Cenotaph

Something for everybody
Empty of everything

That remains elsewhere.

Sic Transit Gloria Sunday

Fleeting landscape art on a mountain in Arcadia, one sunny Sunday, early spring, 2003: My wife and I are posing over a poem composed of pebbles placed on a “quilt” of slowly melting snow somewhere near the spot where—according to Robert Graves by way of Polybius and Pausanias—Zeus was born, namely Mt. Lykaion (alt 1420m), “where no creature casts a shadow,” at the confluence of the states of Ilia, Arcadia and Messinia and a scant few kilometers from the source of the Neda River, where the newborn god was bathed by his mother, Rhea. Though it was frozen in time by the photographer’s art, “Snow Quilts” melted within a half hour after this photograph was taken, and thus deservedly remains to this day (a rainy one, by the way) my shortest, most evanescent poem.

Wind Chimes

Lemon tree in flower—

Watching the wind till
We cannot bear not

To hear it bring it.

Cowards Don't Leave Suicide Notes

So sorry

I couldn’t

Say goodbye

Pandemonium

I thought I’d seen it all before

That spring day that spirited, frisky
Kid frolicked into school on all fours,

Gamboling through the halls
Of knowledge, all hell breaking loose

Before the dumbstruck pupils
And their all-seeing teacher finally

Got smart, chased the demon away.

Hard Times All Around, Poets

What the dickens—

Rotting but not quite
In cold hell, nor in thicket,
Burnt-out magpies scavenging
Black chimney smudges

On ashen-tiled rooftops.

Cross My Heart, Hope to Die

I cannot tell a lie; this photograph taken a few years back is proof of what getting down to earth in my neck of the woods will look like in no time at all--what a place to lie down in!