His own life suddenly seemed repellently formal. Whom did he know or what did he know and whom did he love? Sitting on the stump under the burden of his father’s death and even the...

Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to...

Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.

Wherever we go we do harm, forgivingourselves as wheels do cement for wearingeach other out. We set this houseon fire, forgetting that we live within.(from “To a Meadowlark,” for M.L. Smoker)

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

He did recall that the summer after graduating from college before he joined the state police he had read Shakespeare. It was the pure language that stupefied him. He would be in a diner reading...

Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery” ~ Snarky comment of Clive from “The River Swimmer” (pg 47)

Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first...