climbs to back deck
like a second story man,
ransacks china flowerpots
before the trapper
entices him into a crate
with jam and fruit.

Now he lives in Norwich,
half an hour away,
repatriated across two interstates.
Neighbors report a mother
bear and her cubs
traversed our driveway

and headed up the meadow.
I swim alone in the upper pond
two days before summer,
an August tourist in Paris.  Oh,
one of the dogs joins me
for awhile, makes lazy

serpentine circles
as she trolls for sticks, but
it isn’t the same as the spray
and splashes of children
when they searched
for weapons of mass destruction

that Saddam might have hidden,
found only water guns
while their laughter echoed
across to Hurricane Hill,
rural acres brimful.  Once around
that corner you realize

there won’t be time to read
all the books you want, things
feel different somehow. Some
mornings you forget that tune
but it usually approaches
on the backs of afternoon

shadows as daylilies close
up shop, fewer and fewer
lightning bugs flash
in the evening meadow,
but for some reason
butterflies are everywhere.

If you’d like to learn more about it or order it, click on the image below.

Those journals read a lot better
without the triple-edged intrusion
of those hopeful cardboard invites?
I mean, did some editor think
my guests would be so impressed
they’d rip em out
and fill in their identity
the minute they returned

home or that copies
of those obscure reviews
were going to end up
in waiting rooms
where the public would decide
the poetry life
was what was missing
in their meager existence?

All Climate Change is Local

What is it with these winter
moths who gang up
on the glass porch door
like j.d.’s hanging out
at the corner store, smoking
and intimidating passersby?

The dogs whine to go out,
but the unsightly patchwork
of November visitors –
it isn’t winter after all,
not even cold –
gives us pause.
Still when nature calls,
we all must listen.

Front doors vanished
behind upside-down coconut ice
cream cones waving over blinding sands.
There were no visible routes
for ingress, egress, any gress.

The town library waged
a brave and unsuccessful battle
to keep its books available to residents
before it finally gave up,
conceded that only a January thaw

of biblical proportions or a spring outbreak
of Gulf air, would free its face
to the world – both as likely
as every elementary school student
coming down with the flu at the same time.

Those who wanted
to borrow a book, visit
in a neighbor’s kitchen
or deliver a package
would have to find another way.

Guilfoss Falls

Those giant sunflowers, flattened
by the hurricane, spring back
when gently pushed into place, but beg
for the tallest stakes imaginable;
there isn’t time before the ferry leaves
to run Down-Island to Shirley’s Hardware.
It’s get those supports
and barely make the boat
or take the kids to the Flying Horses.
Let those sad yellow faces
go, choose the future,
face the consequences.