Poetry

Your dead father dogs youlike the white mutt that roams

along the fishing holes and walksthe edge of gravel roads, sometimes

at a trot, most times slow,but with purpose, muscle and sinew

There’s something to be saidabout standing on the center lineof a bustling four-lane road,cars skimming by in front and behind meas I watch my stainless steel thermosbumble along toward the opposite curb

First, find the reliquary:Collect the bones of the mammoth,regurgitated onto the shoreby the agitate cycle of thawing permafrost,rinse clean by the frigid lake’s lapping,swelled in a jumble of reeds

First cited in the sixteenth century (specifically in a book called Dice-Play), the expression [brown study]—which describes a state of intense, sometimes melancholy reverie, really seems to have hit i