Two Poets Divorce I want Cohen! No, I want him. You take Dickinson. No! I want Wilkinson. OK, OK, take them. I don’t care. Just leave me Gilbert, Ginsberg, Hass, […]

This Morning, a Yellow Wheelbarrow I hear the chords, the deep thrum, from a yellow wheelbarrow on its side after snow in a morning garden. The light singing there, yellow […]

  Today like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty […]

Recovering Words  Writing Retreats with Richard Osler The focus of these retreats is to create the opportunity for participants to create substantial new poems through comprehensive writing adventures (assignments)  UPCOMING […]

Cherish This World The daughter, for a time, who wouldn’t talk or look at him, that daughter, tells of her days and nights on Mandarte Island, barely more than a […]

Today I am going to break an unwritten protocol: not to use my blog to showcase my own poems. The reason: my emotional reaction to the release of the Canadian […]

                        My Mother’s Foot The main door into the nursing home slides open, an exhalation of stale air. The […]

Big thanks to Barry Dempster, poet and editor, who posted this cartoon on Facebook today. Another remarkable cartoon rendering of poetry by cartoonist Grant Snider! In 2013 his cartoon Day […]

Dedication You whom I could not save Listen to me. Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another. I swear, there is in me no […]

Worlds collide, words collide – the smoke that stays in the mouth, the eyes, from the Lac-Megantic oil-tanker train wreck and explosion in Quebec; and here in Port Townsend, Washington, […]