‘The Difference Is’
There is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
Read MoreThere is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
Read MoreI am 47, the day is Jan. 2, the year is 2005, / my beard is stained white in several places, / my son is 14, my girl 10, my (borrowed neighborhood) / cat is named Mister Puzzlesocks, / my favorite red wine of the moment is / Trinchero Cabernet, my car is a white ’93 …
Read MoreMy ink-stained hands hear the/ sound of the railroad, another train / passing through my town, here/ at the middle of nowhere &/ everything. I am ready to burst/ open like a cherry tomato/ between your teeth …
Read MoreI am on a porch, captain/ of a green ocean. Wasps patrol / the boundary lands. In whispering winds, conversing / in high tulip poplars, I hear / poems from another tongue …
Read MoreThe song "Appalachian Round" is one of the prettiest, most evocative group songs in the English language. Here is a 2009 four-part harmony version a bunch of fellow travelers and I recorded down in Princeton, WV.
Read MoreDo not deny the urge, do/ not let the chance for a poem/ pass you by. It’s OK, it’s wholesome / and nutritious, go ahead …
Read MoreI decide to be famous / only to myself. It is / so much easier and my / tender, so lightly bruised / ego now thanks me for this / demilitarized zone …
Read MoreI want to see / if it is possible / to be a nobody / from nowhere. / Creating something / out of nothing …
Read MoreA great grief saddles me,/ rides down the pampas of / Virginia Dare Avenue, / until I am too tired / and we return home / together ...
Read More‘To scratch the page,/ to pick the scab, / to mix and match the phrases, / enter the lab and whip up potions, / address the sky with curses, praises, / annoy the authorities, cause commotions …’
Read MoreWrinkle-skinned earth mothers from / another decade, a far more interesting decade they profess, / nest live orchids in tangled-up hair, / black-cotton gloves rising past thin wrists ...
Read MoreI want to run and embrace/ this tulip-yellow light. But/ where? Where do I stand and/ meet it all? Face to face with/ beauty bigger than myself, I / quail ...
Read MoreWhen an audio clip arrived in our 'in-box' from a buddy, Joel Preston Smith, featuring a live recording of hummingbirds dive-bombing his feeder in rural Liberty, WV., wings a-whirring, we asked if we might illustrate it with some action-packed hummingbird video
Read MoreI invite you to take five minutes from feeling harassed by the news or our own hectic heads for "Sonata for Piano & West Virginia No. 1." It offers another way of looking at West Virginia and those parts that remain uncorrupted, fresh, and true.
Read MoreHere in the quiet provinces,/ Wars pass via headlines, worrying us/ Solid citizens even from this distance with/ their loud report./ We in the quiet country have the luxury of/ Worry, second cousin to fear ...
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