WHAT IF What if man had created the world? Would all the pine trees be isosceles triangles, would autumn leaves turn only red or yellow,...

ONCE We Were Wild Wacky Wickedly Wonderful Wounding Weeping Weren’t We

PUDDLE One rainy day, drawn to rippling trees and undulating clouds beneath, I fell into the sky.

CHALLENGER A nation mourns dead we do not know and wonders why such sorrow settles in our bones. The tears are not so much for families...

SECOND CHOICE After forty-two years in this same house my folks are pulling up stakes and moving on. When the time comes, Mother says,...

Will To Bend Knees let us bend and straighten, serve us to stoop, to reach, to play, to kneel, to tend to smaller things. My old knees,...

My yellow kayak silently slices the surface of the morning lake. Autumn shoulders into the northwoods smelling of rotting compost, wet...

I have no other name for her but Mother, this stranger before me slumped in her wheelchair white hair frowsy around her head. My mother...

At night the owl, eyes focused, ears fixing, descends on silent wings to carry off rabbit, vole, snake, claws in their backs, beak...

I am old, Little Red Fawn, but my heart will not be stilled. When I was young I chewed clouds of dust from the horses of the hunter and...

A solitary loon drifts low in the water, dives for food, rises to the surface, then lifts herself from the lake to the tip of her tail,...

Brittle husks cling to the cedar siding of our house, abdomen, head, six legs, two white threads dangling like untied ribbons on a gift....

I see a freckled fawn dead beside the road and then a doe standing at the edge of the trees. I know about illusion-- the lady sawed in...

Thousands of mayflies float upon the water, wings splayed upon the surface, tails trailing behind. A few, left poised on the cedar siding...

What if the skimmer skates on the water, his wake so slight nearly undisturbing, the slug inches across the walk a slim silver tracery...

"My own mother, your grandmother, gave me nothing in the way of information except a family recipe for plum pudding." Robert Nathan...

I saw through the early morning haze the poet huddled on the pier, head bowed in meditation. I guessed she waited for her muse. I looked...

Why did I let him out the door without a string tied round his belt. I want to pull him back, say one more time look both ways, cross...

Would we know you're dead, Sue, seeing your picture there in Colorado, smiling from under your broad-brimmed hat? Your body, seared to...

Clouds forsake the skies in evening And settle in the valleys for the night Like rumpled cotton batting nesting in a box of jewels. In...