As a Christian, Jesus is a very real presence in my life and writing. Spirituality isn’t the only subject I write about, but it is the backdrop for everything I think or pen. Christians believe every person born has good and evil hopelessly combined within. It is like a cup of water that someone hasContinue reading “The Difference Is the t”
Category Archives: The Wind and the Shadows
Valentine’s Day 2017
This May, I will have been married 23 years. Over the years, I’ve written a number of poems for my wife. (Can you really be a poet without a few love poems lurking about? LOL). When my wife and I were married, we chose to use the traditional vows. While these might seem hackneyed toContinue reading “Valentine’s Day 2017”
Wildfires
The past 20 years, horrific wildfires seem to have become the rule rather than the exception in the United States. My home state of Washington has lost hundreds of thousands of acres to fires. I live in a valley. During fire season, smoke often floods our valley and is gets trapped by our surrounding hills.Continue reading “Wildfires”
Shapely Poems
Shape poems or visual poems arrange text to form pictures. With some shape poems, the picture formed by words is more important than what the words say. Others use the shape to emphasize the verbal content. One of the first shape poems I read is also one of the best known. “Easter Wings,” by GeorgeContinue reading “Shapely Poems”
Janitor
Haiku is a Japanese poetic form I became acquainted with through the writings of JD Salinger. One of his recurring characters is Seymour Glass, and Seymour enjoys writing haikus. Haiku is a simple, three line form: a line of five syllables, a line of seven syllables, and a line of five syllables. Haiku began asContinue reading “Janitor”
Narrowing Sonnet
At Christmas time, we celebrate the birth of Christ. Christians believe God became human in Jesus. How can we grasp the extent to which God limited Himself in order to become human? Meditating on this is what inspired my poem, “Narrowing Sonnet.” In this poem, I explore God’s self-limitation through description and imagery but alsoContinue reading “Narrowing Sonnet”
Post-Modern Sketches
(The painting for the post is “Retroactive II” by Robert Rauschenberg) Poetry has sometimes been a medium for social critique, as all art forms have. My poems are no exception, and some comment on the world we live in. One of the poems in my book, The Wind and the Shadows, is called “Post-Modern Sketches.”Continue reading “Post-Modern Sketches”
I Know the Moon
Writing doesn’t happen in a straight line, at least not in my experience. Some poems are like slipping on the ice; others like digging out of prison with a spoon. Most poems fall somewhere between these extremes. My first book, The Wind and the Shadows, has at least four poems of the “digging out ofContinue reading “I Know the Moon”
The Fence
The Fence is a poem I wrote in 2020. It’s about a fence (surprise, surprise) and the property behind it that I passed while walking to high school. It’s funny how mundane things imprint on our psyches. I can’t account for it except that it’s one way everything can point to ultimate meaning. Plato saidContinue reading “The Fence”
A Wandering Minstrel 