SAMPLE POEMS
RUPTURE •
THE VISIBLE SPECTRUM •
END OF THE SEASON
Listen to selection broadcast on The Signal, WYPR (88.1 FM)
RUPTURE
Together, in our small boat, we troll the waters
beneath Fossil Rock—a carved-out ledge that hangs
above the Chester’s western bank and teems
with prehistoric sea-life frozen in the cliff.
Downriver, on the eastern edge, geologists
have discovered that a matching cliff preserves
the other half of creatures interrupted
in their journey into stone. A perfect
fit, if only these two halves could ever
reunite. We troll beneath the one
and then continue down the other side. Fish
are drawn to rocks as if they sense their history
and their future, both. We drag our baited line
through water, stop, rebait and start again.
How much farther, we wonder, in our lifetime,
will these two shorelines drift apart?
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THE VISIBLE SPECTRUM
Light flashes behind black film
and a screen leaps to life—
or death—where fog and shadow dance
like moths around your heart.
A picture’s worth a thousand words—
but just the one that counts: inoperable.
The light flicks off with a solid click.
There is no news in this transparency.
Only the world passing
through us, only the fluttering
of particle and wave.
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END OF THE SEASON
Listen to Author's Reading
White on white, the work boat
scrubs the fog outside my window,
churning up the clam shell
bones of the water, towing
a cloud of paper gulls—the wall,
the sky, to my eye everything
the same color: winter, waiting
to receive the smoke of our fires
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