar at a teetotalers’ convention):

Father, eleven year old son
and seven year old daughter staff
the tiny Vietnamese restaurant.
We?re it, no other customers in the house,
we wait for our vegetarian soup
which the boy proudly delivers,
sister smiles behind.

On the wall, the smoke
of a false summer on the Mekong,
plum blossoms free
on placid current.

originally published in riverbabble

The old house didn’t look like much,
so it was no major stressor to find it gone.
Watching the new structure find its shape,

over what was left of the summer, then fall,
and finally the mildest winter in decades,
provided a bit of interest on morning walks,

but now forward progress is hard to see.
Most of us begin with the best intentions,
grand plans, and as the days pass

lose that follow-through. Money worries
strand some boats in port; others change course
for a fairer clime, never complete the journey.

Still others are locked in the doldrums
and while sailors think they see surface
ripples signaling fresh winds, lassitude turns

days to weeks, weeks to months until only
corpses rot in humidity. Occasionally,
a new owner will appear on the scene,

momentum returns perhaps for a while,
but completion, when rarely it occurs,
is like crawling across a finish line,
only an asterisk next to a name.

Originally published in Big River Poetry Review, 7.5.12

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

even stone walls afflicted
by owner’s signature
reciting what was verboten.

No sex, drugs or rock and roll!
Worn placards a virtual
microminiskirt on fine, grassy limbs,

an invitation to roll in the first
sweet haying, then do it all over
under the night canopy.

You are invited to contribute three line haiku, senryu or whatever and I might put them in this spot.  Of course, I reserve all creative and editorial/political judgment.  Email them to me — you know where.

The official website notes it is “published by The Blueline Press, includes work by 56 poets living in Vermont or closely connected with the state. The book’s 92 poems reflect a place where living is dictated by the seasons, farming is a way of life, and towns may have only one main street. But for all the appeal of its picturesque landscape and simplicity of rural life, Vermont, in this volume, is not portrayed as a Norman Rockwell painting. While some poems describe real Vermonters,those born to the land, others are from the perspective of those who have discovered it. All the poems, whether narrative or reflective, open a window on a region of contradictions where natural beauty and neglect, wealth and poverty, often exist side by side.

Birchsong editors are Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, Brenda Nicholson, and Monica Stillman. Guest editor Rob Hunter, who teaches English at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, is the author of a book of poetry, September Swim. Birchsong’s colorful covers were painted by Burr and Burton’s art teacher, Betsy Hubner, who also did the interior artwork.”

Ordering and more information can be found at http://www.northshire.com/siteinfo/bookinfo/9780962030932/0/

In a coffee den
tucked under the hill
mugs anchor, fingers
click click on shining
MacBooks.  Beyond
the iron door icy
flakes whirl above

cobblestoned square,
small children spin,
then fall happy
in October winter
lost and found
in the North Atlantic.

And the video…