Three Poems

In “Total Solar,” a community gathers in Stanley, Idaho, for a solar eclipse, experiencing celestial wonder and poignant human connections.

“The Key to the Crossing” describes a winter trekker's perilous river crossing, reflecting on luck, survival, and shared experiences.

“Breath and Breadth” recounts the joys of winter trails, especially the natural ice bridges that form over streams. As winter recedes, so do the bridges.

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Total Solar

First published by Un Bodado De Voces, The Alternative New Year’s Re-deferred Spoken Word / Performance Extravaganza, 2022 Anthology.

on 21 august 2017
a half hour before noon
stanley idaho went sunless
we nor’easterners had swelled
the town from 68 to 1000s
we hiked by day

we gazed at night
counted the moons of jupiter
oohed and aahed the rings of saturn

our astronomer many weeks away
from his new hampshire home
gazed eastward; you miss

your family we said
his pupils moistened; his lips
trembled; i miss my dog he said

the day and moment arrive
lunacy obscures helios’s radiance
royal blue skies darken to navy blue

then to midnight blue; the air chills
birds roost; from behind moon’s
black orb flares sol’s corona

mercury emerges; venus and mars
regulus denebola and other stars
of constellation leo; ere long

light returns; the show flows east
but misses ole new hampshire
giving it nothing to howl at

The Key to the Crossing

First published by la arcada de los escribas, a summer solstice day spectacle of willfully poetic endeavors, 2023 Anthology.

Water sweeps beneath sheets of ice pushing
out air with the whoomp whoomp
of a bellowing whale.

Snowshoe tracks direct me to the crossing.
Stones fan out from either bank—but none reach
mid-stream, where a misstep becomes a last step.

As I linger, down the trail comes another trekker
who earlier told me this story: in an airport last year
he felt tired and woke five days later in a hospital.

A clogged artery and wasn’t it lucky (I say) you
were in an airport amongst EMTs and not on the trail.
Indeed (he says) out here I’d been a goner.

With no dithering, he descends the embankment,
treads rock to rock to the mid-stream chasm,
and (as I gasp) steps therein.

And steps out the other side! How did he do that?
Now I see it, a rock midstream, a bit submerged,
but good for a quick-step, the key to the crossing.

So, like him, I take the plunge. He leans on his poles
waiting for my safe traverse. Fortuitous for all
he had his heart attack not here but there.

Breath and Breadth

First published by And Then, Volume 22, 2024.

Buds bursting, a soaring sun, last autumn's
leaves pasted to the forest floor, winter’s
breath retreating, lingering only where hikers 

tread on icy rails soon to fade to summer
trails of rocks and roots, soil and mud
trekked with light boot, haversack, and anorak

no risk of freezing or tumbling off a slope
no need for snowshoe, crampon, ice axe, rope
nor layered outerwear. But oh those winter trails!

standing on piled powder that raises a peak
from four thousand feet to four thousand twelve
beating a snowshoe path up a cragged rise

slewing back down as on a luge, but most of all
I miss my bridges, those occasional sweeps
of brook and river where sluggish water crusts

and on those crusts winter's squalls accumulate
and condensate with splashed water and cloud bluster
and freeze, so that with no synthetic intervention

an ice bridge forms and spans the water’s breadth
and hikers cross at ease a current which in summer
they must hop rock to rock in peril of slipping off.

But when cometh April, ice bridges melt
impressing angst in trekking parties, for who
shall be first to cross, the teeniest to test the bridge

or the most ample, for if ample can so can all, a debate
relished by such as I of middle weight, yes, middle
weight, that’s the weight when winter's breath is gone.