At the Wading Pool

At the Wading Pool

The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal, crash, and run through...
The Leaves Remember

The Leaves Remember

Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...
Come Thou Dayspring

Come Thou Dayspring

Where is warmth and where can the light be found? These days, the workers put in longer hours than the sun who goes too soon to sleep. All the leaves, once bright, now have dulled and browned with the sunken gourds and withered flowers to feed the molds and mushrooms...
August’s End

August’s End

The thorn branches are a knot of tangled capillaries. They quarter armies of spiders standing silent and sentinel over the blackest of the blackberries– the last and heaviest summer sweet before the coming rot. These are the scouts and outriders of the advancing...
Winter Staves by Rusten Harris

Winter Staves by Rusten Harris

Is it winter? The trees are waiting to be clothed Arms and branches lifted up to the heavens Staves – ragged upright wooden bones Sup life with a little soil – frozen Limbs clenched through the wind Some lose weight and watch their friends Keep warm...